Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac (1040–1105), known by the Hebrew acronym Rashi, authored a running commentary on almost the entire Talmud as well as one on almost all of the Hebrew Bible. Both fairly quickly became essential to all traditional Jewish study and teaching of these texts. In his recent book Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah, Eric Lawee attempts to give this work its proper place in Jewish intellectual history by examining both the commentary itself and its rabbinic admirers and detractors. Discussing the book with Alan Brill, Lawee explains Rashi’s use of midrash—rabbinic exegesis, mostly from the 4th through 7th centuries—which the sage draws on heavily, often presenting it alongside a more literal interpretation:

Rashi’s careful selection and at times decisive reformulation of midrash shaped perceptions of the Torah’s teachings. . . . On one level, Rashi uses midrashim to address countless ever-so-slight “surface irregularities” (to use the scholar James Kugel’s term) in Scripture, such as apparent redundancies. On another level, midrash infuses the commentary with a profusion of theological ideas and elements of pastoral reassurance.

For example, [living in] a medieval world . . . in which Jews lived under either Christians or Muslims as a tiny minority, and at times a persecuted one (Rashi’s lifetime coincides with the violent assaults on German Jewish communities during the First Crusade of 1096), Rashi frequently reassures his reader via his use of midrashic teachings that God’s love for Israel is eternal and that the Jews remain, despite the evidence, the “chosen people.”

[Yet] Rashi does not explain the meaning of the midrashim that he adduces, leaving readers to ponder their purport. . . . [T]hese midrashim . . . remained pliably open to interpretation. Thus the commentary has the capacity to generate a successive unfolding of meaning as the divine word is refracted through Rashi’s commentary and, in turn, the varied lenses worn by his diverse readers.

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.