More than half of the world’s chess champions are Jews, but is there something particularly Jewish about the game itself? Yes, argues Nathan Lopes Cardozo:

The entire game takes place on a chessboard smaller than the size of a side table, but the game is larger than life. . . . [Its rules] may sound very easy, but what any player soon realizes is that these basic rules allow for thousands of combinations [and] maneuvers. . . .

But is chess rigid? Does it constrain? . . . Does it deny the player his freedom of thought or action? In one sense, it does. The player cannot move the pieces as he would like to. There are rules that make the game incredibly difficult. But that fact is exactly what makes this game so exciting. It leads to an unprecedented outburst of creativity. . . .

What makes [someone] a formidable opponent is his ability to use these rules to unleash an outburst of creativity, which resides deep within him and emerges only because of the “unbearable” limitations. He then strikes! One small move forces a major shift, creating total upheaval and causing the opponent to panic as never before. . . .

And that is why talmudic scholars, religious Jews, and secular Jews love this game and are often very good at it. Chess reminds them, consciously or subconsciously, of the world of [rabbinic] debate with all of its intrigues, its severe obstacles, and its seemingly deliberate tendency to make life more difficult and sometimes nearly impossible. The truly religious Jew loves it because it is these challenges that make life exciting and irresistible.

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.