Tractate Avot (“Fathers”) is unique within the Talmud in that it is composed of a series of rabbinic moral teachings and aphorisms without any discussion of Jewish law. While the first two chapters follow a clear chronological order, moving from teacher to disciple, from Moses until the end of the 2nd century CE, the fifth and final chapter begins by listing things of which there are ten, then things of which there are seven, and so on. As for the third and fourth chapters, they jump from one sage to the next in little discernible order.

Yaakov Jaffe detects in the second half of the fourth chapter a common theme: a series of attacks on Epicurus, the Greek philosopher of the 4th century BCE whose teachings were quite popular in the eastern Mediterranean at the time that Avot was redacted. For Epicureans, there is no immortal soul, and life is best spent pursuing worldly pleasures in judicious moderation. Thus, Jaffe notes that a number of these seemingly disjointed rabbinic statements refer to divine retribution and the afterlife, while others touch on yet other aspects of Epicurean teachings:

Epicurean philosophy is also known for the importance placed on friendship; indeed the 27th saying of Epicurus notes, “Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, the greatest is the possession of friendship.” Two teachings in the middle of the chapter also focus on friendship in general, and in particular on the importance to live in communities with colleagues and peers.

For Epicurus, if life was to be lived in youth, and if there was no future reward after death, it naturally followed that the pursuit of pleasure would be a major drive for human beings in this world. [By contrast], Rabbi Eliezer ha-Kapar teaches that “jealousy, desire, and [the pursuit of] honor remove one from this world.” [Thus he] stresses Judaism’s focus on striving toward higher ideals and away from the pursuit of pleasure.

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.