Founded in Yonkers in 1904 by Hungarian immigrants, Congregation Ohab Zedek was an offshoot of the Manhattan synagogue of the same name, and had some 1,000 members in its heyday. Nancy Klein tells the story of a mysterious scandal at the shul, and its surprisingly easy resolution.

In 1926, the spiritual leader of Ohab Zedek was the fiery Rabbi Philip Rosenberg. One day, in a battle whose cause I was never able to ascertain, Rabbi Rosenberg opened the holy ark and cursed the congregation. It must have been quite a scene. At that time, the ark stood some three stories over a raised platform before a magnificent stained-glass window.

The congregation was understandably upset. And so they contacted Rabbi Philipp Klein [of] Ohab Zedek in Manhattan, [who] proposed a solution: Philip Rosenberg would take a position at Cleveland’s Knesseth Israel synagogue, and the Yonkers Ohab Zedek would hire his newly ordained son, Rabbi Alexander Rosenberg, in his place. Amazingly, the congregation, the elder Rosenberg, and his son all agreed.

Alexander Rosenberg served the shul from 1926 until his death in 1972. His father remained in Cleveland for the rest of his life.

The synagogue eventually moved to the Riverdale neighborhood the Bronx, where it merged with another congregation. But a plaque hangs at the new location, praising Klein for his intervention in the affair.

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.