The Jewish theologian Michael Wyschogrod, who died last Thursday, was an original thinker who argued that at the heart of Judaism lies God’s passionate and undying love for the Jewish people. Meir Soloveichik explains his central ideas, and contrasts them to those of other major Jewish philosophers (2009):

Wyschogrod argues that Judaism concerns not a philosophical doctrine but rather God’s unique and preferential love for the flesh-and-blood descendants of Abraham. The election of the Jewish people is the result of God’s falling in love with Abraham and founding a family with him. And, out of passionate love for Abraham, God continues to dwell among the Jewish people. [Moses] Maimonides, in Wyschogrod’s account, deviated from the biblical view to accommodate Aristotle’s philosophy.

Along the way, Maimonides also attempted to banish all anthropomorphism from Judaism. An entire tradition of Jewish rationalism has followed Maimonides in this and has applied it to the concept of Israel’s election. Thus many German Jewish thinkers, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox, see Israel’s election as symbolic of God’s equal love for all of humanity—for surely a good God would not violate Kant’s categorical imperative. The result is the loss of any reason for the election of Israel, a foundational idea of Judaism. The biblical insistence on God’s indwelling in the living Jewish people, Wyschogrod observes, requires us to believe that God is present in the physical people of Israel.

Ahead of the current operation in Rafah, the IDF seized the city’s border crossing, coming within three miles of Egyptian territory. In response, Egypt blocked all humanitarian aid trucks from entering Gaza. (Israel has since opened a new route for aid to enter the northern part of the Strip.) Cairo appears to be punishing Gazans to express its displeasure with Jerusalem, which it has warned against coming so close to its territory. It has also declared its support for South Africa’s spurious lawsuit against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Quite possibly, the IDF waited so long to seize this key border crossing because it didn’t want to upset its oldest Arab ally. Benny Avni examines the diplomatic fallout:

Israeli-Egyptian relations are more complex than they seem. Hamas’s ideological ancestor, the Muslim Brotherhood, is the main threat to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s regime. Egypt has maintained close intelligence ties with Israel ever since Hamas seized Gaza in a 2007 coup. . . . Cairo’s weeklong blockage of aid trucks at the Rafah crossing accounts for much suffering inside the Strip, but it is rarely reported.

[One] likely dimension of Egypt’s growing tiff with Israel has to do with the IDF’s intention, announced shortly after the war was launched on October 7, to seize the entire nine-mile border between Gaza and Egypt, known as the Philadelphi corridor. Following its full evacuation of Gaza in 2005, Egypt deployed guards to its side of the nine-mile border with Gaza. The deployment, as part of an agreement with Israel, was designed to prevent smuggling of weapons and other illicit materials into Gaza. Yet, Hamas’s arms kept flowing in.

Israelis say that senior Egyptian officers are bribed to facilitate smuggling through tunnels at the Philadelphi corridor. The Egyptians “enabled endless amounts of weapons to go into Gaza underneath the border between Gaza and the Sinai,” a former IDF brigadier general, Amir Avivi, told the Sun. “We see what is going on in Gaza. We know where this all came from.”

Over the weekend the Associated Press reported that for the first time since signing the peace treaty in 1979, Egypt is considering a break in relations with Israel. Yet, perhaps as a sign that both the Israeli and Egyptian governments prize their ties, Cairo quickly shot down the story.