Reading Tragedy in Gittin and Gaza

David Polsky

Shortly after the October 7 terror attacks, Israeli President Isaac Herzog placed the onus of responsibility not only on the members of Hamas but on all Palestinians in Gaza because “they could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.” In many synagogues (including one that I attend as a congregant), rabbis echoed this view, stating that Gazans who disagreed with the terror attacks should have protested; that they did not protest (at least not publicized to the rest of the world) demonstrates their support for such heinous actions.

Considering Hamas’s torture and killing of dissidents and those they suspect of being “collaborators,” Jews making such statements were essentially asking over a million Gazans to, essentially, invite death upon themselves in order to express their abhorrance. Expecting suicide (in a way that would not even save any Israeli lives) from Gazans was/is completely unrealistic and callous toward the lives of non-combatant Palestinians in Gaza.

Aside from the (im)moral logic of such attitudes toward innocent Gazans, it forgets that, almost 2,000 years ago, Jews in Jerusalem also faced the predicament of a siege with mass starvation due to the violent extremists in their midst. This narrative is recorded by the Talmudic sages in Gittin 55b-58a. These pages, which focus on the destruction of the Second Temple and its aftermath, are commonly studied on Tishah B’Av, the saddest day in the Jewish calendar (because it is among the few passages considered sad enough to study on such a morose day).

Before going further, I should clarify that I am not suggesting an exact correspondence between the war with Gaza and the Talmudic narrative in Gittin. However, I believe the parallels are strong enough that the Talmudic passage might provoke new thinking about both the text and the war itself.

According to the Talmudic narrative, three wealthy Jerusalemites donate enough supplies to the people of Jerusalem to survive Vespasian’s siege for 21 years. However, such contingencies are ruined by the Anti-Roman extremists, the Sicarii (biryonei in the Talmud’s language―sometimes translated as zealots). In contrast to the sages, who want to make peace with the Romans, the Sicarii want to wage war (which the rabbis believe would be pointless and only lead to more death) at all costs. To encourage the people of Jerusalem to fight the Romans, rather than making peace, the Sicarii burn down all of the reserved supplies, which leads to a devastating famine. One can certainly point to differences between the Sicarii and Hamas; but Hamas, like the Sicarii, appear to many of their own brethren to prioritize fighting against a detested military power over the lives of their own people.

The Talmud poignantly tells the story of the wealthy Jerusalemite matron Marta Bat Baitos, who dies from disgust amidst her starvation―either stepping on dung while leaving her home to search for food or from eating a fig whose juices had already been sucked out by Rabbi Tzadok. Similarly, even those who believe that Hamas is entirely at fault should be able to empathize with children dying from malnutrition in Gaza.

In order to save the people of Jerusalem from certain death from starvation and the sword, the sage Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai schemes to escape Jerusalem and beg the Romans for peace. He reaches out to and secretly meets with his nephew, Abba Sikkara, who is the leader of the Zealots. Although Abba Sikkara agrees with R. Yohanan b. Zakkai that the Sicarii are needlessly causing the Jews in Jerusalem to starve to death, Abba Sikkara himself (!) is afraid of making this case to the other Sicarii out of fear that they will kill him (!).

No one studying the passage would expect R. Yohanan b. Zakkai or Abba Sikkara to pointlessly sacrifice their lives to argue with the Sicarii over their extremist tactics. Similarly, considering Hamas’s treatment of those suspected of collaborating with Israel or dissenting, and even communicating with Israeli citizens, one should be able to understand why Gazans should not be expected to demonstrate en masse against Hamas.

R. Yohanan b. Zakkai (with Abba Sikkara’s help) escapes by faking his own death so that his students can smuggle him past the Sicarii outside Jerusalem to Vespasian, who, at this point, is overseeing the Roman effort against the Jewish revolt. In response to R. Yohanan b. Zakkai’s approach, Vespasian asks him why he had not come beforehand, to which R. Yohanan b. Zakkai answers that the Sicarii would not let him.

This answer is not good enough for Vespasian, who replies with a parable: “If a snake wraps itself around a barrel of honey, do we not break the barrel to remove it?” The meaning of this parable is not completely clear. Rashi argues that, according to Vespasian, the people of Jerusalem should be destroying the walls of the city (the pot of honey) in order to chase away the snake (the Zealots). According to the modern commentator Rabbi Zev Wolf Rabinowitz and others (like Rabbi Steinsaltz), Vespasian is stating that he is trying to remove the Zealots himself, even if it means destroying the city of Jerusalem. The early modern commentator Rabbi Shmuel Eidels (Maharsha) has Vespasian state that the Jews should be willing to defeat the Zealots even if it means destroying the walls of Jerusalem, since destroying the Zealots is beneficial to the Jewish people.

Rashi’s and Maharsha’s explanations are reminiscent of the aforementioned statement by President Herzog. Rashi seems to have Vespasian argue that, if the other Jews are as opposed to the Zealots as Rabbi Yohanan claims, the Jews should have been willing to destroy Jerusalem in order to remove them from the midst of the Jewish people. For Maharsha, even if the Jews aren’t expected to directly destroy Jerusalem as in Rashi’s explanation, they are still expected to fight against the Zealots themselves. Just as Vespasian in these readings puts the burden of eliminating the Zealots on the Jews of Jerusalem, Herzog states that Palestinians themselves are expected to fight against Hamas and that their inability to do so makes them complicit and subject to collective punishment.

