György Spiró’s novel Captivity, recently translated into English, tells the story of a 1st-century CE Roman Jew named Uri who embarks on epic and life-transforming travels to Judea and Alexandria. Much of the book’s strength, writes Adam Kirsch, lies in its vivid and thoroughly researched depictions of ancient life, but it also has a powerful modern resonance:

When Uri himself makes it to Judea, he experiences a very Jewish kind of ambivalence. Exiled, due to a complicated and not very important series of intrigues, to a small village, he witnesses one of the Jews’ triennial pilgrimages to the Temple. He is equally impressed and alienated by their religious enthusiasm: “Could this be my people?” he wonders, seeing the poor villagers with “their skin … ulcerated, their bodies scrawny.” During his time in the village, Uri experiences—and Spiró carefully describes—the incredible hardship of rural life in the Roman empire and indeed for most human beings throughout most of history. Uri proves unable to do any kind of farm work, just as the modern reader would, since he is used to a sedentary and bookish life.

By contrast, when he makes it to Alexandria, Uri feels truly at home in a kind of ancient version of New York City, full of ethnic diversity, commercial activity, and tall buildings. For a moment, it seems as if Alexandria is going to be the answer to Uri’s, and Spiró’s, Jewish question. If Rome is Europe, where the Jews are a despised minority, and Judea is Israel, where they are a pious but parochial majority, then Egypt seems like America, where Greek and Jew live in prosperous harmony. But any reader of Philo knows that this idyll is too good to last, and Uri is present to witness the pogrom against the city’s Jews that Philo chillingly describes in his work Against Flaccus. . . .

There is a deep pessimism or fatalism in this novel of ancient Judaism, as perhaps there has to be, which casts a shadow across Spiró’s exuberant recreations of the Roman empire. Captivity draws you in with its pageant of the classical world, but by the end it also turns out to be a profound meditation on what Judaism meant, and means.

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.