Through the ages, rabbis have suggested various explanations for the Hebrew Bible’s detailed dietary restrictions, while others have cited them as archetypes of laws that are beyond explanation. Detractors, meanwhile, have taken these rules as evidence of the Bible’s irrationality. But, argues Natan Slifkin, the fact that Scripture doesn’t provide an explicit rationale for these commandments is an invitation for the believer to search one out rather than simply falling back on “God said so.”

Yes, we are obligated to keep kosher because God said so, but God said so for a reason! For centuries, rabbis have been suggesting various rational explanations for the laws of kashrut. . . . And while we might not be able to determine all of the reasons with certainty, we can certainly suggest several rational possibilities.

There may even be layers of reasons—one reason for having a dietary code in the first place (learning and practicing control, or maintaining a distinct Jewish identity), and then a secondary layer of reasons determining which animals would be permitted and which would be forbidden (which could be due to the cultural circumstances at the time of the giving of the Torah, as some medieval rabbis imply). And then there can be a third layer of reasons as to why people should keep kosher today, [such as] connecting to Torah, to the Jewish nation, to three-thousand years of tradition.

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.