In Hidden Heretics, Ayala Fader explores the lives of ultra-Orthodox American Jews who have lost faith but choose not to leave their communities, instead leading double lives. Thanks to the Internet, not only have these “double-lifers” found each other, but Fader was able to find and interview them. Michal Leibowitz writes in her review:

In [the book’s many vignettes], we hear from Blimi and Moishy, double-life lovers who carry on a years-long affair, at one point even conspiring to spend [the same] weekend at a kosher hotel with their families so they can steal a few minutes alone. We learn the story of Avi, a double-life father who keeps his secrets from his wife and four daughters but includes his nine-year-old son in his private world.

It is as though Fader began . . . with the question, why do people stay if they don’t believe? But upon finding that answer too simple (family, fear), she changed it to, how do they bear it? Unfortunately, her explanation here falters. [The book’s] later chapters are full of fascinating glimpses of double lives, but they jump so frequently from subject to subject, from theme to theme (even the Internet drops out), and remain so often on the surface that they sometimes feel more voyeuristic than scholarly. Fader accepts without question, for example, Blimi’s blithe rationalization that her extramarital affair is just “a lie, and liars are not as bad as hypocrites in my book.” Hypocrisy, on her account, would be if she told her children to pray when she did not herself.

Nevertheless, there is one area in which Fader’s inquiry excels: her discussion of how double lifers navigate the tensions inherent to raising children with values they have privately rejected.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.