ANY BOOK on Jewish statesmanship must contend with the fact that for most of the last two millennia, Jews had no state. Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land came to a cataclysmic end in 70 CE, when the Roman legions under Titus destroyed Jerusalem and burned its great temple. Not until 1948, with the proclamation of the new State of Israel, would Jewish statehood be revived in the Jewish homeland.

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AMINA MOHAMMED, a Nigerian politician and diplomat, has been the deputy secretary-general of the United Nations since 2017. Earlier this month she committed a gaffe: She inadvertently told the truth.

At a press conference, Mohammed was asked by Jimmy Quinn of National Review about the organization's blatant policy of discriminating against residents of Taiwan. For years, any visitor presenting a Taiwanese passport has been barred from entering UN premises anywhere in the world. Quinn inquired: Doesn't this exclusion of individuals from Taiwan hold back the UN's efforts to achieve its top declared goals, namely peace, prosperity, progress, and sustainability?

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"TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN" is the name of an early Woody Allen movie and a song by the Steve Miller Band. It is also the name of a contemporary artwork by the Danish artist Jens Haaning. Or at least art is what Haaning says it is. A court in Copenhagen says it's a scam. Who's right?

The background: In 2021, Haaning was commissioned by the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art to reproduce a pair of his earlier works, in which he attached paper money to large, framed canvases. The museum supplied the cash Haaning would need to make the new versions — it gave him 533,000 Danish kroner (equivalent to roughly $76,000) and he signed a contract agreeing to return the currency after the four-month exhibition.

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THE HEVOLUTION FOUNDATION, a lavishly funded organization created to promote research in the field of human longevity, opened a headquarters in Boston last week. The Saudi Arabia-based nonprofit, established in 2021, summarizes its mission as "supporting innovation in life sciences and medicine that focuses on the biology of aging" in order to extend "healthy lifespan for the benefit of all humanity." Hevolution — a portmanteau of health and evolution — will make grants to biotech firms, medical schools, and teaching hospitals working to slow aging and combat age-related disease.

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PRESIDENT BIDEN has a well-earned reputation as a fabulist. PolitiFact, the Poynter Institute's accuracy project, debunks his assertions so often that its releases are wearily headlined "Latest False Fact-Checks on Joe Biden." He was rebuked most recently for claiming that he had traveled to Ground Zero in New York on the day after the Twin Towers fell in 2001.

"I remember standing there the next day, and looking at the building," Biden said in a speech at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska, on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. "I felt like I was looking through the gates of hell."

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