Daniel Gordis
Jewish Review of Books, Fall 2024
“If we knew anything at all about Jewish history, why were we so surprised?”
During one of many recent somber moments, with soldiers dying as Israel remained mired (if not eyeless) in Gaza, more than one hundred hostages still in captivity, almost one hundred thousand internal refugees from the north unable to return to their homes because the IDF could not keep them safe, and the country still deeply traumatized by the horrors perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023, with the inescapable brutality of the ensuing war, I texted a friend: “This wasn’t in the aliyah handbook ” He replied instantly. “No, it wasn’t in the aliyah handbook, but it was in all the history books.”
I stared dumbly at the text. He was right. So obviously, indisputably right. Amid fear for my country and my family, why had I taken no comfort in the fact that though this horrible period was new to today’s Israel, it wasn’t entirely new to the Jewish people?
It will take years for historians and others to decipher this war. How was Israel caught so unprepared by Hamas? Did internal divisions over judicial reform invite the attack? Most importantly, will what we are experiencing be seen in the future as a terrible period that eventually subsided? Or is it, perhaps, the beginning of a decline from which the Jewish state will never recover—as has happened twice before in our people’s history?… [To read the full article, click here]