On Israel’s independence day in 1956, as Egypt seemed increasingly likely to attack the fledgling Jewish state, the great 20th-century sage Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik gave a lengthy lecture on Jews’ obligation to support Israel. The lecture, later published in English as “Fate and Destiny,” appeared first in Hebrew as Kol dodi dofek—“the voice of my beloved knocks”—a verse from the Song of Songs. Soloveitchik’s exegesis of this verse forms the basis of his argument that Jews are obligated to respond to the divine “knocks” manifested in recent history. In conversation with Jonathan Silver, Soloveitchik’s student Jacob J. Schacter explains the historical and theological context behind this argument. (Audio, 29 minutes. Options for download and streaming are available at the link below.)

Schacter’s entire online course on Soloveitchik’s thought can be found here.

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.