Rabbis against the Theater

July 16 2024

If ancient rabbis and church leaders agreed about one thing, it was that the pious should not attend the theater—the most popular of entertainments in the Roman-ruled Mediterranean. The fact that both groups of clergymen devoted so much attention to this problem, argues Courtney Friesen in a new book, suggests that many of their congregants did indeed patronize the theater. Menachem Wecker writes:

Friesen notes that a Jewish dramatist named Ezekiel who lived in Alexandria, perhaps 100 years before the Common Era, created a tragedy about the Exodus story. “We can’t be certain whether it was intended for actual performance, and if so in what venue,” Friesen said.

Ezekiel’s Exodus play—modeled particularly on Euripides—is both by a Jewish author and the “most complete Greek tragedy to survive from any Hellenistic playwright,” beyond the 5th century BCE, he noted.

One of the scholar’s arguments in the book is that even as rabbis and church leaders scolded their flocks for going to the theater, Jewish and Christian practices were shaped by the theater. For example, synagogue and church layouts mirrored designs of Greek theaters, with the “audience” or worshippers surrounding the central “stage” where clergy delivered sermonic “performances.”

Josephus, the Jewish military leader and historian who lived from 37 or 38 to the year 100, recorded that Jerusalem Jews “opposed the theater complex under Herod because of the religious images that surrounded it, among other things,” Friesen told JNS.

Read more at JNS

More about: ancient Judaism, Christianity, Theater

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023