The New York rabbi Shai Held’s new book is—writes Benjamin Weiner, a rabbi in Amherst—“an elaborate treatise, blending polemic and apologetics with theological insight and moral exhortation.” In Judaism Is about Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life, Held “measures up the sprawling mass of Jewish tradition and claims, against incredulous Christians stretching back to Saint Paul, that love has a great deal to do with it.” Is that right?

Held’s argument, Weiner finds, is not quite convincing.

Held’s Judaism of ahavah is certainly not a wholesale invention, and his emphasis often provides truly refreshing readings of familiar sources. To study biblical and rabbinic texts with Held is often to see them persuasively recontextualized as elements in a distinctive Jewish pathway of profound meaning and solace. The inspiring Judaism that comes into view differs markedly from Christianity but is no less imbued with love.

Yet, there are moments when his argument wears thin. One might ask if the effort to center Judaism around love isn’t itself an internalization of Christian prejudice, as if the minority must seek validation by squeezing itself into the majority’s hegemonic categories. For all the beauty in Held’s theology, it also runs the risk of leaving those who don’t emblazon their Jewishness with the banner of love—from secular-culturalists to haredi Jews—even further open to denigration.

Held frequently discusses the earlier American Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Weiner takes the opportunity to compare the two.

Like Heschel, Held is a biblical theologian, deriving his vision of religious life from the textual legacy of the God of Abraham rather than abstract philosophizing. But a tension, if not a contradiction, in his project lies in the impression that he is trying to articulate a doctrinal Judaism of relevance to the nonbeliever—a theology that can function, on some level, whether or not its god actually exists. The high drama of Heschel’s oeuvre, by contrast, is the drama of faith.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.