I am not a politician and I have no wish to become one. I am a rabbi, and the role of a rabbi is not to be a military tactician or a political pundit, but to learn, share and teach halacha, or Jewish law. I am a trader in traditions, and occasionally, on a good day, in wisdom.

The last two years have tested my resolve, as it has for many of my colleagues, to stay within the “arba amot of halacha” — the imaginary one-square-meter space that describes each individual’s realm of agency and action. I have been cajoled and challenged to speak of politics and policies rather than Torah. Mostly I have resisted.

In keeping with that spirit, I have tried to respond to the challenge posed by the growing dissatisfaction inside and outside of Israel — including in England, where I live — with the war and its tactics by educating myself further, studying Israeli history and, critically, reconnecting with the sources that structure our Jewish approach to pretty much every problem. One of those problems is the question which has echoed across all Jewish communities since the Gaza war began: How can we observe and protect Jewish law and........

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