The modern philosophers Immanuel Kant and Soren Kierkegaard wrote opposing analyses of the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22), which is included in last week’s Torah reading of Vayera. While both approaches have had considerable influence on subsequent Jewish and Christian theologians’ treatment of this passage, David Fried argues that neither reflects the authentic Jewish view:

For Kant, Abraham essentially failed the test [put to him by the divine command to kill his son]. God, the Supreme Ethical Being, could not possibly ask [a person] to do the unethical, [since, Kant believed], the moral law must be universal and allow no exceptions. If killing one’s son is wrong, it is wrong under all circumstances. Abraham therefore should have recognized that since the command to sacrifice his son was unethical, it could not possibly represent the will of God. . . . [The obvious] problem with this explanation is that there is nothing in the text indicating that Abraham failed the test. On the contrary, the text effuses with praise for Abraham’s conduct (Genesis 22:12-18). . . .

By contrast, Kierkegaard believed the opposite to be true. God wanted Abraham to comprehend the “teleological suspension of the ethical,” i.e., that the end of serving God justifies the usually unethical means of child sacrifice. Fried finds this reading equally unappealing, especially when compared with the very different rabbinic approach:

Perhaps we could accept that occasionally some greater cause could justify killing an innocent person. The challenge is that every religious zealot believes his cause to be the one that warrants “the teleological suspension of the ethical.” . . .

[U]nlike Kierkegaard and Kant, and contrary to what has become conventional wisdom, most traditional Jewish commentaries did not understand Abraham’s test . . . as centering on the tension between human moral sensibilities and divine command. Rather, Abraham was being tested in his ability to set aside the natural feelings of mercy he felt for his son. Put differently, Abraham was not being asked to do the unethical but to do the ethical despite his powerful inclination to the contrary.

[The Provençal philosopher and exegete] Levi Gersonides (1288-1344) makes this implication explicit, adding his own twist by arguing that Abraham must have assumed that Isaac had done something to deserve the deed Abraham was being asked to carry out. While one might criticize Gersonides by saying that the text’s usage of sacrificial language does not make it sound as if Abraham is being asked to carry out a punishment, this approach does fit very nicely with [the 13th-cenutry Spanish rabbi] Moses Naḥmanides’ understanding of sacrifices. Naḥmanides writes that when a person offers an animal as a sacrifice, he is meant to see himself as deserving of death; the animal takes his place only by the grace of God.

Fried goes on to defend his position by reading the binding of Isaac in the context of the biblical chapters that precede it.

As this newsletter noted last week, Gaza is not suffering from famine, and the efforts to suggest that it is—which have been going on since at least the beginning of last year—are based on deliberate manipulation of the data. Nor, as Shany Mor explains, does international law require Israel to feed its enemies:

Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention does oblige High Contracting Parties to allow for the free passage of medical and religious supplies along with “essential foodstuff, clothing, and tonics intended for children under fifteen” for the civilians of another High Contracting Party, as long as there is no serious reason for fearing that “the consignments may be diverted from their destination,” or “that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy” by the provision.

The Hamas regime in Gaza is, of course, not a High Contracting Party, and, more importantly, Israel has reason to fear both that aid provisions are diverted by Hamas and that a direct advantage is accrued to it by such diversions. Not only does Hamas take provisions for its own forces, but its authorities sell provisions donated by foreign bodies and use the money to finance its war. It’s notable that the first reports of Hamas’s financial difficulties emerged only in the past few weeks, once provisions were blocked.

Yet, since the war began, even European states considered friendly to Israel have repeatedly demanded that Israel “allow unhindered passage of humanitarian aid” and refrain from seizing territory or imposing “demographic change”—which means, in practice, that Gazan civilians can’t seek refuge abroad. These principles don’t merely constitute a separate system of international law that applies only to Israel, but prolong the suffering of the people they are ostensibly meant to protect:

By insisting that Hamas can’t lose any territory in the war it launched, the international community has invented a norm that never before existed and removed one of the few levers Israel has to pressure it to end the war and release the hostages.

These commitments have . . . made the plight of the hostages much worse and much longer. They made the war much longer than necessary and much deadlier for both sides. And they locked a large civilian population in a war zone where the de-facto governing authority was not only indifferent to civilian losses on its own side, but actually had much to gain by it.