Devoted as they were to the unmediated reading of the Bible, and of the Old Testament in particular, many Puritans of 17th- and 18th-century New England were interested in learning Hebrew, which for a time became a standard subject of study at both Harvard and Yale. Rachel Wamsley describes the man who made possible the Hebraist aspirations of many early Americans, and his Dickdook Leshon Gnebreet: A Grammar of the Hebrew Tongue [in modern transliteration, Dikduk l’shon ivrit], the first of its kind produced in the colonies:

Judah Monis, an Italian Jew of Sephardi descent, arrived in Boston around 1720 with a completed draft of his Dickdook already in tow. Within two years, he was baptized and installed as instructor of Hebrew at Harvard College, a position he would hold for the next 38 years. The primer served as a textbook for his introductory classes and, among its grammatical expositions and verb tables, featured a mysterious system of Hebrew transliteration of his own design, and two devotional translations of the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed into Hebrew. . . .

Though never published and now lost, Monis also produced Hebrew translations of the Large and Small Catechisms, as well as the 39 articles of the Church of England. Among Puritan luminaries and Harvard academics, the excitement over Monis’s conversion and literary activity was intense: did it presage the conversion of the Jews, with all its millenarian implications? Would Monis himself go evangelize among his former co-religionists? Might Puritan missionaries, furnished with Monis’s insights into Jewish learning and psychology, finally break down the resistance of that infamously stiff-necked people? . . .

Dickdook Leshon Gnebreet embodies the encounter between Christian Hebraist and traditional Jewish approaches to Hebrew. While its outward appearance—in language, format, and organization—resembles contemporary grammars of other classical languages, Monis prominently announces his intellectual debt to a number of Jewish grammarians, most notably David Kimḥi, on the title page. Elsewhere, Monis was vocal in his defense of the Masoretic vocalization system, which had lately come under attack by Christian Hebraists. His pedagogy, too, was informed by distinctively Jewish practices, such as the use of mnemonic acronyms.

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.