Moses Breaking the Tables of the Law (1659), by Rembrandt. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – When it comes to religion, how much is belief, and how much is rational? Is Judaism a rational religion? Does being religious require a leap of faith?

Perhaps other faiths do. I mean, I respect everyone’s right to choose the religion they subscribe to and want to practice, but some religions do require extraordinary leaps of faith from their followers.

Judaism, on the other hand, is based not on any incredulous leaps of faith, but on the shared firsthand experience of an entire nation.

With other faiths, the starting point is a supposed revelation reported to have been experienced by the founder of that faith. You either believe it or you don’t believe it. Your choice.

But Judaism was founded at Mount Sinai where millions of Israelites, fresh out of Egypt, experienced the Revelation at Sinai. Each and every Israelite, personally, heard the Ten Commandments from the voice of God, not Moses! And it wasn’t virtual, it was personal. They were all there, and it was an in-body experience.

That’s not faith. That is fact. Not only Moses and his disciples but the entire nation of men, women and children—a few million in all—were eyewitnesses to that revelation. And this was handed down by father to son, mother to daughter, throughout the generations wherever Jews lived. European Jews and Yemenite Jews have the very same tradition, the very same Torah. Yes, there are differences in custom and variations on a theme, but the basic traditions are identical.

How? Because they all came from the very same source—Almighty God at Mount Sinai!

This week, we read Mishpatim, a Torah portion that deals with civil and social laws that are very logical. Everyone understands and accepts that society needs a code of law and justice to be able to function.

So, if your ox gores your friend’s ox, you will be liable for damages. If you’re making a barbecue and your negligence causes the fire to spread to your neighbor’s property and it burns down his house, you will be liable. And if you’re going on vacation and deposit your pet poodle at the Lords & Ladies Poodle Parlor for safe keeping and when you come back, they tell you they lost your poodle, then they will be responsible for paying you for your poodle. And so on.

But even the logical mitzvot have much more to them than meets the eye. There are layers and layers of depth, meaning, symbolism and profound spirituality behind every single mitzvah, rational or not.

There are only a handful of chukim, statutory decrees that we were not given an explanation of and for which we must take on faith, like kashrut or shatnez, the law of not mixing wool and linen garments together.

But the truth is that every mitzvah needs faith.

Why? Because without faith, we do something only humans are capable of. Do you know what that is? Rationalization.

Everyone understands that you’re not supposed to steal. And yet, studies have shown that no less than 59% of hotel guests steal from their hotel rooms. Now, I don’t think the hotel really minds if you take the shampoo. I imagine if you asked them, they would say it’s fine.

But no hotel will let you take the towels or the robes. And no hotel will let you take the TV. I was shocked to read that some guests even took home a mattress! (Apparently, in the middle of the night, they snuck it into the elevator, went down to the basement garage and stuffed it into the trunk of their car.)

If you ask these people, they will likely give you all kinds of reasons why their actions are justified. The hotel overcharged me. It calculates shrinkage into their price, so I actually paid for it. If I wear the hotel’s towel on the beach, I am advertising for them, so they should pay me.

This is classic rationalization.

So we do need faith after all, even for logical commandments like not stealing. Otherwise, we fail. Badly.

Interestingly, the very same Torah reading of Mishpatim, with its logical, civil laws also has the famous phrase, Na’aseh V’Nishma. These were the words of the Jewish people when asked if they would accept God’s Torah. They replied Na’aseh, “we will do” and only thereafter Nishmah, “we will listen” and understand. It is the core of simple, pure, absolute faith, beyond any logic or understanding.

And this explains why the Ten Commandments, which we read last week, begin with Anochi, “I am God,” the lofty, abstract mitzvah to believe in God. To have faith.

And then the other commandments go on to tell us the most basic laws that every low life knows he should keep. Not to murder, commit adultery, steal, lie or be jealous.

How did we get from the highest, metaphysical commandment of belief to the grossest of the gross in a few short sentences?

Because without faith, a human being is capable of justifying anything.

The accursed Nazis justified the Holocaust. REAL genocide, not make-believe South African genocide. How did they justify it? By saying Jews are scum, sub-human. We are doing the world a service by eliminating them. The world will be a better place for it. Rationalization.

Without the first commandment of faith in God, there can be no adherence to any of the other commandments.

Logic gets you pretty far but not far enough. As logical as Judaism may be, we still need the foundation of faith to do what we must do and avoid that which is tempting but wrong.

May we all embrace Judaism with knowledge and reason and by understanding its philosophy, without losing that pure and simple faith that every one of us possesses.

