In an investigation of how traditional Jewish law operates, Moshe Koppel compares it with two competing models: that of a legal system, where general rules, written by legislators, are applied to specific instances and then enforced by police and courts, and that of a language, where native speakers learn rules through imitation and can change organically without a formal amendment process. He argues it is meant to be more like that latter:

[T]he main written sources of Jewish tradition themselves repeatedly make the point that halakhah is ideally meant to be spoken fluently like a first language and not learned from written rules like a second language. . . . The Talmud itself records the undisputed opinion of Rabbi Yoḥanan that no text other than the Bible should be written. . . . The oral tradition [on which he Talmud is based] was compiled in writing only when social turmoil threatened its very existence. . . . Intuitive knowledge of Torah (Torah as a first language) is replaced by a compiled set of rules (Torah as an acquired language) only when necessary. . . .

[Furthermore, even] codes like the Shulḥan Arukh, [the most important post-talmudic digest of halakhah] actually reflect popular practices more than they determine them, and are incapable of preventing popular disinclination to abide by their rulings. In a considerable number of cases, rulings cited in the codes lose general support and subsequent codes reflect the later practice. . . .

When new issues arise, popular consensus often precedes rabbinic consensus. For example, turkey was almost universally regarded as a kosher bird long before rabbis made any determination to that effect. . . .

Electricity came into wide use in urban areas in the 1880s. The first to rule against the permissibility of the use of electric devices on Shabbat was the rabbi of Lemberg, Isaac Shmelkes, in 1895. He argued that creating a new electric current was akin to transferring fragrance, which the Talmud forbids on somewhat vague grounds. The prohibition was universally accepted, as evidenced by the fact that almost all subsequent scholars take the prohibition as a given, despite rejecting the reasoning behind it.

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.