In 1993, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which provides a general exemption from laws that place an unnecessary burden on the free exercise of religion. Since the RFRA only applies to federal laws, many states have passed their own version of it, but several states with large Jewish populations have not. In New York, many Orthodox Jewish schools are currently protesting new regulations on private education that, they argue, threaten their freedom to structure religious education as they see fit. A state RFRA could have prevented the resulting conflict, note Mitchell Rocklin and Howard Slugh, and would benefit religious Jews in other ways as well:

[In many instances], Jews have used the [federal RFRA and its state equivalents] to protect their religious freedom. For instance, Jewish military personnel often rely on it to obtain kosher meals and Shabbat accommodations. RFRA is taught in military chaplaincy curricula and is a basis upon which chaplains and commanders accommodate service members of all faiths.

RFRA has a sister statute: the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). That statute functions in effectively the same manner, but in limited circumstances it also applies to states. Jews have used RLUIPA to defend their rights to build synagogues and religious schools in the face of restrictive zoning laws. Jewish prisoners have used RLUIPA to obtain kosher food, sacramental wine, and other necessary religious goods. One way to highlight the importance of RFRA is to explore how vulnerable Jews are in instances where it does not apply.

In 2016, in California, an animal-rights group sued to prevent a rabbi from performing the kapparot ritual before Yom Kippur, a practice in which some Jews slaughter chickens and then use the meat to feed poor families. In this case, the plaintiffs sued under a generally applicable unfair-competition law to prevent the rabbi from killing chickens. In its legal briefs, an animal-rights group acknowledged that if California had an RFRA law, the rabbi might have a defense. But because California has no such protection, the group claimed that the California need not accommodate religious observances. The group succeeded in dragging out the litigation long enough to prevent the rabbi from performing the ritual that year.

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.