In a recent book, the Israeli archaeologist Yonatan Adler contends that one cannot speak of “Judaism” as such beginning anytime before the middle of the 2nd century BCE, at least if Judaism is understood as a set of practices observed by a sizeable number of people who thought of themselves as Jews. Jon D. Levenson has examined the book’s strengths and weaknesses here. In her own review, Malka Simkovich argues that ideas like “covenant, monotheism, revelation, and the messianic age” were widely shared by Jews earlier than Adler suggests, along with a focus on “the Jerusalem Temple, charity, and prayer.” What’s more, she writes, Jews of this era already had a strong sense of fellow feeling wherever they lived:

In the 2nd century BCE, Jews living in Egypt enthusiastically responded to the Hasmoneans’ victory over the Syrian Greeks. To show support for their Judean kin, many Egyptian Jews began to give their children Hebrew names. And by the 1st century BCE, Jews in Egypt were sending so much money to support the Jerusalem Temple that the Roman orator Cicero complained about it. With the exception of sectarian documents, nearly all Jewish texts produced at this time refer to all Jews, wherever they lived, as members of a global community that share a common heritage, a common God, and a common messianic future.

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.