A descendent of distinguished Protestant clergymen on both sides, Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) was a gifted journalist and perhaps the greatest American literary critic of his day. He began enthusiastically studying biblical Hebrew in the 1950s, and kept up his study for the remainder of his life. Writing for publications like the New Republic, Commentary, and the New York Review of Books, he also rubbed elbows with a number of prominent American Jewish intellectuals—not all of whom shared his views about Israel, of which, as Shalom Goldman writes, he “was an enthusiastic supporter.” Goldman continues:

What Wilson saw in the Jewish intellectual tradition was an affirmation of the scholarly, and an openness to criticism. As a representative of an American cultural world that he believed was disappearing, he sought allyship in the Jewish tradition. In his mind, what was noble about the American tradition was its “Hebraic” element. In Jewish culture he saw the possibility of American renewal or, at the very least, cultural preservation.

A bannerlike inscription in biblical Hebrew hung over his desk in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, and it was this phrase, Hazak hazak v’nithazek (“be strong and be strengthened” in Wilson’s translation), that is engraved on the base of his tombstone.

In his occasional excursions into short fiction, Wilson also took up Jewish themes. In Encounter, Wilson published a short story, “The Messiah at the Seder.” In that story the messiah appears in mid-20th-century Manhattan on the eve of Passover. He is invited to a seder on the Upper West Side. There he discovers that the fractious and contentious participants at the seder—which include a Freudian, a Marxist, and a religious thinker—are unable to accept that he is the redeemer. . . . This satire on the multiplicity of opinions in the Jewish world is anything but savage. The satirical effect is achieved with considerable subtlety and verve.

The short story is a delightful one and the most sensitive fictional portrait of Jewish life by a non-Jewish author that I’ve ever read.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.