Avraham Yurovitch, who died in 2002, was a rabbi of some prominence in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox community. He was also a mystic who taught meditative techniques to his followers. His son recently published a book based on his ideas, which draw heavily on the works of the 13th-century Spanish kabbalist Abraham Abulafia, recent academic findings about the history of kabbalah, and Buddhist techniques for meditative breathing. Alan Brill dissents:

Almost any contemporary natural-health book in the last decades has [instructions on] basic meditation for health. Yurovitch probably obtained his knowledge from those works. . . .

[First, Yurovitch’s] directions of how to sit [while meditating] are nowhere to be found in Jewish literature. Second, in no place in Jewish literature do we find directions on how to breathe, [such as] “empty your lungs,” lesson number one in any yoga or [Buddhist] teaching on breathing. Third, [Yurovitch elevates] breathing as an end itself, its own form of meditation. . . .

In 50 years, Yurovitch’s instructions will be seen as the true Jewish tradition of breathing and meditating. A new ancient tradition . . . is being constructed. In the meantime, a younger generation is being raised on these practices.

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.