The explanations of Rabbis Rabinowitz and Steinsaltz do not have Vespasian expect the Jews to fight the Zealots themselves. Instead, in their understandings, Vespasian is justifying collateral damage to Jerusalem and its inhabitants. Given the importance of defeating the Zealots and the impossibility of defeating them without collateral damage, such deaths and destruction are morally justified. This explanation is thus reminiscent of those who justify the deaths of Palestinian non-combatants with the claim that they were unavoidable, or that the war is ultimately beneficial to Gazans to “Free Gaza from Hamas.”

R. Yohanan b. Zakkai lacks the presence of mind to reply to Vespasian; but, according to Rabbi Akiva, in retrospect R. Yohanan b. Zakkai should have responded that―within the parable of the snake―“we take tongs to remove the snake and kill it, but spare the barrel.” According to Rashi, the argument would be that the Jews were waiting for the opportunity to defeat the Zealots themselves but were never given the chance. According to others, Vespasian should have tried to only kill the Zealots and spare Jerusalem, rather than destroying it and all of its inhabitants. Similarly, one might argue that it should be possible to empathize with Gazans who are losing their homes and cultural treasures. Even if one is confident that the Israeli army is being as careful as possible to avoid unnecessary destruction (about which I am personally skeptical), one can understand why Gazans may wonder to what degree tongs are being used to kill the snake of Hamas rather than the breaking of the entire barrel of Gaza.

Vespasian is then informed that―as R. Yohanan b. Zakkai had predicted―he has been chosen to become the next emperor and must soon leave for Rome to ascend the throne. Before Vespasian leaves, he offers to grant R. Yohanan b. Zakkai whatever he requests. R. Yohanan b. Zakkai makes minor requests―sparing the city of Yavneh and its sages, the family of Rabban Gamliel, and a medical assistant for the dangerously ill Rabbi Tzadok―but he is too fearful of complete rejection to ask Vespasian to “leave us alone this time.” The people of Gaza, who are unable to access sufficient medical access from the outside world, pray to be “left alone” before the barrel completely breaks.

This is not to suggest an exact correspondence between the siege of Jerusalem and that of Gaza. In the Roman siege of Jerusalem, there were no hostages taken by the Zealots. Additionally, the Zealots, who care more about national victory than religion and the lives and safety of their own people (let alone non-Jews), could also be compared to members of the Israeli Right, who identify with the Zealots and consider R. Yohanan b. Zakkai to be a traitor. Even some religious right-wing Zionists who follow Halakhah openly identify more with the Sicarii than with the rabbis.

Personally, I do not believe that the war at present―even if violence toward non-combatant Palestinians was really being kept to a minimum―would be worth all of the death and devastation it is bringing to Palestinians. I also doubt that it is making Jews living in the state of Israel (let alone the diaspora) any safer in the long term, let alone in the short term. But even those who are confident in the war effort’s necessity and morality can and should open their hearts when studying these rabbinic narratives of destruction this Tishah B’Av. Doing so prompts us to consider the ways in which Palestinian non-combatants in Gaza are also trapped in a similar predicament to that of the Jews of Jerusalem almost 2,000 years ago.

The parallels between the Talmudic narratives and the current war with Gaza can better help us appreciate the tragic elements of each, as both are caught in impossible situations between two forces. The Jews of Jerusalem may disdain the Romans and resent their rule, but the Jewish Zealots’ hatred of Roman subjugation leads to the exacerbation of their suffering from the same Romans. Trying to distinguish themselves from the Zealots would only lead to death from their own people. This leads them to suffer famine and death by a Roman enemy that self-servingly excuses its failure to distinguish between them. Reading tragedy into these narratives lends them greater psychological depth.

Appreciating the similar tragic predicament of the people of Gaza enables Jews to better humanize the perspectives and suffering of Palestinian people, who are sometimes rendered two-dimensional. Some who instinctively accept the “pro-Israel” side can so internalize it that they cannot understand how Palestinians could resent Israel’s treatment of them without being “terrorist sympathizers,” antisemites, or worse―Amalek. Self-proclaimed “anti-Zionists” lionizing Hamas also render Palestinians perfect victims rather than as human. Appreciating the analogies between Palestinians and the Jews of Jerusalem can help Jewish-text readers to appreciate how Palestinians in Gaza could resent Israel without deserving death because of the actions of Hamas.

Appreciating these analogies might also prompt us to ask ourselves whether it is possible for Vespasian to be correct, in a sense. According to Rabbi Zev Wolf Rabinowitz’s and R. Steinsaltz’s understandings of the passage, Vespasian is insisting that it is absolutely necessary for him to destroy Jerusalem and bring death to many of its inhabitants in order to defeat the Zealots. R. Yohanan b. Zakkai should have retorted to Vespasian that the latter should instead be trying to defeat the Zealots while still sparing Jerusalem and its inhabitants.

But we might wonder to what degree Vespasian’s argument bears merit. What if it were indeed the case that tongs would not have been sufficient to pick the snake off of the barrel? If the snake could only really be removed by breaking the barrel, to what degree should that serve to justify the Roman war against Jerusalem? Would we be willing to say that the emperor we view as an enemy may have had a point? Or would we say that Vespasian is nonetheless engaging in an immoral war because the strategic value of defeating the Zealots did not justify the deaths to the other Jews in Jerusalem?

Obviously, it is possible to point to particular differences between Gaza and Gittin. However, the analogies are parallel enough that thinking through the similarities (and differences) between the two offers an important thought experiment that offers us a greater understanding of both.