While the Orthodox Union has officially announced its opposition to the nuclear agreement, the Union of Reform Judaism has declared its intent to remain neutral; meanwhile, letters have circulated, signed by large numbers of rabbis, both opposing and supporting the deal. Efrem Goldberg explains why he decided to publicize his opposition:

In my career in the rabbinate, I have never used the pulpit to endorse a candidate or promote a particular political position. And yet I do not hesitate in these critical days to use every opportunity to encourage our community to lobby our elected officials to vote against the Iran deal because to me, this issue is not one of politics, but potentially one of life and death, saving the Jewish people, and the preservation of the Jewish state. . . . [T]he stakes include weapons capable of effecting genocide against our people and the possibility of billions of dollars flowing to sworn enemies that surround Israel. These threats transcend politics and demand leadership from the pulpit even if those in the pews have diverse positions. . . .

[R]abbis are not categorically smarter, necessarily more qualified, or more insightful [than those in other professions]. However, I believe that rabbis, unlike, [for instance], plumbers, bear an awesome responsibility to be outspoken leaders on issues of historic significance to Israel’s security as well as to the well-being of the free world. Rabbis have been charged with being both students of Torah and of history and applying both our analytical skills and knowledge to try to guide our constituencies in an informed, educated manner.

While the Holocaust raged and millions of Jews were being slaughtered, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the American Jewish Congress rigorously debated the best course of action on behalf of the Jewish people. The former feared instigating anti-Semitism and therefore advocated for quiet, behind-the-scenes efforts, while the latter called for protests, rallies, and demonstrations. . . .

Nobody would look back and dismiss the debate between [the two organizations] as politics. Nobody would read a sermon of a rabbi from 1943, calling on his members to lobby their elected officials to intervene, and say it had no place in the synagogue.

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.