Not long after arriving in the U.S. in 1932 and becoming the rabbi of Boston’s Orthodox community, Joseph B. Soloveitchik gave an interview to a reporter from the Boston Herald—presumably in Yiddish or German—which she then translated for publication. In it, Soloveitchik speaks of the “difficult problem” of trying to blend “two hostile educational systems,” namely the religious and the secular:

The study of the Jewish religion—of the Talmud and Jewish law—represents a complete culture in itself. The modern secular educational system is another. Jewish religious culture and the modern educational culture have no conflicts [in and of themselves, but only in the received approaches to teaching them]. They belong side by side; instead, they are separated by a so-called Chinese wall. To penetrate the wall between these two entirely different kinds of culture—to combine them into an ideal oneness—is the problem Orthodox Jews [face]. . .

The Talmud and the Torah once demanded one’s mind and attention entirely. The new educational system demands time and attention also. One of the two systems must suffer. Obviously, it is religious study.

The problem, then, is to give our generation of growing boys and girls an all-embracing, well-balanced education, one that will include the complete Jewish spiritual education as well as modern secular training, both to meet side by side on an equal footing, neither one to suffer because of the other. . . .

To bridge this gap between the old Jewish culture and the modern culture is not an easy task. It is a task for the generations.

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.