One of the most cited and revered figures in the Talmud, Rabbi Akiva was active in the first decades of the 2nd century CE and died a martyr during the Hadrianic persecutions. Of the many talmudic anecdotes about the great sage, Barry Holtz cites one that features Moses—having just been informed by God Himself that Akiva’s understanding of the Torah will one day surpass his own—magically transported to the back of Akiva’s classroom:

Sitting in that class, Moses is distressed. He understands nothing that is being said. This is a remarkable story in many ways—the time travel, the pairing of Moses and Akiva, the role of God—but nothing is quite as extraordinary as the moment when Moses becomes depressed by his inability to understand the discussion. It is only when Akiva cites Moses’ own authority that Moses is able to revive himself. Not only is Akiva asserting the importance of Moses, but it is no accident that the text has Akiva use the traditional phrase “a law given to Moses at Sinai”—and all this at the exact moment when, according to the midrash, Moses is standing on Sinai about to receive the Torah.

What does it mean that Moses cannot understand the future debates surrounding the very Torah that he is about to receive from God? Moses is so distressed that he wants God to give the Torah through Akiva, not through him. But God will not relent, nor will God explain the reasoning behind that decision: “Shut up,” God essentially tells him, “I’ve made my decision.”

One of the most extraordinary things about this story is that the rabbis who composed it show how well aware they were of the necessary evolution of Torah interpretation over time. Even Moses—the greatest of all the prophets, the person closest to God’s revelation—even Moses will not be able to understand the way that biblical interpretation grows over time. . . . [T]he storytellers’ solution, the concept that comforts Moses in his depression, is, [in the words of Jeffrey Rubenstein], “that the expanded and developed Torah of the rabbinic era somehow inheres in the original Torah revealed to Moses.”

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.