Ever since the apostle Paul referred to “the law”—meaning the prescriptions of the Torah—as a “curse,” Christians have been perplexed, to say the least, by Judaism’s enthusiasm for legality. Meir Soloveichik believes this has started to change:

The Torah—a rigorous and complex code containing 613 commandments, to which the rabbis later added a myriad of further prohibitions and obligations—is for Jews an exquisite source of happiness, the ultimate embodiment of the Almighty’s love, and God’s greatest gift. . . .

Christian thinkers have been startled by the fact that law—in all its multifarious details—can be a source of delight. In his Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis admits he was confounded by the Psalmist’s description of the Torah as sweeter than honey. “One can easily understand,” Lewis asserts, how laws may be important, even critical, but “it is very hard to find how they could be, so to speak, delicious, how they exhilarate.” . . .

In the past two decades, however, a stunning new genre of religious writing has appeared: Christian appreciation of the Jewish love of the law. These sensitive reflections are not only instructive to Christians but also, in certain ways, very interesting to Jews, as we can learn a great deal when we see ourselves through an outsider’s insightful eyes. . . . In an age of libertinism, Christians are coming to appreciate the role rigorous adherence to law plays in Jewish character formation—and in an age when they are now cultural outsiders, Christians are beginning to seek the secret of Jewish survival through the centuries, and are discovering it in the Jewish love of the law.

In a sense, the most successful negotiation with Hamas was the recent agreement securing the release of Edan Alexander, the last living hostage with a U.S. passport. Unlike those previously handed over, he wasn’t exchanged for Palestinian prisoners, and there was no cease-fire. Dan Diker explains what Hamas got out of the deal:

Alexander’s unconditional release [was] designed to legitimize Hamas further as a viable negotiator and to keep Hamas in power, particularly at a moment when Israel is expanding its military campaign to conquer Gaza and eliminate Hamas as a military, political, and civil power. Israel has no other option than defeating Hamas. Hamas’s “humanitarian” move encourages American pressure on Israel to end its counterterrorism war in service of advancing additional U.S. efforts to release hostages over time, legitimizing Hamas while it rearms, resupplies, and reestablishes it military power and control.

In fact, Hamas-affiliated media have claimed credit for successful negotiations with the U.S., branding the release of Edan Alexander as the “Edan deal,” portraying Hamas as a rising international player, sidelining Israel from direct talks with DC, and declaring this a “new phase in the conflict.”

Fortunately, however, Washington has not coerced Jerusalem into ceasing the war since Alexander’s return. Nor, Diker observes, did the deal drive a wedge between the two allies, despite much speculation about the possibility.