Today’s newsletter began by discussing America’s rabbinic seminaries, and it will end with them as well. Matt Austerklein examines the unique status of cantors in 19th-century Britain, and argues that these attitudes did much to shape the cantorial profession, and cantorial training, in the U.S.

Many norms of American Jewish life are undeniably British. The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, founded in 1913, was originally conceived of by the Anglo-Jewish academic, Solomon Schechter, as a parallel to the United Synagogue in Great Britain, and even his own religious concepts relied on Anglican ideas and terms. American-Jewish music is also indebted to this British influence, as Schechter’s wife Mathilde published a hymnal which includes several British melodies now in use throughout American synagogues.

Great Britain deserves credit for having the first cantorial school in history. Predating American cantorial schools by almost a century, London’s Jews’ College was founded in 1855 to afford a “liberal and useful Hebrew and English education to the sons of respectable parents, and training of Ministers, Readers, and Teachers.” The term “reader” here refers to cantors. . . . It is notable that Albert Hyamson, the chronicler of the first century of Jews’ College, wrote that the ministering function in Britain was firstly a cantorial one.

Below, today’s newsletter will return to some other reflections on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the current war, but first something must be said of its recent progress. Israel has kept up its aerial and ground assault on Hizballah, and may have already killed the successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader it eliminated less than two weeks ago. Matthew Levitt assesses the current state of the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which, in his view, is now “a shadow of its former self.” Indeed, he adds,

it is no exaggeration to say that the Hizballah of two weeks ago no longer exists. And since Hizballah was the backbone of Iran’s network of militant proxies, its so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s strategy of arming and deploying proxy groups throughout the region is suddenly at risk as well.

Hizballah’s attacks put increasing pressure on Israel, as intended, only that pressure did not lead Israelis to stop targeting Hamas so much as it chipped away at Israel’s fears about the cost of military action to address the military threats posed by Hizballah.

At the same time, Levitt explains, Hizballah still poses a serious threat, as it demonstrated last night when its missiles struck Haifa and Tiberias, injuring at least two people:

Hizballah still maintains an arsenal of rockets and a cadre of several thousand fighters. It will continue to pose potent military threats for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region.

How will the group seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death amid these military setbacks? Hizballah is likely to resort to acts of international terrorism, which are overseen by one of the few elements of the group that has not yet lost key leaders.

But the true measure of whether the group will be able to reconstitute itself, even over many years, is whether Iran can restock Hizballah’s sophisticated arsenal. Tehran’s network of proxy groups—from Hizballah to Hamas to the Houthis—is only as dangerous as it is today because of Iran’s provision of weapons and money. Whatever Hizballah does next, Western governments must prioritize cutting off Tehran’s ability to arm and fund its proxies.