A New Book Traces the Roots of Israeli Democracy to the Legacy of the Conversos

At its height in the 17th century, the Sephardi community of Amsterdam was composed largely of descendants of conversos: Jews who had entered the Catholic Church during successive waves of persecution in Spain and Portugal. Many of these “New Christians” reverted to Judaism—sometimes generations after converting—upon coming to the Netherlands. In his book The Origins of Democratic Zionism, Gregory Kaplan explores the thought of three members of this community—Rabbi Saul Levi Morteira, the philosopher and apostate Benedict Spinoza, and the poet Miguel de Barrios—and argues that their historical memory of persecution and their ex-converso milieu led them to develop distinctly democratic ideas. Samuel Goldman explains in his review:

[In Iberia], New Christians were persecuted for their heredity rather than their beliefs. It was not obvious, therefore, that escape to a more tolerant society should be accompanied by a return to Judaism. In order to attract conversos, Jewish leaders had to justify a choice for Judaism. This imperative, Kaplan argues, explains Morteira’s presentation of the so-called Hebrew Republic [of Moses’ time] as a democracy.

Perhaps so, writes Goldman, but less convincing is the next part of Kaplan’s argument:

Jumping to 1896, [Kaplan] contends that Theodor Herzl’s assessments of democracy built on Spinoza. If Spinoza was adapting Morteira’s ideas, there is a line of argument from the converso problem to the founder of modern Zionism. This proposal is intriguing, but there are too many intervening steps to justify any significant conclusion. For Germanic readers like Herzl, Spinoza’s influence was filtered through the Idealist and Romantic traditions.

We have become accustomed, [however], to regard biblical argumentation as a source of narrowness and intolerance. Kaplan shows how we might again read the Hebrew Bible as a justification for liberty.

Read more at Journal of Church & State

More about: Benedict Spinoza, Biblical Politics, Conversos, Dutch Jewry, History of Zionism, Theodor Herzl

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF