On Saturday night, Ashkenazi Jews began reciting the pre-Rosh Hashanah penitential prayers known as slihot. Joshua Berman takes a close look at the raw, striking, and disturbing imagery used in one of these prayers:

Medieval Ashkenazi communities lived under the constant threat of sexual violence against Jewish women, a terror so pervasive that in the 11th century, the Italian poet Solomon ben Judah ha-Bavli penned a liturgical piece portraying Israel as a bride who had been raped. The tradition is rich with stories of women who chose martyrdom over defilement, but ha-Bavli’s composition is unique in its exploration of the inner life of a sexual-trauma victim.

For this bride, virginity is tied to a sense of bodily autonomy and personal identity. Her rape shatters this autonomy, leaving her with a profound sense of violation and loss. The future she had envisioned with her groom was taken from them, dashing her dreams and plans, leading to a sense of despair or hopelessness.

This is the only slihot prayer in which Israel is cast as a victim of sexual assault, and, significantly, it is also the only one where Israel’s sins are never mentioned. These two facts are deeply connected. Ha-Bavli’s piyyut, [liturgical poem], is not simply a cry for mercy, it is a protest. It is a demand for justice, rooted in the understanding that, in rape, the victim is never to blame. Israel stands before God not as a sinner seeking forgiveness but as a victim crying out for justice.

While President Trump has begun his term with a flurry of executive orders, their implementation is another matter. David Wurmser surveys the bureaucratic hurdles facing new presidents, and sets forth what he thinks should be the most important concerns for the White House regarding the Middle East:

The cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas may be necessary in order to retrieve whatever live hostages Israel is able to repatriate. Retrieving those hostages has been an Israeli war aim from day one.

But it is a vital American interest . . . to allow Israel to restart the war in Gaza and complete the destruction of Hamas, and also to allow Israel to enforce unilaterally UN Security Council Resolutions 1701 and 1559, which are embedded in the Lebanon cease-fire. If Hamas emerges with a story of victory in any form, not only will Israel face another October 7 soon, and not only will anti-Semitism explode exponentially globally, but cities and towns all over the West will suffer from a newly energized and encouraged global jihadist effort.

After the last hostage Israel can hope to still retrieve has been liberated, Israel will have to finish the war in a way that results in an unambiguous, incontrovertible, complete victory.