Maimonides on Netanyahu

On August 5, 2025, Israel’s prime minister, Ben Netanyahu and his cabinet were considering conquering all of Gaza as cease-fire talks came to naught. According to the Associated Press, he “hinted at wider military action in devastated Gaza . . . even as former Israeli army and intelligence chiefs called for an end of to the nearly 22-month war.”[1] Roughly thirty years earlier, Netanyahu had admitted in an interview that Israel destroys countries (or peoples) it doesn’t like very slowly. The slow process of starvation amid Israeli troops and American mercenaries enjoying shooting Gazans at designated food-distribution sites through at least the summer of 2025 instantiates Netanyahu’s perhaps careless admission of cruelty befitting a man out for vengeance. Never mind the scriptural passage, Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord; Netanyahu and his cabinet, and even the president of Israel felt entitled to take that task upon themselves, such that even just death would be too good for Palestinians, rather than having faith in their deity, whose vengeance would presumably be narrowly and properly directed to the Hamas attackers and kidnappers rather than to innocent people, including small children who could not possibly be considered to have been culpable two months shy of two years earlier in 2023. The religious depth of the betrayal of Yahweh by Netanyahu and his cabinet can be gleamed by recalling passages from Maimonides.

In The Eight Chapters, the medieval Jewish scholar writes, “If you consider most of the commandments in this way, you will find that all of them discipline the powers of the soul.”[2] Such disciplining is necessary for a person to keep the mean (i.e., feelings and actions that are fitting and proper, rather than too little or too much) and thus be virtuous in Aristotle’s sense of virtue. “For example,” Maimonides continues, “they [i.e., most of the commandments] eliminate revenge and vengeance by His saying: You shall not take revenge nor bear a grudge, You shall surely release it, and You shall surely help to lift them up, etc.; these aim at weakening the power of rage and irascibility.”[3] A person who ignores or dismisses these divine commands and violates them “does not know that he goes all the way to one extreme, completely leaving the mean,”[4] by which Maimonides means Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean as pertains to the moral virtues.

Given that the ongoing, gradual decimation of Gaza’s infrastructure and of the residents themselves by the Israeli government for more than a year and a half by the late summer of 2025, it is evident that the vice (i.e., extreme) of hateful vengeance had become a habituated pattern for those officials in charge of the Israeli government, and especially in the military. Allowing oneself to continue in a bad (i.e., not virtuous) habit is antipodal to Maimonides’ advice: “the perfect man needs to inspect his moral habits continually, weigh his actions, and reflect upon the state of his soul every single day. Whenever he sees his soul inclining toward one of the extremes, he should rush to cure it and not let the evil state become established by the repetition of a bad action.”[5] A person having intentionally or unwittingly developed such a sordid habit “should attend to the defective moral habit in himself and continually seek to cure it, for a [human being] inevitably has defects.”[6] Even though “Solomon said absolutely: There is no man who is just upon the earth, who does only good and does not sin,”[7] by no means does this justify going to the other extreme and remaining there, such that a habit of vice can establish deep groves in the road such that turning around becomes virtually impossible, given the human penchant for stubbornness and intractability.  For I submit that by the summer of 2025, Netanyahu and his cabinet officials had reached such a point that only external force could be capable of pushing those men back from the extreme in the sense of Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean.

Moreover, it is so easy for humans to will to stay the course in what is an immoral extreme that Yahweh issues divine commands concerning particular actions, such as to forbid daytime sex so to keep lust in moderation rather than going to an extreme. Maimonides views such laws as being oriented to Aristotle’s philosophy on virtue, and thus risks reducing theology to ethics. This risk may be worth it, given the stubborn presumptuousness of Netanyahu in the presumably righteous determination to exterminate a subjugated people in Israel’s Gaza territory in a habituated extreme case of vengeance. Nietzsche points out that positing Yahweh as both omnibenevolent and vengeful is self-contradictory and thus discredits that concept of God. Even given Netanyahu’s extreme vengeance as routinized as a genocide and even holocaust, the divine command not to be vengeful does not need the additional scriptural text, Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. To leave a vacuum without a credible concept of a deity puts too much weight on human subjectivity to fill the gap—hence Sartre claimed that human choices are so weighty and Husserl treated subjectivity as the only possible basis for a philosophy. In other words, that the Nazi Holocaust and the Gaza Holocaust have both followed the Age of Reason and Nietzsche’s claim that God is dead leaves us with the vital question of what is left upon which a moral and, moreover, existential philosophy can be built. In short, even without positing vengeance as pertaining to Yahweh, Maimonides’ reading of the Torah and the Talmud in line with Aristotle’s moral philosophy (without conflating the two or reducing one to the other) is enough to base the claim that Netanyahu and his cabinet members have become extremists both in terms of their religion and an established theory of virtue. It is upon this basis that the Gaza Holocaust rests.

