Throughout the history of rabbinic thought, widely accepted practice has always had a quasi-sacred status, even if it goes against the conclusions suggested by the authoritative texts. Yet rabbis also felt able to criticize popular customs they found contrary to halakhah, and generally distinguished custom from the letter of the law. Moses Schreiber (1762–1839), one of the greatest Central European rabbis of his day, and considered by some historians a founding father of Orthodox Judaism, sought to transform that relationship. Confronting the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, and the earliest stages of the Reform movement—which he saw as threats to the fundamental integrity of Judaism—Schreiber believed it was necessary not merely to defend halakhah but to prohibit the slightest innovation of any sort.

To this end, Schreiber contended that the distinction between law and custom should be erased, and every custom be considered possessed of the utmost sanctity. Schreiber thus bears some resemblance to the British parliamentarian and thinker Edmund Burke, who—in the face of Enlightenment rationalism—set forth a defense of tradition and prejudice against the onslaught of the French Revolution. Shmuel Ben-Shalom notes both important similarities and differences:

Schreiber’s attitude to custom was a turning point in the history of halakhah. He identified custom as the ultimate rival of modernity and consciously augmented its centrality, turning it into a potent weapon against the Haskalah. Schreiber’s “conservative revolution” reinvented custom, granting it a higher status even than that of halakhah.

[Burke and Schreiber] both identified the danger latent in the dismissal of custom emanating from the revolutionary winds. They both understood that the fundamental problem of the revolutionaries was their primary reliance on reason, which allowed them to wave away customs rooted in the public consciousness of many generations.

At the same time, it is important to distinguish between Burke’s conservatism and Schreiber’s protection of custom. Burke’s approach understands humanity as being a partner in history, part of a great contract between the dead and the living. We are able to repair custom and are even duty-bound to do so yet must be careful not to shatter them; every correction must be undertaken out of respect for the past, cautious advancement, and an empirical examination of results. This permission to change past approaches does not appear in Schreiber’s teachings.

On March 5, Riyadh appointed Salman al-Dosari—a prominent journalist and vocal supporter of the Abraham Accords—as its new minister of information. Hussain Abdul-Hussain takes this choice as one of several signals that Saudi Arabia is inching closer to normalization with Israel:

Saudi Arabia has been the biggest supporter of Palestinians since before the establishment of Israel in 1948. When the kingdom’s founder Abdulaziz Ibn Saud met with the U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard the USS Quincy in the Red Sea in 1945, the Saudi king demanded that Jews in Palestine be settled elsewhere. But unlimited Saudi support has only bought Palestinian ungratefulness and at times, downright hate. After the Abraham Accords were announced in August 2020, Palestinians in Gaza and Ramallah burned pictures not only of the leaders of the UAE and Bahrain but also of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS).

Since then, many Palestinian pundits and activists have been accusing Saudi Arabia of betraying the cause, even though the Saudis have said repeatedly, and as late as January, that their peace with Israel is incumbent on the establishment of a Palestinian state.

While the Saudi Arabian government has practiced self-restraint by not reciprocating Palestinian hate, Saudi Arabian columnists, cartoonists, and social-media activists have been punching back. After the burning of the pictures of Saudi Arabian leaders, al-Dosari wrote that with their aggression against Saudi Arabia, the Palestinians “have liberated the kingdom from any ethical or political commitment to these parties in the future.”