Eugene Borowitz, who died on January 22 at the age of ninety-one, was one of the outstanding theologians of post-World War II Reform Judaism. In his post at Hebrew Union College (HUC), he mentored hundreds of future rabbis, and was much beloved by his students. One such student, David Ellenson, writes:

I first encountered Eugene Borowitz as many people have—through the words of his voluminous writings. In 1969, when I was twenty-one, I came across his book A Layman’s Guide to Religious Existentialism. . . . His words on [Søren] Kierkegaard, [Paul] Tillich, and other thinkers excited me and ignited a passion for the life of the mind and the life of the spirit that I had never previously felt. . . . .

Nearly five years later, . . . in [Borowitz’s classroom] as a second-year rabbinical student, . . . I was introduced to a vocabulary that helped me define and understand the religious struggle I was then experiencing.

In his initial lecture in the course, Rabbi Borowitz said clearly and simply, “The problem of modern Jewish thought is one of how we affirm the best of what the modern world has taught us while simultaneously maintaining our commitment to the covenantal tradition that is at the base of genuine Jewish belief and practice. How can we simultaneously be both modern and authentically Jewish?” . . .

Borowitz . . . always subordinated his academic role as professor to his vocation as a moreh derekh—a spiritual guide. He told me that even as he taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton, he remained on the HUC faculty because there he could offer daily Jewish prayer in a Jewish community. I found this profoundly moving and indicative of his deepest commitments and values.

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.