In the 1940s, the anthropologist Ruth Benedict posited a distinction between “guilt” and “shame” cultures, which has since become standard in the social sciences. Put simply, guilt cultures tend to focus on the inward response to transgression, while shame cultures emphasize society’s reaction to the individual transgressor. The late rabbi Jonathan Sacks frequently employed this distinction in his writings, seeing Judaism as an exemplar of the merits of a guilt culture. Marc Eichenbaum explains how Sacks’s ideas on the subject have particular relevance today:

From March to May, a series of small-scale terrorist attacks claimed the lives of some twenty Israelis, and raised fears that jihadist murder would again become a fact of everyday life in the Jewish state. Hillel Frisch details how a swift campaign waged by the IDF and Shin Bet, employing deliberate and discriminate force, succeeded in restoring the peace: