In December, when Mosaic asked Cynthia Ozick to recommend some of the books she had recently read, she named, among others, David Kertzer’s The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, which tells the story of a six-year-old Bolognese Jew abducted and forcibly converted by papal authorities in 1858. Now, Ozick, in her most recent work of fiction, imagines seeing Mortara through the eyes of his great-nephew:

If you are unfortunate enough to bear a name trailing a history, as I am, you will understand why I have decided to change mine—though not quite yet. I must live with the original until I have squeezed out of it the last syllable of iniquity. A great sin was committed against this name, the name of an honest and peaceful family, and whether the choice of an American commonplace will serve as anodyne, I can hardly predict. It was in 1940 that my own fraction of these relations arrived here from Bologna to escape the racial laws. My widowed father, Isacco Giacobbe Mortara, had already been expelled from the university, where he taught philosophy. And it was in this same year, 1940, that my great-uncle, Pio Edgardo Mortara, died at age eighty-eight, after living out his last years in a monastery in Belgium. The incident that had made a small boy notorious was by then mainly forgotten, except by a handful of scholars, and was regularly attributed to mediaeval ignominy, as if modernity—railway, telegraph, photography—hadn’t at the time already permeated everywhere.

Since the war began, there has been a tension between Israel’s two primary goals: the destruction of Hamas and the liberation of the hostages. Many see in Israel’s renewed campaign in Gaza a sacrifice of the latter goal in pursuit of the former. But Meir Ben-Shabbat suggests that Israel’s attacks aim to bring Hamas back to the negotiating table:

The timing of the attack, its intensity, and the extent of casualties surprised Hamas. Its senior leaders are likely still wondering whether this is a limited action meant to shock and send a message or the beginning of a sustained operation. The statement by its senior officials linking the renewal of fighting to the fate of the hostages hints at the way it may act to stop Israel. This threat requires the Israeli political leadership to formulate a series of draconian measures and declare that they will be carried out if Hamas harms the hostages.

Ostensibly, Israel’s interest in receiving the hostages and continuing the fighting stands in complete contradiction to that of Hamas, but in practice Hamas has flexibility that has not yet been exhausted. This stems from the large number of hostages in its possession, which allows it to realize additional deals for some of them, and this is what Israel has been aiming its efforts toward.

We must concede that the challenge Israel faces is not simple, but the alternative Hamas presents—surrendering to its dictates and leaving it as the central power factor in Gaza—limits its options. . . . Tightening and significantly hardening the blockade along with increasing pressure through airstrikes, evacuating areas and capturing them, may force Hamas to make its stance more flexible.

But Ben-Shabbat also acknowledges the danger in this approach. The war’s renewal puts the hostages in greater danger. And as Israel makes threats, it will be obliged to carry them out.