In his treatise Nefesh ha-Ḥayyim, the outstanding Russian rabbinic scholar and educator Ḥayyim of Volozhin (1749–1821) presented a kabbalistic theology of Judaism. In his review of Avinoam Fraenkel’s English translation of this work, Alan Brill writes:

In contrast to ḥasidic thinking, Nefesh ha-Ḥayyim situates Torah study over prayer and piety (without, of course, rejecting either).The most famous idea from Nefesh ha-Ḥayyim is about the talmudic obligation to study Torah . . . “day and night.” . . . [According to] Nefesh ha-Ḥayyim, the Talmud’s intent is that one should maximize the actual time spent studying because of study’s mystical effect on the cosmos. Most contemporary yeshiva students do not know that the source for this approach is the Zohar [the principal work of kabbalah], not the Talmud. . . .

The greater availability of Nefesh ha-Ḥayyim [in English] will correct the widespread [and] mistaken view that its author, and the opponents of Ḥasidism in general (known as Misnagdim), advocated Talmud study without concurrent emphasis on kabbalah, the attainment of moral perfection, and worship. . .

Nefesh ha-Ḥayyim has not played a large role in American Jewish thought or in the [highly influential work] of the great scholar of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem. However, the work was translated into French in 1986 by Benno Gross and has played a significant role in modern French thought, where it has been used to derive Jewish ideas of cybernetics and semiotics. In several of his essays, the French-Jewish philosopher Emamnuel Levinas cites Nefesh ha-Ḥayyim to explain the need to transcend the self for infinite confrontation with divine will.

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.