In the 1920s and 30s, a number of Jewish thinkers from outside the ḥasidic world—most prominently Martin Buber—began to mine ḥasidic teachings and practices as a source for spiritual renewal, seeking to make Judaism relevant, in their minds, in an increasingly secular era. Historians refer to their ideas as “neo-Ḥasidism.” Among the most influential of these in his own time was Hillel Zeitlin (1871-1942), who, unlike Buber, was himself raised in a ḥasidic family in Eastern Europe. Ariel Evan Mayse describes Zeitlin’s intellectual development:

Zeitlin enjoyed an energetic devotional life in his youth, a period that he later described as being filled with a rich, mystical intoxication with the divine presence. Yet in his adolescence Zeitlin became increasingly troubled by philosophy and higher criticism of the Bible, and his confrontation with modernity led Zeitlin away from the world of Ḥasidism. He immersed himself in the study of Western thought, publishing books on Spinoza and Nietzsche. . . . By the early 1900s, [however], he returned to [religion], and devoted his considerable literary talents to what he now saw as his life’s work: preserving the legacy of early Ḥasidism and rearticulating a vision of Jewish spirituality that was compelling to contemporary (and future) seekers.

Zeitlin is a neo-ḥasidic writer because he interpreted and combined a wide variety of early ḥasidic sources, and because he neither lived in a ḥasidic community nor committed himself to a particular ḥasidic [sect]. He sought to return to the spiritual vitality he believed lay at the root of Ḥasidism, but also felt compelled to reinterpret the sources of the ḥasidic tradition. His works, peppered with references to Western philosophy, were written in Hebrew and in Yiddish for secularized Polish Jews, hoping to provide them with a compelling spiritual alternative both to the balkanized, intensely political Jewish intellectual world of [non-ḥasidic] Warsaw and to the [insular ḥasidic world that very much persisted in Poland]. . . .

Zeitlin felt that it was his privilege and obligation, together with the rest of Polish Jewry, to ensure that the vital spiritual message of Ḥasidism did not founder. More than simply preserving and safeguarding Ḥasidism, Zeitlin saw his task as returning this movement of devotional renewal to its roots . . . so that it might develop anew and spread forth to include all peoples.

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.