The phrase Torah u-madda (literally, “Torah and science”) refers to the attempt to bring together fruitfully secular study and traditional Jewish learning. In America, the slogan is largely associated with the intellectual ambitions of Modern Orthodoxy of the kind nurtured at Yeshiva University. Elana Stein Hain, in the first essay of a symposium on the subject, examines the case for Torah u-madda set forth by one of its most prominent exponents: Rabbi Norman Lamm, the late former president and chancellor of that institution.

Rabbi Lamm wanted Orthodox Jews to be curious and confident—that is, curious about all forms of knowledge, but confident in their commitment to Torah. But his arguments are primarily directed over his right shoulder, towards those who are quite confident in Torah but are not curious about madda: those who see “Torah only” as the way to live a truly religious life. For people who are confident but lacking in curiosity, Rabbi Lamm’s arguments still stand 30 years later.

However, today there are also many in Orthodoxy who are not just curious but who value madda deeply. And even those who do not value it deeply are nevertheless exposed to it all the time whether through books, the Internet, or the arts. Moreover, many yeshiva-day-school students pursue degrees—both undergraduate and graduate—at secular universities, where they enjoy a sophisticated madda education. What is more concerning for this subset is confidence: ensuring that Torah does not lose its vitality.

The [question] for this group is not whether madda is valuable; it is whether and how madda should influence our understanding of Torah.

Since time immemorial, people have asked themselves the most basic questions about what it means to be human, our place in the universe, what it means to have a relationship with God, what a good life looks like, how to construct a good society, and how we ought to respond to injustice. . . . I believe that bringing some of the framing questions of madda into the beit midrash [house of study] provides a fruitful way to relate madda and Torah: doing so can help us access the implicit ways that Torah addresses these questions.

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.