Seven years ago, William Kolbrener found himself in a religious crisis, feeling unsure of the path of strict Jewish observance he had chosen. Now, looking back, he describes a visit to Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum that helped him through the crisis, in particular a viewing of Rembrandt van Rijn’s paintings on Jewish and biblical themes. These often feature books and other texts, sometimes in Hebrew characters:

Rembrandt’s Jewish book gives life to his greatest works, and to the liberal world in the making in Amsterdam’s Golden Age. The painter treasures the Hebrew Scriptures as the source that animates the ideals of liberal democracy—fairness, justice, law, toleration. His is a Christian world to be sure, but the Jew is not erased, but present. With his studio in the Jewish Quarter, Rembrandt’s paintings put the Jew at the center of a democratic future. Tolerate the Jew, and other minorities follow. The Jewish presence in Rembrandt’s works is a painterly toleration act, the first step towards the liberal world that his paintings imagine.

One of these is Hannah Instructing Samuel (1655), which shows the prophet’s mother sitting in a chair, a book on her lap, and a young Samuel peering at it, with what appear to be the Ten Commandments engraved in Hebrew on the wall in the background.

Hannah sits, her face luminous. The white garment makes her angelic; but the black cape encircling her head, shoulders, and neck seems to hold her down, almost keeping her from floating away. The bulk of her skirt spreads over her tree-trunk legs. Her left sandal is discarded; she is connected to the earth. Rembrandt discovers the Jewish sacred in his Hannah, at once transcendent [and] this-worldly. The painting, in the end, is Christian, but Hannah, the Jew, is not going anywhere.

In keeping the Hebrew book open, and the Jew on the canvas, [Rembrandt] paints a world in the making. Hannah’s book remains literally open, her fingers holding a place. Her book, our book, gives life to everything Rembrandt paints around her—her surroundings, Greek, Christian, Jewish, and ours.

Around the same time Kolbrener was visiting the Netherlands, Mosaic published a series of essays on Rembrandt on the Jews by Meir Soloveichik. If the topic intrigues you, I recommend having a look.

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.