The post Is Religion Rational? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Orthodox Jewish men stand near a tank, ahead of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, as seen from the Israeli side of the border with Gaza, Jan. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

JNS.org – Thursday was a national day of mourning, as the bodies of hostage Shiri Bibas’s children Ariel and Kfir, along with that of Oded Lipshitz, returned to Israel. Hamas also handed over a fourth coffin, falsely saying it held Shiri Bibas‘s remains, but it was subsequently determined that it contained the corpse of an unidentified non-Israeli woman.

Their dire fate, along with that of some 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, stand as an unbearable reminder of the consequences of allowing a genocidal, jihadist army to entrench itself on Israel’s border.

The sorrow that grips all Israelis, reinforced by months of war, adds up to a clear national imperative: Israel can never again allow Gaza to be a staging ground for an Iranian-backed terrorist army. Once Israel has exhausted all efforts to secure the release of its hostages, Hamas must be eliminated from the face of the Earth as a terror army. No one on Israel’s borders can be allowed to build an ability to send death squads and invasion brigades over the border in an organized manner.

Ensuring Israeli security control over Gaza is the only way to achieve this. This work cannot be outsourced to anyone; the idea that a foreign force or paid mercenaries would have the ability to deal with Hamas is absurd. Israeli security control of Gaza is not just a military necessity to prevent future Hamas barbarity, it is an existential imperative.

The ongoing professional inquiries by the IDF into the events of Oct. 7 aim to provide answers to the public, the bereaved families and affected communities about the multiple system failures of that darkest of days.

But these investigations are not just about accountability—they are about learning from history in real time. As one IDF official put it this week, Israel must “carry out the lessons learned during the war, not afterward, and prepare for future conflicts.”

The scope of the IDF’s inquiries is broad, covering four main areas: Israel’s long-term strategy regarding Gaza, intelligence failures leading up to the war, the decision-making process between Oct. 6 and 7, and the first 72 hours of defensive operations.

But even before their conclusions are published, likely in the coming days, it is possible to draw some key conclusions.

Not deterred, not a rational actor, not seeking prosperity

Before the attack, every day that Israel did not act to prevent Hamas from building its capabilities, and every day that Israel gave up on the idea of achieving security control over Gaza, was an opportunity for Hamas to develop further its murderous plans and prepare for the massacre.

The Western-oriented idea that Israel could afford to refrain from continuous security operations in Gaza, and that the IDF could stay back behind the border, was fueled by deluded concepts of Hamas being deterred, that it was a rational actor, and that it sought economic prosperity.

These delusions stem from a catastrophic inability to grasp the jihadist mindset of a fundamentalist Islamic death cult, and from the tendency that was rampant in the defense establishment and the political echelon before Oct. 7 to project Western thinking onto our enemies. This allowed Hamas the space and the time to prepare its attack. Those who wish to indefinitely delay Israeli operations to prevent Hamas from rebuilding these capabilities have returned to the pre-Oct. 7 misconceptions. The “day after” is today.

During the Oct. 7 attacks, Hamas behaved like an army intent on genocide. It seized land, executing civilians in the most brutal manner imaginable, and taking hostages to act as insurance policies for the survival of its leadership. It was only able to do these things because it controlled its own territory, giving it the ability to develop an arms industry, smuggle in weapons and develop its intentions with minimal interference.

Meanwhile, the chief of the IDF General Staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, who is due to step down on March 6, has spent recent days in the United States discussing strategic and operational issues with top American military officials.

Halevi visited the Pentagon to meet with Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with staff officers, and with Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, the commander of CENTCOM (responsible for the Middle East), to discuss Lebanon and Iran, and ways to strengthen U.S.-Israeli cooperation.

But Gaza trumped the other arenas. Halevi expedited his return to Israel due to the agreement to return the bodies of the hostages.

No international diplomacy or security guarantees can obviate the necessity of full Israeli freedom of operation in Gaza for the foreseeable future. Failure to recognize this would invite, once again, catastrophe, and Israel cannot afford to repeat its mistakes.

The post Israeli Security Control of Gaza Is an Existential Necessity first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks to members of the Security Council during a meeting to address the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question, at UN headquarters in New York City, New York, US, April 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

JNS.org – There was no way to write about the latest depravity before it happened. We thought we knew, but we didn’t.

Now we do.

The short form is that they staged a raucous celebration with children singing and dancing as four coffins moved along. They provided keys to the Israel Defense Forces for unlocking the coffins—keys that didn’t work. Propaganda material was in each coffin. One held a person that it turns out was not Shiri Bibas, mother of Ariel and Kfir, wife of Yarden.

In the aftermath, people have had a lot to say.

