A 19th-Century Poem Celebrating the Maccabees, and the Jews’ Place in England

In 1839, two young English sisters, Marion and Celia Moss, published a collection of poems whose title boldly identified them as belonging to “the Hebrew nation.” Just nine years prior, a bill intended to give British Jews nearly equal rights to their Gentile compatriots was defeated in parliament. One of the Mosses’ poems memorializes the events in York in the year 1190, when the local Jewish community took refuge in a castle and then committed mass suicide rather than face slaughter or conversion at the hands of a Christian mob. Lauding these Jews’ courage, the poem invokes the Maccabean revolt:

When the Israelites echoed the Maccabees’ cry
As they raised the Asmonean banner on high,
They stayed not to think upon danger or death,
But glorified God with their last fainting breath . . .

Karen Weisman comments:

One of the striking aspects of this poem is that the Moss sisters represent the Jews as embodying England’s most authentic values. What we have in [the first part of the poem] is a description of the English “stately hall” decorated with the proud reminders of English military might, “the sword and buckler on the wall/ Won from the foe in tented field.” But in the hall there are no warriors; the image of the brave English of famed and just valor has given way to the bloodthirsty English swarm, and it is the courageous Jews who are sheltering in the halls of the castle—the very symbol of English stability. With their “jetty” (black) hair and eyes, they don’t look like Englishmen—but they embody genuine English fortitude. . . .

The Jews who die at York Castle will be leaving “in their country’s annals a name/ That will ne’er be erased from the records of fame.” And their country is England. This is a rather remarkable turning of the tables, and a splendid irony: this poem about the moment when Jews were victimized as outcasts implicitly becomes a poem about their rightful belonging to a nation whose glorious history they presume to define.

Read more at Jewish Review of Books

More about: Arts & Culture, British Jewry, History & Ideas, Jewish literature, Poetry

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF