Among the many forms of violence and oppression that Israel has perpetrated against the population of Gaza over the last two years, one of the most devastating is the deliberately manufactured famine. It must be understood that starvation is not merely being deprived from food. It is also a gradual assault in which a person’s body turns against them, consuming its own reserves until muscle, tissue, and life are slowly depleted. Hunger gnaws away with relentless persistence, manifested first as physical weakness, then as disorientation, and finally as the extinguishing of life itself. Very few conditions encapsulate more starkly this transition from survival into suffering, where a human life slowly dwindles away, consuming itself, until it finally experiences death.

Since the onset of the genocide, hundreds of Palestinians have perished from starvation and the complications that are related to it. Yet, despite facing the combination of endless aerial bombardments and what many observers are describing as a deliberate state-engineered starvation campaign, the population of Gaza continues to demonstrate a great deal of resilience.

Even under such dire conditions, large segments of Palestinian society refuse to acquiesce to Israeli pressure or abandon their collective struggle.

Jews Eating Their Own Children?

But how have Jews themselves reacted to instances of famine in their own historical experience? While there are no recorded instances of Palestinians resorting to cannibalism (something that is absolutely haram/unlawful in Islam, even in the face of starvation), the Hebrew Bible contains stories in which famine had driven the ancient Israelites to such abhorrent extremes. These scriptural accounts, often framed as divine punishment or the collapse of social order under siege, suggest that the Jewish tradition retains its own memory of hunger that is so severe the most basic moral boundaries were disregarded and dissolved.

We thus read in Lamentations 4:9–10:

Those killed by the sword are better off
than those who die of famine;
racked with hunger, they waste away
for lack of food from the field.

 

With their own hands compassionate women
have cooked their own children,
who became their food
when my people were destroyed.

This reference falls squarely within the context of Jerusalem’s destruction and divine punishment. In later rabbinic interpretations, however, the motif of parents eating their own children takes an even more disturbing turn. In certain midrashic readings, this evil act is not merely viewed as a tragic consequence of siege; it is reframed as a mitzvah, i.e., a religious obligation, performed under extreme circumstances.

We read in Eikhah Rabbah 4:13:

“The hands of merciful women cooked their children.” Rabbi Huna said in the name of Rabbi Yosei: The Holy One blessed be He said: ‘They did not allow Me to extend My hand against My world.’ How so? If one of them had one loaf of bread that would have sufficed for her and her husband for one day, when her neighbor’s son died, she would take that loaf and comfort her with it. The verse ascribes to them as though they cooked their children as a mitzva. That is what is written: That is what is written: “The hands of merciful women cooked their children.” Why to that extent? It is because “they were food [levarot] for them.”

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Parallel readings occur in other midrashic traditions. Another striking biblical example is found in 2 Kings 6:24–29, within the context of the Aramean siege of Samaria, when two women are described as agreeing to eat their children.

Returning to the passage from Lamentations, Rabbi Moses Alshekh, a prominent 16th-century rabbi and biblical commentator under the Ottoman Empire, authored a commentary on Lamentations entitled Devarim Neḥumim (“Comforting Words”). In this work, he wrote:

And to explain the verse, ‘The hands of compassionate women…’: it would have been fitting that their eyes grow dim so as not to cook their own children; or, if another cooked them, their hearts should have been too faint to eat them. Yet it says, ‘they boiled their children,’ and afterward ‘they became food for them.’ And one should not say that this happened only once, in the extremity of famine, and that afterwards they buried the rest — but not so did they act. Rather, ‘they became food for them’ — meaning, they ate and even stored away for another time, to make many meals from them. And they did not have the strength of spirit to exchange with one another, saying: ‘You eat from mine, and I will eat from yours,’ out of sorrow and anguish. Instead, each one ate the flesh of her own child. This is what Scripture means by ‘for them’ — i.e., for themselves.

Rabbi Samuel ben Isaac de Uçeda, also from the 16th century, composed a commentary on Lamentations entitled Leḥem Dimʿah (“Bread of Tears”), in which he wrote:

It says specifically “they boiled their children” — it would have sufficed to say “they ate their children.” But perhaps the use of “boiled” conveys something greater, in line with what our sages told of the pious man and his wife who used to leave coins each night at their poor neighbor’s door. When the neighbor tried to discover who was giving them, the couple fled and hid inside a fiery furnace, where a miracle occurred: they were not burned. The pious man, however, had his shins singed, and was henceforth called “Ketina, whose shins were singed.” He wondered why his wife was spared entirely while he was harmed. She replied: “Because when you give charity, you give money — and the poor must still trouble themselves to buy food. But when I give, I provide cooked food, ready to eat without effort. Therefore my merit was greater, and the fire did not touch me.” From this we learn that the boiling of food is itself an act of mercy and lovingkindness. Thus, the verse emphasizes “they boiled their children” — for the very women who once boiled food to give to the poor were now reduced to boiling their own children.

