In a wide-ranging interview, Michael Harris—an influential British rabbi—discusses the differences between Modern Orthodoxy in America and in the UK, the recent history of Britain’s United Synagogue, and the implications of ancient Near Eastern texts for understanding the divinity of the Bible, among other topics. He also advocates a “moderate” and carefully defined form of religious pluralism. (Interview by Alan Brill.)

Modern Orthodoxy should resist a strong pluralism that views Judaism and other faiths as equally true, [claiming], for example, Judaism is true for Jews, Christianity for Christians, and Islam for Muslims. There is a more moderate but still valuable kind of pluralism, suggested by the medieval sage Menaḥem Me’iri, according to which we [should recognize as valid] the self-understanding of other religions as religions without accepting all their [theological] claims as on a par with our own. Believing in the truth of the core [tenets] of our own faith is also perfectly compatible with a positive attitude toward other faiths.

As a religious Jew who believes that Judaism is right and Christianity (for example) wrong on the messianism of Jesus and the relative status of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, I can and should still accept that Christianity teaches a great deal of moral truth, that it brings blessing to the lives of many individuals and communities who adhere to it, and indeed that it strengthens the moral fabric of many contemporary societies, including the Western ones in which we live. We should also be open to what other faiths and their literatures can teach us—for example, . . . by their ability to convey shared truths in a particularly powerful way.

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.