The Leningrad Codex is the oldest complete extant manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, produced in 1008 or 1009 CE by professional scribes in Cairo; in the 19th-century, it made its way to Russia’s then-capital. Based on letters found in the Cairo Genizah from Mevorakh ben Joseph ibn Yazdad—the Egyptian Jew who commissioned the manuscript—Ben Outhwaite finds some hints about its origins. In particular, the evidence suggests that Mevorakh was a member of the Karaite sect, who dismissed talmudic (or “Rabbanite”) interpretations of the Torah in favor of their own, more literalist, interpretive standards:

Mevorakh’s family name is of Persian origin—Yazdad means “God has given” [in Persian]—and an Ibn Yazdad, probably Mevorakh’s father, appears in commercial correspondence from the Genizah early in the 11th century, whence it seems he is based in Egypt and plays a role in Mediterranean trade. Mevorakh himself clearly possessed significant social status, and probably also personal wealth, as we find that he was appointed around 1019 CE to oversee the two supervisors of an inheritance. . . .

[There is] strong circumstantial evidence that the Ibn Yazdad family were themselves Persian Karaites, [evidence supported by the codex’s primary scribe] Samuel ben Jacob’s use of a distinctively Karaite system of dating, alongside all the others, in the main colophon.

Mevorakh was not the only Karaite to own the codex. The last few lines of [its] colophon were added over a hundred years after its manufacture and reveal that in 1135 CE the book was sold to the leading Rabbanite Matsliaḥ ha-Kohen, [head] of the Palestinian yeshiva, an ownership fact asserted in attractive medieval Hebrew legalese and witnessed by Ḥalfon ha-Levi ben Manasseh, one of the most prolific court scribes of the Genizah, [who is] widely attested in 12th-century documents. . . .

So, the Leningrad Codex was produced for, most likely, a Persian Karaite, and was subsequently acquired by a Persian Karaite, who sold it to Matsliaḥ ha-Kohen ben Solomon, the head of the Jerusalem yeshiva. Matsliaḥ was the highest intellectual authority [not just in the land of Israel, but for Jews throughout Africa and Europe who followed “Palestinian” rather Babylonian halakhah and customs] and “head of the Jews” (raʾīs al-Yahūd) in the Fatimid empire. That such a powerful and senior figure should acquire the Bible attests strongly to the value ascribed to it in its day. In addition, evidently its Karaite provenance did not devalue it in Matsliaḥ’s eyes and deter him from purchasing it. . . .

[W]as Samuel ben Jacob a Karaite too, given that Karaism is so intimately connected with the creation of the manuscript? I don’t think so. From other findings in the documentary record, I believe he was a Maghrebi from a Rabbanite family of some status, though he had fallen on hard times.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.