What friends and supporters of Israel are saying and writing is wrenching but not unexpected. Among them are friends that Israel and Jews can count on, including Col. Richard Kemp, a retired British Army officer; Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.); Karoline Preisler, a lawyer and politician based in Berlin; John Spencer, the chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute; and Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.

An amazing number of public voices suddenly found their outrage.

The biggest fraud in this was U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. “I condemn … Under international law … They must comply … Respect for the dignity of … .” And so on and so on.

Who cares? More than 500 days ago, 1,200 people were killed in Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, in what we thought then was the most horrific manner conceived by the human brain. (We might have been wrong. What happened to those who have and had been held captive by terrorists inside the Gaza Strip may have been worse.) More than 500 days ago, more than 250 people—some still living, some now deceased—were dragged from southern Israel into Gaza as hostages in violation of “international law,” which clearly applies in only certain cases, none involving Israelis or Jews.

The deafening silence by Guterres about murdered and mutilated Jewish men, women and children (babies!), coupled with his loud, ongoing condemnation of Israel’s defense and support of Hamas will be his legacy. Along with the lunatic propaganda that came out of U.N. agencies over which he presides.

The BBC reported, “Once again, there was a stage, flanked by huge posters highlighting the catastrophic consequences of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and the Palestinian determination to stay put.” They missed the graphic showing the Bibas family—all of them—on the banner with a vampire-like image of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his mouth dripping with blood, standing behind them, and missed the Nazi chants.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is waiting “in agony.”

Amnesty International was reminded of the “urgent need to immediately release the civilian hostages and Palestinians arbitrarily detained.” Amazing how the bodies of babies murdered by hand remind Amnesty of the need to release Palestinians detained and tried for terror activities in the court of a democratic country.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which failed to visit a single hostage, deliver any medicine or ensure that the hostages were treated according to international humanitarian law, was worried about bodies. “We have unequivocally clarified that any release—of living hostages or ones that are no longer alive—must be carried out respectfully and privately.”

“Privately” is a euphemism for not letting the world see the degradation imposed on people, living and dead, by Hamas.

Palestinian voices were interesting.

After 500-plus days of moaning about (fake) genocide, (fake) famine and (fake) hideous brutality of Israel in Gaza, now (now!) they are jumping over each other to say, “No, it wasn’t me, and yes, it was them, and yes, I’m so upset about the Bibas children.”

One wrote, “Seeing my feed with so many Palestinians who stood and loudly stated that Hamas should never have abducted the hostages makes me very proud. We shall never forget the crime they committed against the Bibas family.”

Another, “My feed is full of Palestinians condemning the kidnapping of the Bibas family &and children. No one with a conscience can justify such a crime. We must uphold our values and speak up for the victims, the innocent and the unheard—no matter who the perpetrators or victims are.”

Not about the women raped, the parents who watched their children die, and the children who watched their parents die on Oct. 7, in addition to the torture, rape, and murder of adult hostage inside Gaza? Just the babies?

Um, no.

Palestinians should be reminded that the government of Israel announced large rewards and safe passage for Palestinian civilians who gave information about the hostages to the IDF. Not one single person came forward. Some hostages were at times imprisoned in “civilian” spaces—forced to cook, clean and watch after Palestinian children in homes in Gaza—including UNRWA spaces, Mr. Guterres. And still, crickets.

For those who say, “Well, the Gaza ‘civilians’ were oppressed by Hamas, so they were afraid to speak out,” note that in every hideous country of Europe during the Holocaust, brave and threatened civilians hid Jews, fed Jews and sheltered Jews. The Garden of the Righteous Among Nations at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem tells their stories of bravery and decency. There will be no Palestinian counterpart.

There were Arab voices, and herein lies hope.

Even before the Abraham Accords were signed in the fall of 2020, there have been voices in the Arab world calling sincerely for coexistence and friendship between Muslim Arabs and Israelis, including its Jewish and non-Jewish population. It is an amazing group of people who stayed the course, even after Oct. 7.

Amjad Taha, political strategist and analyst from the United Arab Emirates; Luai Ahmed, a Yemeni and Swedish journalist, columnist and influence; Hayder Alasadi, the founder and CEO of the Iraqi-Israeli Association of Peace; Bassam Eid, a Palestinian who comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for Israeli TV and radio; and a few others (not many) can have a garden. They were joined Friday by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, who said, “What we saw today in Gaza is a disgrace to Islam, an act of blasphemy against Allah.”

So, now what?

Bible study. Deuteronomy. “Vengeance is Mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.”

Vengeance is His, but the instrument of His wrath is likely here on Earth.

The post The Day After… first appeared on Algemeiner.com.