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.

Even if the agreement with Hamas to secure the release of some, and possibly all, of the remaining hostages—and the bodies of those no longer alive—is a prudent decision for Israel, it comes at a very high price: potentially leaving Hamas in control of Gaza and the release of vast numbers of Palestinian prisoners, many with blood on their hands. Nadav Shragai reminds us of the history of such agreements:

We cannot forget that the terrorists released in the Jibril deal during the summer of 1985 became the backbone of the first intifada, resulting in the murder of 165 Israelis. Approximately half of the terrorists released following the Oslo Accords joined Palestinian terror groups, with many participating in the second intifada that claimed 1,178 Israeli lives. Those freed in [exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011] constructed Gaza, the world’s largest terror city, and brought about the October 7 massacre. We must ask ourselves: where will those released in the 2025 hostage deal lead us?

Taking these painful concessions into account Michael Oren argues that they might nonetheless be necessary:

From day one—October 7, 2023—Israel’s twin goals in Gaza were fundamentally irreconcilable. Israel could not, as its leaders pledged, simultaneously destroy Hamas and secure all of the hostages’ release. The terrorists who regarded the hostages as the key to their survival would hardly give them up for less than an Israeli commitment to end—and therefore lose—the war. Israelis, for their part, were torn between those who felt that they could not send their children to the army so long as hostages remained in captivity and those who held that, if Hamas wins, Israel will not have an army at all.

While 33 hostages will be released in the first stage, dozens—alive and dead—will remain in Gaza, prolonging their families’ suffering. The relatives of those killed by the Palestinian terrorists now going free will also be shattered. So, too, will the Israelis who still see soldiers dying in Gaza almost daily while Hamas rocket fire continues. What were all of Israel’s sacrifices for, they will ask. . . .

Perhaps this outcome was unavoidable from the beginning. Perhaps the deal is the only way of reconciling Israel’s mutually exclusive goals of annihilating Hamas and repatriating the hostages. Perhaps, despite Israel’s subsequent military triumph, this is the price for the failures of October 7.