On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther is said to have nailed his 95 theses to a church door, thus setting off the Protestant Reformation. While Luther’s anti-Semitism is well known—he urged his followers “to set fire to their synagogues or schools,” urged “that their houses also be razed and destroyed,” and called the synagogue “a defiled bride, . . . an incorrigible whore, and an evil slut”—less well known is his debt to Christian Hebraism. Harry Freedman traces this connection to the Italian Renaissance philosopher Pico della Mirandola, who had made a thorough study of Judaism and especially Kabbalah:

Hebrew was to play a central role in [Luther’s] Reformation, largely due to the work of Johannes Reuchlin, a German lawyer. Reuchlin had met Pico della Mirandola in 1490 and come away inspired by his infectious enthusiasm for Kabbalah. Reuchlin began to study Hebrew, to better his understanding of Kabbalah. He engaged Jewish teachers, including the great Bible commentator Obadiah Sforno, to help him.

In 1506 Reuchlin published his Rudiments of Hebrew, the first Hebrew grammar and dictionary written for Christians. He then wrote two books on Kabbalah. The study of Hebrew became so fashionable in German humanist circles that Reuchlin proposed that every German university engage two professors dedicated to the language. This sudden turn to Hebrew opened up new ways of thinking for the emerging Protestant Reformers.

One of Luther’s main complaints was that the Roman church had misrepresented the Bible, . . . which it claimed could be understood only through [ecclesiastical] interpretation. . . . Luther disagreed. He argued that even popes could make mistakes, but the only authority that could be relied upon was the unmediated word of the Bible. . . .

Understanding the Bible in accordance with its plain Hebrew meaning became a defining principle of the Reformation. Rather than being told what the Bible said, people were encouraged to study it themselves, from a translation faithful to the original Hebrew text. In 1532, Luther published his German translation of the Tanakh directly from Hebrew.

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.