Born in the Spanish city of Gerona, Moses Naḥmanides (1194-1270), was an outstanding talmudist, kabbalist, exegete, physician, and community leader, whose work left an enduring mark on Jewish thought and practice. The scholar Idan Perez, in his research into the liturgy of the Jews of Catalonia—which was distinctive from that of other Spanish Jews, and has not been used for centuries—discovered what appears to be a liturgical poem composed by Naḥmanides himself. Zack Rothbart writes:

Perez’s work presents the first ever printed prayer book of the Catalonian liturgy and ritual used by Naḥmanides and the once thriving Jewish communities of Catalonia, Valencia, and Majorca, which were ultimately extinguished by the expulsion of the Jews from Spain over 500 years ago. The monumental project was completed by piecing together manuscripts and other source materials from institutions across the globe.

The prayer attributed Naḥmanides was found in a manuscript written just after the expulsion, which was likely used by Catalonian exiles living in Provence. . . . “The text’s content and style, along with the fact that the manuscript’s author prefaced it with the words ‘A bakashah [supplication] of Rabbi Moses ben Naḥman,’ all seem to indicate that this bakashah was, in fact, written by the Naḥmanides himself,” says Perez.

The first complete English translation of the prayer can be found at the link below.

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.