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.

Ron Ben-Yishai, reporting from a visit to IDF forces in the Gaza Strip, analyzes the state of the fighting, and “the persistent challenge of eradicating an entrenched enemy in a complex urban terrain.”

Hamas, sensing the war’s end, is mounting a final effort to inflict casualties. The IDF now controls 65 percent of Gaza’s territory operationally, with observation, fire dominance, and relative freedom of movement, alongside systematic tunnel destruction. . . . Major P, a reserve company commander, says, “It’s frustrating to hear at home that we’re stagnating. The public doesn’t get that if we stop, Hamas will recover.”

Senior IDF officers cite two reasons for the slow progress: meticulous care to protect hostages, requiring cautious movement and constant intelligence gathering, and avoiding heavy losses, with 22 soldiers killed since June.

Two-and-a-half of Hamas’s five brigades have been dismantled, yet a new hostage deal and IDF withdrawal could allow Hamas to regroup. . . . Hamas is at its lowest military and governing point since its founding, reduced to a fragmented guerrilla force. Yet, without complete disarmament and infrastructure destruction, it could resurge as a threat in years.

At the same time, Ben-Yishai observes, not everything hangs on the IDF:

According to the Southern Command chief Major General Yaron Finkelman, the IDF is close to completing its objectives. In classical military terms, “defeat” means the enemy surrenders—but with a jihadist organization, the benchmark is its ability to operate against Israel.

Despite [the IDF’s] battlefield successes, the broader strategic outcome—especially regarding the hostages—now hinges on decisions from the political leadership. “We’ve done our part,” said a senior officer. “We’ve reached a crossroads where the government must decide where it wants to go—both on the hostage issue and on Gaza’s future.”