In conversation with Dru Johnson and Matthew Lynch, Jon D. Levenson addresses some widespread misperceptions about death in the Hebrew Bible, most importantly the idea that death is seen as final and irreversible and that notions of resurrection and the afterlife found in both Christianity and in rabbinic Judaism are wholly alien to it. Levenson also argues that a host of “debunking ideologies” have left contemporary academic biblical scholarship in a sorry state—and that the talmudic rabbis would have preferred footnotes to endnotes. (Audio, 51 minutes.)

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.