Originally written in Italian in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, Stefano Massini’s single-volume verse novel The Lehman Trilogy has recently appeared in English. Later adopted for the stage, it won much praise when it appeared at London’s National Theater in 2018. Both book and play tell, with a heavy dose of poetic license, the story of the Lehman brothers—founders and namesakes of the once-great investment bank was named—and their descendants. In Massini’s hands, their remarkable rags-to-riches story becomes what Adam Kirsch calls a “didactic pageant about capitalism, America, modernity—and Jewishness, which plays an unsavory role in the proceedings.” Kirsch writes:

The Lehman Trilogy draws [an] equation between Judaism and capitalism, repeatedly using the imagery and vocabulary of one to describe the other. This tendency was toned down somewhat in Sam Mendes’s version of the play at the National Theatre, but in the novel, it is unavoidable. . . . The New York Stock Exchange is “a synagogue/ with ceilings higher than a synagogue.” Lehman Brothers’ publicity strategy is “the bank’s new Talmud.” Business successes are greeted with cries of “Barukh HaShem,” and at the end of the book, the ghosts of Lehmans past gather to recite kaddish for their dead bank. “This is the famous Wall-Street tribe/ bloodthirsty, cruel people/ known for their human sacrifices,” says a figure in a dream-scene parody of King Kong, with Bobbie Lehman playing the role of the ape.

Massini seems to intend such conflations of Judaism and capitalism as a critique of the latter rather than the former. In The Lehman Trilogy, Jewish practice is one of the humane things that melts into air under capitalism; for instance, full-fledged mourning in the family’s early years shrinks to a perfunctory moment of silence in the later ones. Massini is a Catholic, but he prides himself on his Jewish knowledge, referring to mourning as “shiva and sh’loshim” and giving most chapters Hebrew or Yiddish titles. . . . But these signs of affection for Judaism strike a discordant note in a story that refurbishes the old tropes of left-wing anti-Semitism for a new audience.

Robert Clark explains why the resumption of hostilities is both just and necessary:

These latest Israeli strikes come after weeks of consistent Palestinian provocation; they have repeatedly broken the terms of the cease-fire which they claimed they were so desperate for. There have been numerous [unsuccessful] bus bombings near Tel Aviv and Palestinian-instigated clashes in the West Bank. Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in captivity.

In fact, Hamas and their Palestinian supporters . . . have always known that they can sit back, parade dead Israeli hostages live on social media, and receive hundreds of their own convicted terrorists and murderers back in return. They believed they could get away with the October 7 pogrom.

One hopes Hamas’s leaders will get the message. Meanwhile, many inside and outside Israel seem to believe that, by resuming the fighting, Jerusalem has given up on rescuing the remaining hostages. But, writes Ron Ben-Yishai, this assertion misunderstands the goals of the present campaign. “Experience within the IDF and Israeli intelligence,” Ben-Yishai writes, “has shown that such pressure is the most effective way to push Hamas toward flexibility.” He outlines two other aims:

The second objective was to signal to Hamas that Israel is not only targeting its military wing—the terror army that was the focus of previous phases of the war up until the last cease-fire—but also its governance structure. This was demonstrated by the targeted elimination of five senior officials from Hamas’s political and civilian administration. . . . The strikes also served as a message to mediators, particularly Egypt, that Israel opposes Hamas remaining in any governing or military capacity in post-war Gaza.

The third objective was to create intense military pressure, coordinated with the U.S., on all remaining elements of the Shiite “axis of resistance,” including Yemen’s Houthis, Hamas, and Iran.