Drawing on the work of the anthropologist Richard Schweder as well as on rabbinic sources, Moshe Koppel divides the various regulations Judaism imposes on its adherents into three groups, which, respectively, enforce fairness, loyalty, and restraint. Correlatively, violations of these rules are harm, disrespect, and degradation. Although all societies have taboos in each of these categories, today’s liberal cosmopolitans put a disproportionate value on fairness, while Jewish tradition tends to regard them as close to equal. Koppel illustrates his point by referring to two archetypal figures from his own life—a religiously observant Holocaust survivor named “Shimen” and a Jewish graduate student named “Heidi”:

Shimen . . . wouldn’t say kiddush over a stolen bottle of wine. He knows that under certain circumstances one can violate a prohibition in order to observe a positive commandment, but it would never occur to him that this principle would include violation of duties to other people. . . . So, Shimen does not regard the fairness foundation and the loyalty and restraint foundations as being exactly equal.

Likewise, Heidi shares Shimen’s revulsion at disrespect and degradation. She shares Shimen’s instinctive sense that incest [a violation of restraint], for example, is wrong. Similarly, she agrees that speaking ill of one’s deceased father [a violation of loyalty], even if nobody is harmed by such speech, is wrong. She is as revolted by cannibalism, [another violation of restraint], as any conservative would be, even if the deceased has died naturally and willed his body for that purpose.

So Heidi is not completely insensitive to the loyalty and restraint foundations [of morality]. . . . [But] in Heidi’s culture, fairness is given much greater importance than loyalty and restraint. . . . When two different moral foundations rub up against each other, fairness always wins. Thus, if homosexual acts are regarded as dissolute, as they were in Heidi’s culture until recently, while restrictions on such acts are now seen as causing undue harm to homosexuals, the outcome is clear. The very idea of dissoluteness sounds archaic to Heidi. Similarly, if intermarriage is regarded as a betrayal of tribal loyalty, as it was in Heidi’s culture until recently, while restrictions on intermarriage are now seen as intolerant, the resolution is again obvious. The very idea of tribal loyalty sounds bizarre to Heidi.

Information about a supposedly near-finalized hostage deal continued to trickle out yesterday. While it’s entirely possible that by the time you read this a deal will be much more certain, it is every bit as likely that it will have fallen through by then. More likely still, we will learn that there are indefinite and unspecified delays. Then there are the details: even in the best of scenarios, not all the hostages will be returned at once, and Israel will have to make painful concessions in exchange, including the release of hundreds of hardened terrorists and the withdrawal from key parts of the Gaza Strip.

Unusually—if entirely appropriately—the president-elect’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, has participated in the talks alongside members of President Biden’s team. Philip Klein examines the incoming Trump administration’s role in the process:

President-elect Trump has repeatedly warned that there would be “all hell to pay” if hostages were not returned from Gaza by the time he takes office. While he has never laid out exactly what the specific consequences for Hamas would be, there are some ominous signs that Israel is being pressured into paying a tremendous price.

There is obviously more here than we know. It’s possible that with the pressure from the Trump team came reassurances that Israel would have more latitude to reenter Gaza as necessary to go after Hamas than it would have enjoyed under Biden. . . . That said, all appearances are that Israel has been forced into making more concessions because Trump was concerned that he’d be embarrassed if January 20 came around with no hostages released.

While Donald Trump’s threats are a welcome rhetorical shift, part of the problem may be their vagueness. After all, it’s unlikely the U.S. would use military force to unleash hell in Gaza, or could accomplish much in doing so that the IDF can’t. More useful would be direct threats against countries like Qatar and Turkey that host Hamas, and threats to the persons and bank accounts of the Hamas officials living in those counties. Witkoff instead praised the Qatari prime minister for “doing God’s work” in the negotiations.”