Drawing on kabbalah, feminist theory, and a wide variety of other sources, Miriam Kosman’s recent book, Circle, Arrow, Spiral, explores the idea that masculine and feminine symbolism in traditional Jewish texts can be applied to the actual relationship between the sexes. (Interview by Alan Brill)

[In the book’s title], the arrow represents a male energy and force. It connotes progress, action, force, productivity, [and a] constant striving to have more and get more. The circle represents the female force which symbolizes the idea of wholeness, harmony, and relationship. The arrow is doing; the circle is being.

The ideal in Judaism is the spiral, which is a synthesis of these two forces.

There are many examples of this spiral in the whole structure of Judaism. One classic one is the dynamic between Shabbat and the days of the week. The days of the week would be a male . . . ; Shabbat would be a circle, or female. The spiral would be the synthesis [in which] the building and accomplishing we do during the days of the week create the person we bring to the relationship of “being” on Shabbat, and the experience of Shabbat sends us out to our work week from a higher place. . . .

[Applying these concepts, I differ from Jewish feminists in] many ways. Firstly, I do not see Jewish gender conceptions as problems that need correction. On the contrary, understanding the value of the dance between these two primal forces upends the idea that gender difference represents a flawed, chauvinistic approach that needs to be updated. To me, adopting [an absolute] egalitarianism robs us all of the richness, depth, and insight that gender difference can yield. [However], I do see women’s growing prominence [in public life] as a positive thing, and I want that to continue.

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.