The Italian humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was among the first of many Renaissance Christian thinkers to become interested in Jewish mysticism. David Navarro reviews a recent collection of essays on the subject:

As a humanist, Pico was exposed to ideas about magic and astrology, both of which were mainstream subjects in natural philosophy. Kabbalah was one of the movements Pico became involved with in order to prove the truth of Christianity. His main contribution is “to have conveyed to the Christian world a specific interpretation of the Jewish Kabbalah, and have given rise to a real and proper independent discipline that many imitators would have rendered more distant from its Jewish origin.” . . .

[The scholar] Moshe Idel examines . . . the strategy applied by Pico to bend Christianity to some central aspects of Kabbalah. The different Jewish esoteric doctrines represented a challenge to understanding the core of Jewish mysticism, and spread through various Jewish mystics during the 15th century in the Italian kingdoms. Pico’s methods for combining the hermeneutic strategies he acquired from these different movements are explained [by Idel], showing his approach to the use of Kabbalah in order to prove Christ’s messianic role and “convince Jews as to the correctness of Christian theology.”

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.