Next year will mark the 450th anniversary of the death of Joseph Karo (1488–1575), author of the code of Jewish law known as the Shulhan Arukh (literally, “The Set Table”). Prior to its publication, there were several important works that tried to systematize the unwieldly corpus of talmudic jurisprudence, and there have been many more since. But this book carefully synthesizes its predecessors, and every one of its successors is on some level a commentary on the Shulhan Arukh, conferring upon it a uniquely authoritative status. Menachem Wecker writes:

Karo, whose name is variously spelled in English, was born in Spain. Four years after his birth year, Spain expelled its Jewish population, and Karo’s family fled to Turkey. Some 34 years later, he moved to Israel, settling in Safed, the city associated with Jewish mysticism and the Kabbalah.

Like other major Sephardi rabbis, Karo had his feet planted firmly in both Jewish ritual law—halakhah—and Kabbalah.

Karo’s work has been cited in multiple amicus curiae briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court. Edward Fram, a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev . . . told JNS that Karo’s work remains timely “due to his scholarship, which is not to be underestimated, but no less significantly, because his work became a springboard for further discussion of the law, much of it in the margins of the printed text.”

One of Hamas’s most notable failures since October 7 is that it has not succeeded in inspiring a violent uprising either among the Palestinians of the West Bank or the Arab citizens of Israel. The latter seem horrified by Hamas’s actions and tend to sympathize with their own country. In the former case, quiet has been maintained by the IDF and Shin Bet, which have carried out a steady stream of arrests, raids, and even airstrikes.

But there is a third category of Arab living in Israel, namely the Arabs of Jerusalem, whose intermediate legal status gives them access to Israeli social services and the right to vote in municipal elections. They may also apply for Israeli citizenship if they so desire, although most do not.

On Wednesday, off-duty Israeli soldiers in the Old City of Jerusalem shot at a Palestinian who, it seems, was attempting to attack them. But this incident is a rare exception to the quiet that has prevailed in Arab Jerusalem since the war began. Eytan Laub asked a friend in an Arab neighborhood why:

Listen, he said, we . . . have much to lose. We already fear that any confrontation would have consequences. Making trouble may put our residence rights at risk. Furthermore, he added, not a few in the neighborhood, including his own family, have applied for Israeli citizenship and participating in disturbances would hardly help with that.

Such an attitude reflects a general trend since the end of the second intifada:

In recent years, the numbers of [Arab] Jerusalemites applying for Israeli citizenship has risen, as the social stigma of becoming Israeli has begun to erode and despite an Israeli naturalization process that can take years and result in denial (because of the requirement to show Jerusalem residence or the need to pass a Hebrew language test). The number of east Jerusalemites granted citizenship has also risen, from 827 in 2009 to over 1,600 in 2020.

Oddly enough, Laub goes on to argue, the construction of the West Bank separation fence in the early 2000s, which cuts through the Arab-majority parts of Jerusalem, has helped to encouraged better relations.