The Torah repeatedly mandates care for orphans (along with widows and the poor), most notably by creating a special tithe to be given them and by commanding “You shall not afflict any widow or orphan” (Exodus 22:22). The Talmud understands the latter injunction as endowing orphans with special legal privileges. But do these apply to anyone whose parents have died, or only to children? What about orphaned children with inherited wealth, or indigent adult orphans? Searching rabbinic literature, Gil Student concludes that only those under the age of twenty, who are not yet able to fend for themselves, qualify—and there are, he writes, important lessons here:

Life is full of challenges. If we offer preferential treatment to everyone who has suffered setbacks or encountered difficult or even traumatic circumstances, then the preference would be nullified by abundance. . . . A child separated from his parent or whose parent is unable to raise or assist him is not an orphan but still must overcome difficult challenges. Why doesn’t he receive preferential treatment? The Torah reserves this treatment for the unique, tragic case of an orphan. Everyone else [ought to receive] sympathy and encouragement, as well as our charity and support, but not preferential treatment.

Additionally, and perhaps important for contemporary discussion of affirmative action, adults must take responsibility for their situations. The disadvantages and setbacks of our upbringing do not entitle us to perpetual special treatment. Even those who seem to come from charmed backgrounds carry emotional baggage. Children need guidance and support, and therefore orphan children receive preferential treatment. Adults, though, need to take control of their lives. While we must deal with every individual sensitively, we have no Torah-based affirmative action for adults.

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.