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1. Julia Frankel and Wafaa Shurafa, “Netanyahu Hints at Expanded War in Gaza but Former Israeli Military and Spy Chiefs Object,” The Associated Press, August 5, 2025.

2. Maimonides. Ethical Writings of Maimonides, ed. Raymond L. Weiss and Charles E. Butterworth (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1975), p. 72.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 73.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.

Pope Leo on the Fallacy of Collective Justice: The Case of Israel in Gaza

One of the many pitfalls in the doctrine of absolute sovereignty, whereby government officials acting as government can literally get away with murder domestically given the lack of credible de jure and de facto enforcement of international “law,” is the ability to inflict collective punishment based on group-identity, including the ideologies that hinge on identity politics. Going the actual culprits of a crime or even a revolt, collective punishment inflicts harm and even mass murder on an entire group, including individuals thereof who are not at all culpable. Unlike “collateral damage,” the ideology of collective justice includes intentionally harming such individuals. It is an ideology because it is based on beliefs about a group rather than an ethic that would justify normatively the infliction of pain and suffering on the innocent. Furthermore, collective justice is an ideology because it includes the artificial elevation of a group (i.e., the collective) over the individual even though members of a group are arguably foremost individuals, who typically belong to more than one group or organization. To put the collective abstraction first ontologically is thus tenuous at best. A person may be a Texan, a Democrat, a Catholic, and a member of a football team, for example, so the claim that that person is essentially any one of these would be dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary. In privileging a part over a whole, thus being partisan, an ideology is in a sense arbitrary, even in claiming that a state of affairs that is favored or desired is the present state of affairs, as if the statement were a fact of reason rather than a counter-factual statement.

The full essay is at "Pope Leo on the Fallacy of Collective Justice."

Secularized Religion in Nazi Ideology

In 2025 at Harvard, Madeline Levy presented her dissertation in progress in a graduate-student research workshop, which I was privileged to attend in my capacity as a research scholar at Harvard. She was presenting how the Hitler Youth program in Nazi Germany appropriated from religion politically, thus in a secular context yet with the aura of a religious cult. Interestingly, most of the kids in the program had been in church groups. Almost two decades earlier, I had audited a course on Nazi Cinema at another university; the course was taught by an 81-year-old German man who had been forced into Hitler Youth. Unlike Stalin’s cinema, which was blatant Soviet propaganda, Nazi cinema was escapist (not counting the anti-Jew propaganda “documentaries”). In contrast, Hitler Youth was hardly escapist, as the program was steeped in Nazi ideology. Although that ideology was secular, casting even Catholic Europe as an enemy, Levy was making the case that religious paraphernalia was incorporated in the program nonetheless. She brought up the element on ontology, or being, which in turn led me to draw on philosophy to explain the kids as becoming moral agents in a Kantian sense. Although philosophy and theology are distinct, both can be applied to political theory in a historical context.

The full essay is at "Political Religion."

The Hebrew Bible on Wealth

The early Hebrews considered wealth to be an integral part of human perfection and, moreover, what ought to be.[1] The ideal man was wealthy and leisured, and yet occupied with honorable work.[2] In the Torah, as long as the Hebrews as a people obey God, including dutifully acting as stewards rather than as selfish exploiters of the land that God has provided, poverty should be nonexistent in Israel. “There need be no poor people among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the Lord your God.”[3] Blessed wealth is a reward for fidelity to Yahweh, whereas poverty here is indicative of, or even punishment for, disobedience, which will evidently always be the case in Israel, for, “There will always be poor people in the land.”[4] The conditionality leaps off the page, as does the notion of collective justice, and yet wealthy individuals, including business practitioners, are held to account. The ethic of work is upheld even though labor in Genesis is due to original sin.  

The Torah does recognize, however, that the humble can be poor and the greedy and prideful can become rich. God does not punish the humble and reward the proud. To be proud is to trust in oneself, and thus one’s own ability to acquire still more. In Psalm 52, the righteous laugh at the man, “who did not make God his stronghold, but trusted in his great wealth and grew strong by destroying others!”[5] Such strength refers here to becoming richer or more powerful, rather than more righteous or pleasing in the sight of the Lord.

The Hebrew Bible depicts greed as a sin. For one thing, greed can motivate a rich or powerful person to unjustly exploit the poor to obtain still more wealth. Relatedly, moreover, putting the love of gain above loving and obeying God implicates greed in contributing to the more grave sin of idolatry—regarding or treating something in Creation as being above the Creator, and thus as a superior god. Pride is thus in the mix—the arrogance of a pot to presume itself superior to the potter who made it. Generally speaking, the Hebrew Bible tends to associate the rich with being greedy, prideful, and, worst of all, idolatrous. Prideful idolatry involves trusting in oneself rather than God. This sort of pride goes easily with making money into an idol to form the ground of existence. The prophets had nothing good to say about selfish wealth and leisure.[6] This does not necessarily implicate wealth itself, however, or even being rich, since it can be a reward for being obedient in placing Yahweh before oneself and other possible gods, such as wooden idols and even earthly treasure. In the Torah, greed and wealth are uncoupled, as if snipped apart with scissors. Wealth itself can go either way. Riches acquired righteously are a blessing from God and therefore do not carry the stain of greed, whereas wealth gained greedily, as in taking unjustly from the poor, is associated with sin.

Nobody is exempt from being tempted by greed. Referring to the people of Jerusalem, Jeremiah charges, “From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain.”[7] As an urge, greed can be understood as coming out of an instinct that is activated along with the subtle sense, or fear, that having enough for the future can never be guaranteed completely. It is as if we were squirrels continuously scurrying around after walnuts, storing as many as possible until none more can be found. No amount of wealth is sufficient to get a person to certainty on whether what one now has is sufficient for one’s future needs and comfort. Accordingly, having just clinched a good deal is never enough; any brief satisfaction at the achievement is quickly replaced by the urge to get an even better deal.

Just because greed is a sin does not mean that it treats all wealth as sinful too. According to the Hebrew Bible, a person need not be wealthy in order to be greedy, and a person can be rich without being greedy. Every prophet preached that if Israel were righteous, it would be sure to prosper—the gift of Jehovah on condition that Israel kept to the covenant (i.e., righteousness).[8] The prophets denounce the abuse of wealth rather than seeking or holding wealth itself, luxury, commerce or even monopoly as evil in itself. [9] Even if the overwhelming majority of rich Hebrews in Jerusalem were at a certain time very greedy in unjustly exploiting the poor to gain still more wealth, the Torah indicates that God could still bestow riches, which, coming as a blessing, would be unstained by the sin of greed. Each of the three Patriarchs in Genesis, for example, is rich.[10] Were greed mixed in with blessed wealth, God would be rewarding the righteous with a sin, which does not make sense. Abraham’s wealth is a gift from God rather than a sin.[11]

As a gift, blessed wealth can come with or without the need to labor for it. Proverb 10 promises, “The blessing of the LORD brings wealth, without painful toil for it.”[12] Blessed wealth gained without effort is reminiscent of the natural wealth of the Golden Age depicted by Greco-Roman poets such as Homer and Ovid.[13] The Greco-Roman poets characterize such wealth as being free of greed; where there is plenty and no fear of future shortage, a person need not labor; one can even let go of the instinct for still more without fear of falling short one day. In the Hebrew Bible, blessed wealth without painful toil is associated with not only a lack of greed, but also the Garden of Eden—hence prior to Adam’s original sin. It follows that blessed wealth without labor is more of a reward than is the variety of blessed wealth in which industriousness is required. 

The Hebrew Bible does not insist that industriousness itself is sinful. Proverb 10 states, “Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. He who gathers crops in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son. The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor.”[14] Therefore, working diligently does not necessarily mean that a person is greedy. “Those who work their land will have abundant food, but those who chase fantasies will have their fill of poverty.”[15] Ceaseless activity does not necessarily point to the presence of greed. Proverb 18 goes so far as to say, “One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.”[16] Industriousness does not suffer from the vice of such sloth.

Industriousness is not unconditionally good, however. The virtue must pertain to the person who works rightly as a steward in the vineyard in which God created the soil, the vine, the fruit, and even the laborer. Proverb 22 declares, “Rich and poor have this in common: The LORD is the Maker of them all.”[17] Although the vineyard differs from the Garden of Eden (or the poets’ Golden Age) in that painful toil is necessary, profit-taking from industrious labor is a blessing, or reward, that God bestows on the stewards who have been dutifully industrious in managing God’s property.  The blessed wealth and the industriousness being presumed greed-free are therefore conditioned on how a person responds to God.

