In the 16th century, the Galilean city of Safed became a major center of kabbalistic study, attracting such important rabbis as Moses Cordovero, Joseph Karo, and, above all, Isaac Luria—whose teachings would become the basis for future understanding of Jewish mysticism. The Jerusalem-born Luria (1534-1572) developed a reputation as a wonderworker, which enhanced Safed’s mythic reputation, but, notes Eli Yassif, his miracles were of a very specific type:

[A]t the foundation of the Lurianic myth lies a highly significant contrast between the claim that Luria performed awe-inspiring deeds that elicited the veneration of his contemporaries and the actual accounts of his deeds, which demonstrate that they involved no more than recognition or knowledge of a world hidden to others.

This is exceptional even from the point of view of comparative folklore. The trademark of saints’ legends, [Jewish and non-Jewish], from the end of antiquity to the modern age is that holy men and women perform supernatural acts. They cure the sick, abrogate the laws of nature, rescue individuals and communities from various dangers, and make intensive use of magical powers (such as the use of the Tetragrammaton). Even the figure with whom Luria’s students, as well as later generations, compared him, Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai, stands out in the talmudic corpus for his magical powers and supernatural deeds.

[Yet] not most, [but] all of the original legends about Luria involve his knowledge or recognition of something. . . . Not a single legend told about Luria during his sojourn in Safed, or [in the decades following his death], recounts a miraculous deed. There are no stories of sick people lining up in front of his door so that he could cure them, or stories of threats to the Safed Jewish community that he averted or undid.

Consider a famous legend about a calf that enters the study room of Luria’s circle and places his forefeet on the table. Luria tells his disciples that they must purchase the calf at any price, slaughter it ritually, and eat its meat communally. The calf, he informs them, houses the soul of a kosher slaughterer who had caused the Jews of Safed to sin. Here . . . Luria does not do anything. He only knows something. As a result of this knowledge, he tells his students what to do, but his instruction does not include any act that takes it out of the realm of everyday life. In other words, Luria . . . does not act like other saints.

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.