In this week's Parshat Toldot, the Torah recounts how the Philistines filled with earth the wells that Avraham's servants had dug (Genesis 26:15). In a region where water was essential to life, the decision seems almost incomprehensible. The wells could have served the Philistines themselves. Instead, they made them useless.

The Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi, 1160-1235) explains that after Avraham's death, the Philistines feared that his son might one day become powerful enough to reclaim the wells. They therefore chose to block them, even at the cost of depriving themselves of the water.

Their attitude, according to the Radak, amounted to: Better that neither of us have it.

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The final countdown has officially begun. As President Donald Trump goes into his last two years as president, he is only one of six presidents to have entered his last two years following the ratification of the 22nd Amendment, and therefore constitutionally precluded from running again.

Like Trump, every one of those predecessors experienced midterm election losses and had to grapple with opposition control of Congress going into their finales. Some handled it better than others, and their experiences could be helpful to Trump as he tries to figure out how to succeed in this challenging period.

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At a rally in Michigan last Saturday for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, former President Barack Obama called the conflict with the Islamic Republic of Iran "an unnecessary war."

He apparently dates hostilities as starting this year on Feb. 28, or, at the earliest, last June. He's off by nearly 47 years.

This war began on Nov. 4, 1979, when Islamic militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

The leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran made their war aims plain. Their 1979 constitution gives the army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps the "ideological mission of jihad in God's way," which it defines as "extending the sovereignty of God's law throughout the world."

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The upcoming election in Israel will likely prove pivotal in determining whether the ongoing erosion in support for Israel in the United States devolves further into a full rupture that makes both Americans and Israelis less secure.

As Americans, we are not interested in picking winners and losers. Israelis should decide such things, but our friends there should understand the consequences of their decisions.

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Since early October, American and other Western health and biodefense officials have been concerned by reports on social media that a young Russian researcher at an anti-plague institute in Siberia had died of a highly contagious form of plague after accidentally breaking a vial of the deadly germs in her laboratory.

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Two massacres, two Islamic terror attacks, two world-historical events.

The anniversaries of Sept. 11, 2001 and Oct. 7, 2023 mark incidents that changed the course of history in both obvious and subtle ways. Among the results were the American war against Iraq and the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza, respectively. Neither has been entirely successful, but both removed immediate threats while embedding other threats more deeply in Western society.

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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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