 

Another explanation: Why boil? Why not eat raw flesh? For eating raw flesh is cruel, like stabbing live flesh. The verse tells us that they boiled them so that they would also have broth, and it would last longer, for many meals. Thus it says “they became food for them” in the plural, meaning multiple meals.

 

Another explanation: “They became food for them” — this refers to the custom of comforting mourners with food (havra’ah). These women, in their famine, boiled their children, and thus their children became the meal of consolation — the “havra’ah” — on account of the breaking of my people.

These rabbinic sources portray famine in such extreme terms that they speak casually of parents making “multiple meals” of their own children.

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If we turn from the religious to more secular historiography, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, arguably the most significant premodern chronicler of Jewish history, records the infamous episode of Mary of Bethezuba, who resorted to cannibalism during the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE (Jewish War 6:201):

There was a certain woman that dwelt beyond Jordan, her name was Mary […] it was now become impossible for her any way to find any more food, while the famine pierced through her very bowels and marrow, when also her passion was fired to a degree beyond the famine itself; nor did she consult with any thing but with her passion and the necessity she was in. She then attempted a most unnatural thing; and snatching up her son, who was a child sucking at her breast, she said, “O thou miserable infant! for whom shall I preserve thee in this war, this famine, and this sedition? As to the war with the Romans, if they preserve our lives, we must be slaves. This famine also will destroy us, even before that slavery comes upon us. Yet are these seditious rogues more terrible than both the other. Come on; be thou my food, and be thou a fury to these seditious varlets, and a by-word to the world, which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of us Jews.” As soon as she had said this, she slew her son, and then roasted him, and eat the one half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed. Upon this the seditious came in presently, and smelling the horrid scent of this food, they threatened her that they would cut her throat immediately if she did not show them what food she had gotten ready. She replied that she had saved a very fine portion of it for them, and withal uncovered what was left of her son. Hereupon they were seized with a horror and amazement of mind, and stood astonished at the sight, when she said to them, “This is mine own son, and what hath been done was mine own doing! Come, eat of this food; for I have eaten of it myself! Do not you pretend to be either more tender than a woman, or more compassionate than a mother; but if you be so scrupulous, and do abominate this my sacrifice, as I have eaten the one half, let the rest be reserved for me also.” After which those men went out trembling, being never so much aftrighted at any thing as they were at this, and with some difficulty they left the rest of that meat to the mother.

It is difficult to fathom how this Jewish woman, who, driven by starvation, could have resorted to consuming her own child. Some scholars have even drawn a provocative parallel between this episode and the Christian Eucharist, both due to the symbolic resonance of the act itself and, in part, the association suggested by her name. In a 2023 article for the journal Religion Compass, entitled “Cannibal Maria in the Siege of Jerusalem: New Approaches,” Mo Pareles writes:

Maria’s cannibalism is of great theological interest to Christian readers, since it can be interpreted as what Suzanne Conklin Akbari calls a “grotesque parody” of St. Mary’s role at the Incarnation, Christ’s birth, and the Crucifixion, his death. The parallels are indisputable, although it is unlikely that Josephus intended them. According to the New Testament, the Virgin Mary gave birth to Christ in Bethlehem, near Jerusalem. Mary, who witnessed her adult son’s death and held his body, mourning him, is considered a participant in his sacrifice. Moreover, Christ offered his body and blood to his followers at the Last Supper (also in Jerusalem) before being crucified and resurrected. Medieval Christians partook at least annually in the sacrament of the Eucharist, the consumption of Christ’s body and blood in the form of bread and wine. More frequently, they saw priests partake and instruct them that Christ’s sacrifice was performed in their name and that all members of the Church were also members of his body.

 

One could certainly take the Cannibal Mary episode, in which another Jewish Mary living in Jerusalem sacrifices her child, as a sort of mockery of the Virgin Mary’s and Christ’s sacrifices. However, to a supersessionist Christian reader, the joke is on the besieged Jews. This sacrifice is unsanctified either by God’s imprimatur or by the blessing of resurrection. The idea of a fruitless and horrific imitation of the Virgin Mary’s sacrifice at the fall of Jerusalem would underline the idea that Jews are being rightly punished for participating in Christ’s persecution and for failing to understand its meaning.

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As far as I am aware, there are no comparable accounts among Palestinians resorting to such drastic and inhumane measures despite currently facing an extreme manufactured famine, with countless people dying on a daily basis. This would suggest that, in this specific context, they have demonstrated a significantly greater moral resilience than these particular historical Jews. (Not all Jews, obviously! That would be antisemitic. It would also be mathematically impossible, given that a large segment of Jews are actually vegetarians…)

It is important to note that the discussion at hand concerns internal Jewish scriptural and exegetical traditions. It should not be confused with the long history of antisemitic accusations, ranging from Greco-Roman polemics to the medieval and modern blood libel, alleging Jewish cannibalism or ritual use of non-Jewish children, which are, of course, unfounded fabrications which we may try and analyze in more detail in the future, in sha’ Allah!

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