With God as “Possessor of heaven and earth,” the world is the Creator’s property in Genesis.[18] It follows that human possessions are gifts from God. Rather than becoming the absolute owner of the gifted property, the Hebrew is meant to act as God’s steward.[19] That is, God retains the basic or foundational ownership right in His property. Moreover, the property relations embody a relation between Israel and God in which the Israelites owe obedience and service as stewards in exchange for a right to Jehovah’s blessings, which include riches.[20]  Put another way, because Jehovah is a partner in every Hebrew’s property, no Israelite was able “do as he liked with his own.”[21] Indeed, one’s own is precisely what is being qualified or restrained here. At most, a Hebrew’s property was his own and God’s, if not altogether God’s.[22] The partnership laid out in Scripture is one of rights and responsibilities rather than “anything goes,” as is the case with greed.

The theological value of maintaining the partnership through dutiful work and blessed wealth should not be overstated, however. Even though the bounty from God’s vineyard is free of greed, the riches cannot be expected to accomplish what righteousness can do. According to Proverb 22, “A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.”[23] Proverb 11 is more direct. “Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.”[24] Through Zephaniah, God says of the sinners, “Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the LORD’s wrath.”[25] Clearly, having wealth is not as valuable as being righteous.

If riches bestowed by God are worthless in making up for unrighteousness, it goes without saying that greed-laden wealth surely cannot accomplish what righteousness can. “Ill-gotten treasures have no lasting value, but righteousness delivers from death.”[26] When greed is added to the equation, industriousness and its wages become ruinous. Proverbs warns, “Better the poor whose walk is blameless than the rich whose ways are perverse.”[27] In other words, even though we are all subject to the temptation to subject our diligent labor to greed, the sour odor need not stain the fabric of one’s work clothes or the fruit of one’s labor. “The wages of the righteous is life, but the earnings of the wicked are sin and death.”[28] The greedy, having acquired their wealth unjustly, will lose it. The Book of Enoch, of the ancient Jewish apocalyptic movement, reads, “Woe to you who acquire silver and gold in unrighteousness and say: ‘We have become rich with riches and have possessions; (a)nd have acquired everything we have desired.’ . . . your riches shall not abide . . . For ye have acquired it all in unrighteousness, (a)nd ye shall be given over to a great curse.”[29] Both in respect to wealth falling far short of righteousness and the very conditionality of blessed wealth, the positive theological significance of wealth is lessened, or at least moderated. Neither the conditionality of the positive theological significance nor the tendency of people to succumb to greed is a trivial point in the Hebrew Bible.

For more on Judaism on profit-seeking and wealth, see Skip Worden, God’s Gold, ch. 2.

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[1]. Charles R. Smith, The Bible Doctrine of Wealth and Work (London: Epworth Press, 1924), 21.

[2]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 22, 33-34.

[3]. Deut. 15:4-5.

[4]. Deut. 15:11.

[5]. Ps. 52:6-7. All Biblical passages quoted in this chapter are according to the New International Version of the Bible, obtained from BibleGateway.com.

[6]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 111.

[7]. Jer. 8:10.

[8]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 128.

[9]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 97-99.

[10]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 21.

[11]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 24; Gen. 24:35.

[12]. Prov. 10:22.

[13]. See Skip Worden, God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth, ch. 1.

[14]. Prov. 10:4,5,15.

[15]. Prov. 28:19.

[16]. Prov. 18:9.

[17]. Prov. 22:2

[18]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 23; Genesis 14:19,22.

[19]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 25.

[20]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 26,55.

[21]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 54-55.

[22]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 55.

[23]. Prov. 22:1.

[24]. Prov. 11:4.

[25]. Zeph. 1:18.

[26]. Prov. 10:2

[27]. Prov. 28:6. According to Flusser, the Book of Enoch, of the ancient Jewish apocalyptic movement, contrasts woes against the wicked rich with word of hope and promise to the righteous poor. David Flusser, “Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit,” Israel Exploration Journal, 10 no. 1 (1960): 12.

[28]. Prov. 10:16.

[29]. Book of Enoch, bk 5, 97:8,10. Quote from Robert H. Charles, The Ethiopic Version of the Book of Enoch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.