This week’s Torah reading contains one of the most famous and most misunderstood lines in all of Scripture:
“Not by bread alone does man live, but by the word that emanates from the mouth of God does man live.” (Deuteronomy 8:3)
It’s a deceptively simple sentence. On the surface, it says that human beings need more than food to survive. But the Torah’s point is far deeper: without something transcendent, without a sense of morality, of accountability to something higher than ourselves, physical existence becomes a hollow shell. Without that spark of godliness, we stop truly living and merely exist.
It’s a lesson that could not be more relevant today.
For months, the headlines have been full of accusations that Israel is “starving” the people of Gaza. The United Nations issues dramatic warnings, NGOs hold urgent press conferences, and Western politicians compete to sound the most indignant. And yes, there is a starvation crisis in Gaza, but it is not the one the world thinks it is.
There is also, tragically, the starvation of our hostages. For 22 months, innocent people, who were just going about their daily business festival fun, have been held in Hamas’s underground tunnels, in darkness, in fear, with little or no food or medicine. The world, which claims to be so concerned about human suffering, rarely spares them a mention. Their suffering is not just physical. It is the soul-crushing deprivation of freedom, dignity, and contact with the outside world. It is the starvation of human connection and human hope.
However, the starvation I want to talk about goes even deeper than that.
Gaza’s true famine
The real famine in Gaza is not a shortage of bread. It is a famine of godliness. And that famine is entirely the work of Hamas.
On October 7, Hamas showed the world what happens when all traces of godliness are removed from a society. Their actions, the slaughter of families, the rape of women, the burning of homes, the gleeful abduction of children and the elderly, were not just war crimes. They were a repudiation of everything that makes us human. They were the purest expression of barbarism: hatred for its own sake, cruelty as a political and spiritual principle.
It is worth remembering that the verse in our Torah portion does not say “Not by bread alone does man survive” – it says, “does man live.” The Torah distinguishes between existing and living. Bread, food, shelter, and health are essential for existence. Yet life is something more. Life requires meaning, purpose, and a connection to morality and justice.
That is precisely what Hamas has destroyed in Gaza. By making violent hatred the organizing principle of their society, by teaching children that killing Jews is the highest aspiration, by elevating death over life, they have deprived their own people of the possibility of living as the Torah understands it.
The world’s selective compassion
It is a bitter irony that the same Western governments now rushing to recognize a “State of Palestine” are willfully blind to this spiritual starvation. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has joined his counterparts in the UK, France, and Canada in extending symbolic recognition to a “state” that exists only as a political fiction.
It is as though the West believes that statehood is a magic wand that can transform a terrorist-run enclave into a peace-loving democracy. That if you simply pronounce the words “two-state solution” often enough, the underlying reality will obediently rearrange itself.
But the Torah and history teach otherwise. Statehood without godliness, without moral accountability, is just another vehicle for oppression. Recognizing a Palestinian state will not feed a single hungry child in Gaza. It will not free a single hostage. It will not bring an ounce of peace. All it will do is reward and entrench the very forces that have caused the suffering in the first place.
Playing by different rules
Part of the West’s blindness comes from a persistent and dangerous naivety: the belief that everyone plays by the same rules. In liberal democracies, we are used to political opponents who disagree passionately but operate within shared moral boundaries. We assume that our enemies value life, want the best for their children, and would prefer peace if only it were possible.
But groups like Hamas do not share those assumptions. Their rulebook is different. They believe that the more their people suffer, the more leverage they gain. They have turned civilian suffering into a strategic weapon, and they are entirely willing to sacrifice their own citizens to advance their goals.
In such a worldview, food aid is not a means to end hunger. It is a bargaining chip, a political prop, and sometimes even a shield for smuggling weapons. International sympathy is not a path to reconciliation: It is a tool for delegitimizing Israel.
Bread and the word of God
The Torah’s insight is as piercing today as it was over three thousand years ago: bread sustains the body, but only godliness sustains life. This is not a pious abstraction – it is a political reality.
A society that feeds its children but teaches them to kill will not be a healthy society. A movement that demands bread for its people while plotting massacres for its neighbors is not a liberation movement. A government that rejects all moral restraint is not a partner for peace.
Hamas’s rejection of godliness is not a matter of theological disagreement. It is a rejection of the very idea that there is a higher standard of right and wrong, one that binds rulers as well as the ruled. And without that, no amount of bread will bring life to Gaza.
Israel understands this. Our struggle is not only to protect our borders and rescue our hostages. It is to insist to ourselves and to the world that real peace, real life, requires more than full stomachs. It requires moral transformation.
A call to the West
If the West truly wants to help the people of Gaza, it must stop confusing bread with life. Humanitarian aid is essential, but it will achieve nothing lasting until Hamas’s ideology is defeated. This is not a call for endless war. It is a call for moral clarity: to recognize that as long as Hamas rules Gaza, the famine of godliness will continue – and so will the physical hunger.
Recognizing a mythical Palestinian state under current conditions is not an act of compassion – it is an abdication of responsibility. It tells the people of Gaza that they need not change, that they can have the rewards of statehood without the responsibilities of moral governance.
The Torah’s wisdom cuts through such illusions. Bread is not enough. To live, a society must accept that it is answerable to something greater than itself: to God, to justice, to the sanctity of human life. Until Gaza embraces that truth, no amount of bread will be enough.
The writer is a rabbi and physician, and lives in Ramat Poleg, Netanya. He is a co-founder of Techelet – Inspiring Judaism.