In a mere four-week span, the Jewish people lost four impressive philosophers, each with wide-ranging interests, but little known in the English-speaking world. Warren Zev Harvey, a distinguished scholar of medieval Jewish thought, recounts their achievements:

Michael Schneider, sixty-three, a remarkably erudite historian of Jewish philosophy and mysticism, died on September 24 of this year; David Brézis, seventy-two, a provocative philosopher and leading interpreter of [the 20th-century French Jewish philosopher] Emmanuel Lévinas, died on October 8; Michael Zvi Nehorai, eighty-eight, a veteran authority on Maimonides and Rabbi Kook, died on October 16; and Gabriella Elgrably-Berzin, fifty-three, an impressive young specialist in Jewish and Islamic medieval philosophy, died on October 20.

Harvey examines at the life and work of each. Of particular interest is a pathbreaking 1986 essay by Nehorai, who was a student—and for a time likely successor to—Tsvi Yehudah Kook, the son of the great rabbi, mystic, and Zionist thinker Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.

It had been customary to couple Rabbis Isaac Jacob Reines (1839-1915) and Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935) together as the two great “fathers of religious Zionism.” Rabbi Reines was the founder in 1902 of the Mizrahi faction of the Zionist movement, which was the organization that represented religious Zionists throughout the world. Rabbi Kook was appointed in 1921 as the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine. It was widely presumed that their ideologies as “religious Zionists” were roughly identical.

Nehorai, however, found their attitudes toward Zionism to be in sharp opposition. Rabbi Reines and his early Mizrahi colleagues emphasized that Zionism was not a religious or messianic movement but a purely political one, and thus its leaders should be the best politicians, even if, like Theodor Herzl, they are not religious. This emphasis on the nonreligious character of Zionism made it possible for Orthodox Jews to participate fully in the Zionist movement even though most of its leaders were secularists.

Rabbi Kook, for his part, criticized Rabbi Reines’s strictly political approach, and held that the movement for the rebuilding of the Land of Israel must necessarily be a religious and messianic one. In 1917 he founded the Banner of Jerusalem movement, which sought to provide a theological and messianic alternative to the Mizrahi, but which was unsuccessful. Nehorai concludes provocatively that if Reines had followed Kook’s approach, there would have been no Mizrahi faction in the Zionist movement—that is, no movement of religious Zionism—and the history of Zionism would have been very different.

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.