Ten years ago, researchers discovered in the Vatican archives a rare manuscript of Benedict Spinoza’s Ethics, which had come into the possession of the Roman Inquisition in 1667 because of its theologically suspicious content. While the Church banned the book much as, decades earlier, the Amsterdam Jewish community had expelled the philosopher for his unorthodox opinions, the 18th-century German intellectual Novalis would later proclaim Spinoza “a God-intoxicated man.” In England, Spinoza’s work would later appeal to the secular proto-Zionist novelist George Eliot as well as the religious conservative Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Clare Carlisle and Yitzhak Melamed urge readers to take seriously the possibility that Spinoza was not the atheist many have made him out to be, and that his oft-quoted invocation of “God or Nature” may in fact betray the influences of his Jewish youth:

Spinoza confessed that “I favor an opinion concerning God and Nature far different from the one Modern Christians usually defend.” Yet he aligned himself with older religious traditions, both Jewish and Christian: “That all things are in God and move in God, I affirm with Paul, and . . . with all the ancient Hebrews, as far as we can conjecture from certain traditions, corrupted as they have been in many ways.” Spinoza’s reference to “certain traditions” may allude to Kabbalistic literature in which the identification of God and Nature is ubiquitous. In pre-modern Hebrew, the literal meaning of Kabbalah is “tradition,” and in the 17th century the Kabbalah was widely regarded as an ancient wisdom of the mysteries of being.

The separation of God from nature that Spinoza, in 1675, recognized as distinctively “modern” was sharpened in 18th-century deism, and found striking expression in the image . . . of a divine designer whose relation to the natural world was analogous to a watchmaker’s relation to a watch. We can now recognize this anthropomorphic deity as the God of those modern atheists who caricature religious belief as a wish-fulfillment fantasy about a cosmic father-figure.

Looked at this way, deist and atheist challenges to traditional religion, far from following in Spinoza’s footsteps, are decidedly un-Spinozist. If the 17th-century churches had been more attentive to the Ethics they might have better fortified their God against the ravages of secularism to come. Instead, Protestants and Catholics alike denounced Spinoza as an atheist.

[Yet] Spinoza’s religion does not fit easily into any pre-existent category. Like Thomas Aquinas, he treated religio not as a system of beliefs but as a virtue—the virtue of honoring God.

Even if the agreement with Hamas to secure the release of some, and possibly all, of the remaining hostages—and the bodies of those no longer alive—is a prudent decision for Israel, it comes at a very high price: potentially leaving Hamas in control of Gaza and the release of vast numbers of Palestinian prisoners, many with blood on their hands. Nadav Shragai reminds us of the history of such agreements:

We cannot forget that the terrorists released in the Jibril deal during the summer of 1985 became the backbone of the first intifada, resulting in the murder of 165 Israelis. Approximately half of the terrorists released following the Oslo Accords joined Palestinian terror groups, with many participating in the second intifada that claimed 1,178 Israeli lives. Those freed in [exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011] constructed Gaza, the world’s largest terror city, and brought about the October 7 massacre. We must ask ourselves: where will those released in the 2025 hostage deal lead us?

Taking these painful concessions into account Michael Oren argues that they might nonetheless be necessary:

From day one—October 7, 2023—Israel’s twin goals in Gaza were fundamentally irreconcilable. Israel could not, as its leaders pledged, simultaneously destroy Hamas and secure all of the hostages’ release. The terrorists who regarded the hostages as the key to their survival would hardly give them up for less than an Israeli commitment to end—and therefore lose—the war. Israelis, for their part, were torn between those who felt that they could not send their children to the army so long as hostages remained in captivity and those who held that, if Hamas wins, Israel will not have an army at all.

While 33 hostages will be released in the first stage, dozens—alive and dead—will remain in Gaza, prolonging their families’ suffering. The relatives of those killed by the Palestinian terrorists now going free will also be shattered. So, too, will the Israelis who still see soldiers dying in Gaza almost daily while Hamas rocket fire continues. What were all of Israel’s sacrifices for, they will ask. . . .

Perhaps this outcome was unavoidable from the beginning. Perhaps the deal is the only way of reconciling Israel’s mutually exclusive goals of annihilating Hamas and repatriating the hostages. Perhaps, despite Israel’s subsequent military triumph, this is the price for the failures of October 7.