End of Days Ethics, Tradition, and Power in Israel

“Drawing on an impressive range of sources—the Talmud, the writings of Ashkenazi and Sephardic medieval Jewish pietists, the Chofetz Chaim’s forgotten guide for Jewish soldiers, the Yiddish poetry of Jacob Glatstein—Manekin traces in compelling detail the traditional Jewish ethical disposition that recoils from pride, abhors violence, and views power with suspicion. He argues that this traditional Jewish ethics requires a radically different approach to the reality of Jewish political power instantiated by the Israeli state than the dominant view in Israel allows. By the book’s end, he leaves the reader with little doubt that not only is there no need to compromise one’s commitment to Jewish tradition in order to oppose Israel’s occupation, but that a commitment to traditional Jewish ethics requires active opposition to the occupation. Powerful yet unconventional, [this book] is a hybrid of memoir, mussar [morality], family history, halakhic argumentation, and social criticism. It is a manifesto for a new religiously committed Jewish left that is taking shape.”

— Joshua Leifer, Tel Aviv Review of Books (on the Hebrew edition)