At Passover seders, numerous Jewish families will be singing the Aramaic song Ḥad Gadya (“Only a Goat”), which includes the line, “Then came a cat and ate the goat that my father bought for two zuzim.” While the Hebrew Bible has numerous references to goats, it has none to cats—although the animal was certainly known to ancient Israelites. Joshua Schwartz examines the evidence:

Cats have been excavated in Jericho from as early as the pre-pottery Neolithic period (before 6000 BCE). At most, these ancient cats may have co-existed in some form with humans, although they were not yet domesticated.

To date, we have found no evidence that the Israelites kept cats in their houses. The scant archaeological evidence of cats in a domestic context from Bronze and Iron Age Israel shows no connection to the Israelites, and the Bible never mentions cats. This silence stands in contrast with the evidence from Egypt, where cats were dearly loved and often depicted in wall paintings and bronzes from the mid-second through late-first millennium BCE.

Schwartz then moves on to the Talmud:

The Persians who ruled talmudic Babylonia despised cats; they were considered khrafstra, noxious creatures, not much better than the vermin they destroyed. The talmudic traditions about cats suggest a slightly more mixed view of cats. The only talmudic tradition that directly praises cats is cited by the Palestinian sage Rabbi Yohanan (3rd century CE): “If the Torah had not been given, we could have learned modesty from the cat.”

With the IDF engaged in ground maneuvers in both northern and southern Gaza, and a plan about to go into effect next week that would separate more than 100,000 civilians from Hamas’s control, an end to the war may at last be in sight. Yet there seems to be no agreement within Israel, or without, about what should become of the territory. Efraim Inbar assesses the various proposals, from Donald Trump’s plan to remove the population entirely, to the Israeli far-right’s desire to settle the Strip with Jews, to the internationally supported proposal to place Gaza under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA)—and exposes the fatal flaws of each. He therefore tries to reframe the problem:

[M]any Arab states have failed to establish a monopoly on the use of force within their borders. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan all suffer from civil wars or armed militias that do not obey the central government.

Perhaps Israel needs to get used to the idea that in the absence of an entity willing to take Gaza under its wing, chaos will prevail there. This is less terrible than people may think. Chaos would allow Israel to establish buffer zones along the Gaza border without interference. Any entity controlling Gaza would oppose such measures and would resist necessary Israeli measures to reduce terrorism. Chaos may also encourage emigration.

Israel is doomed to live with bad neighbors for the foreseeable future. There is no way to ensure zero terrorism. Israel should avoid adopting a policy of containment and should constantly “mow the grass” to minimize the chances of a major threat emerging across the border. Periodic conflicts may be necessary. If the Jews want a state in their homeland, they need to internalize that Israel will have to live by the sword for many more years.