According to Deuteronomy, if a married man dies childless, his brother is obligated to marry the widow—in a union otherwise forbidden. This practice, known as levirate marriage, is the subject of the talmudic tractate Yevamot. (Deuteronomy also prescribes a ritual that can relieve the brother of the obligation.)

Skip forward to 16th-century England. Anxious to obtain a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, previously married to his brother, so that he could marry Ann Boleyn, Henry VIII sought help in an appeal to the finer points of talmudic law. To this end, he ordered a copy of the Bomberg Talmud, the first-ever printed edition, hoping scholars could find an applicable loophole. That was his mistake, as Jeremy Brown writes:

Henry argued that his marriage to Catherine should be dissolved since it was biblically forbidden for a man to marry his sister-in-law. But as we [learn] from tractate Yevamot, the Bible commands a man to marry his widowed sister-in-law if his brother died without children. Since [his brother] Arthur died childless, it could be argued that Henry was now fulfilling the biblical requirement of levirate marriage. . . . If that was the case, the marriage was kosher and could not be dissolved. . . .

[I]t’s a little bit more complicated than that. Behind the scenes were Christian scholars who struggled to reconcile the injunction against a man marrying his sister-in-law, found in one part of the Bible, with the command to do so under specific circumstances, found in another. In fact, the legality of Henry’s marriage [to Catherine] had been in doubt for many years, which is why Henry had obtained the Pope’s special permission to marry.

The bishop of London eventually concocted an argument for nullifying the marriage to Catherine that involved not an appeal to the Talmud but a rejection of papal authority, setting into motion the English Reformation. And now skip forward to the 1950s, when a copy of the Bomberg Talmud was discovered in Westminster Abbey; whether it was the one ordered by Henry VIII remains a subject of debate.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.