An online exhibit created by the University of Pennsylvania’s Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies presents the evolution of the academic field of Jewish studies from 1818 to the 21st century, with documents and information about such compelling figures as Elia Benamozegh, author and prodigious publisher of Sephardi and Mizrahi liturgical works:

An Italian rabbi, kabbalist, and thinker of Moroccan descent who lived in the Tuscan port city of Livorno, Elia Benamozegh (1823-1900) authored an abundance of works encompassing exegesis, historical studies, and various newspaper contributions, written in Hebrew, Italian, and French. Through his posthumous masterwork, Israel and Humanity (1914), he significantly influenced the Christian-Jewish dialogue in Europe. . . . In his books penned in French or Italian, brimming with references to Western philosophy and literature, he never made mention of his oriental roots and rarely cited contemporary Sephardi authors. . . .

[However], Benamozegh seems to have used his press as a way to publish his likeminded contemporaries, thus mapping out a landscape of modern Sephardi and Mizrahi thought. This is certainly the case for the haggadah revised by Shelomoh Bekhor Hutsin (1843-1892) which Benamozegh published in 1887. This book, printed in Judeo-Arabic, Arabic, and Hebrew, according to the Baghdadi minhag (liturgical custom), lies at the juncture of tradition and modernity. . . . Hutsin . . . was an advocate of a version of Jewish enlightenment that was respectful of Jewish values and modern culture.

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.