The final words of this week's Haftorah (Isaiah 60:1-22) contain one of the most intriguing contradictions in the prophecies of redemption.

Isaiah declares: "The smallest shall become a thousand, and the least a mighty nation; I am the Lord; in its time I will hasten it" (Isaiah 60:22).

Be'itah achishenah - "In its time - I will hasten it."

But how can both be true?

If redemption will come be'itah, at its appointed time, then how can G-d hasten it, achishena? And if He hastens it, then it would seem that it is no longer coming at its appointed time.

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President Donald Trump has tried everything from negotiations to military force to blunt Tehran's nuclear, missile, and regional aspirations. He has now settled on economic pressure. The president deserves significant credit for his willingness to tackle this challenge, including his decision to strike the Islamic Republic with the aid of the Israelis earlier this year.

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Carlos the Jackal is 76 years old and has been in French prisons for three decades. When Joby Warrick went to see him, the old communist had an explanation for his long survival: "Allah has protected me all these years."

Marxists, Islamists, and those who fuse the two insist that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." Still, discredit where discredit is due: It was Reuters' global head of news who invoked that phrase in a memo to his staff following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Jeane Kirkpatrick, who had been President Reagan's ambassador to the U.N., rebutted such moral equivocation. "No cause and no grievances can justify the murder of other people's children," I recall her telling me.

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Fifty years ago today, Ronald Reagan gave one of the most important speeches of his life. While speaking to the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, Reagan asked a powerful question: What would people of the future think if they opened a time capsule in 100 years? Would they believe Americans had met the challenges of the moment?

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Great Britain's revolving door of prime ministers accelerated in June with the resignation of Keir Starmer, its 6th leader 10 years. As Andy Burnham, the popular former mayor of Manchester, hovered in the wings, and Starmer's approval ratings plunged to an all-time low, the former prime minister was living on borrowed time.

Weak and indecisive and with his domestic policies in shambles, the media had nicknamed him Keir Stumbler.

And then there was his embarrassing feud with President Donald J. Trump over defense and foreign policy.

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This has been a terrible year for the higher education industrial complex. Among the many crises are a year and a half of assaults by the Trump administration against research grants and foreign money, discriminatory hiring and admissions policies and reliance on foreign students.

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Pope Leo XIV began an official visit to Spain (June 6–12) by urging Spaniards to embrace multicultural coexistence with Islam and stop "fanning the flames of polarization" over mass migration from the Muslim world. He said that Christians and Muslims can live together as friends and proceeded to present medieval Spain—which was occupied by Islamic invaders for nearly 800 years—as an interfaith utopia that led to advancements in astronomy, medicine, and science.

The Pope declared:

"Your own history suggests that a culture of encounter, not confrontation, is what fosters stability and prosperity....

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A century ago, the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard and one of the founders of the NAACP, W.E.B. DuBois published The Gift of Black Folk, a book that was commissioned by the Catholic organization the Knights of Columbus, as part of a series intended to help Americans appreciate the contributions of minority groups.

DuBois was highly educated and an avid reader of great texts from Plato to Frederick Douglass. The irony of the present moment is that if DuBois were currently a student in a core philosophy class at Texas A&M University, he would be assigned only a redacted version of Plato's great work, The Republic.

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Imagine your physician walks into the exam room, recommends a prescription medication, and casually mentions she's being paid by the company that makes the drug to say so. You'd probably have questions.

You might even find a new doctor.

Now imagine that same scenario playing out on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube — except the advice is coming from a celebrity "influencer" who's very familiar to you, who has an emotional backstory, and a financial arrangement buried somewhere in a sea of hashtags. Millions of people encounter exactly this situation every day, and most of them have no idea it's happening.

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ANYONE WHO spends time with me knows me knows how much I despise litter. For as long as I can remember, I have fumed at the sight of trash on sidewalks, beer cans in the gutter, or garbage flung from passing cars. I often pick up litter when I'm walking, and when my kids were young I made them pick it up, too.

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