Among the recent public letters was one from dozens of Orthodox rabbis demanding “moral clarity” to what they called a humanitarian crisis.
By Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer Aug. 26, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET
As Israel’s tactics in Gaza have increasingly provoked international condemnation, rabbis from across the world are taking the unusual step of speaking out against the Israeli government’s conduct in the war, on moral and religious grounds.
Over the past few weeks, as reports of starvation and mass killings in Gaza have spread, a significant number of clergy across the spectrum of Jewish observance and affiliation have signed a series of high-profile, carefully crafted public letters criticizing the Israeli government.
Since the first Trump presidency, I look on world news as a great satire. Everything is ridiculous and cartoonish. Evil people control the world to amass wealth and destroy everything. They have cults of hate with thugs who carry out blatantly immoral acts for no sensible reason. They are creating underground bunkers and digging underground highways with mole machines.
World-shattering events are a daily occurrence to the extent it feels like fiction. The fate of the world hangs in the balance, but no James Bond or Ethan Hunt are going to save the day — though frankly if they did, I think my only reaction would be that the plot went on a bit long for my taste.
And yet, for all that, my day to day is unchanged. I go to work, my kids go to school, I pay a mortgage and mow the lawn. My outrage is exhausted like I’ve been in a horror movie for ten years and I simply have no adrenaline left to react when my friend gets axe murdered. It’s surreal.
That’s exactly what authoritarian regimes like the USSR’s or Trump’s want to achieve by overwhelming everybody with outrageous shit all of the time: people get used to the dystopia and it becomes their new normal.