In Rising Moon, Moshe Miller explores the biblical book of Ruth, traditionally read on the upcoming holiday of Shavuot. Ruth begins with the words “It was when the judges judged,” and ends with the title character giving birth to a son who will be the grandfather of David. As Sarah Rindner writes in her review, Miller thus situates Ruth as the bridge between two biblical books: Judges and Samuel.

For Miller, the difference between the period of the Judges, and even the first biblical king, Saul, and his successor David, comes down to something like grace. True kingship, or malkhut, cannot be imposed on a nation—it cannot even be requested by that nation. In Hebrew, the name Saul . . . literally means “asked for,” and Saul’s coronation is rooted in the people “asking” for a king. Kingship, on the other hand, must emerge organically as a kind of “center around which the nation could coalesce”—as exemplified by the more enduring kingship of David and his progeny.

Malkhut [therefore] is a natural outgrowth of a development that has reached a stage demanding integration. It must grow out of a vast complex of interrelationships that insists upon it. Asking for kingship guarantees its failure. . . .

According to Miller, kingship emerges from a web of personal relationships among members of the nation. It is therefore fitting that some of the greatest love stories of the Bible all emerge alongside the first major instantiation of malkhut: the stories of Ruth and [her mother-in-law] Naomi, Ruth and [her eventual husband] Boaz, Saul and [his protégé] David, Jonathan and [his best friend] David, and David and [his lover-turned-wife] Bathsheba. Even the name David derives from the Hebrew word dod, meaning beloved. Love, of course, cannot be forced, but emerges naturally and organically to ultimately produce a union that is greater than the sum of its parts.

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.