Axiomatic to the traditional concept of Jewish law is that its demands override subjective emotions; thus, as a general rule, halakhah requires a person to pray at prayer times, even if he isn’t feeling prayerful. But, explains Josh Yuter, it hardly follows that Judaism is insensitive to the vast range of human emotion. For instance, the Talmud teaches that “one who embarrasses his fellow in public, even if he has Torah and good deeds, has no portion in the World to Come”—and surely embarrassment is a subjective response. The more complex question, for Yuter, is the extent to which the rabbinic tradition is willing to adjust halakhic obligations out of sensitivity to people’s feelings:

Sometimes concern for people’s emotional states can even override established halakhah. Under normal circumstances, it is forbidden to acquire property on Shabbat. [One exception is] the case where someone is dying [and has no written will]. The sages decided that he may articulate a legally binding will on the Sabbath, so that his mind will not be further disturbed and worsen his already weak condition. . . . We also find cases where people may decline to fulfill an obligation because they feel it to be beneath their dignity. Deuteronomy 22:4 commands that one must return a lost object, but the Talmud qualifies that an elderly person for whom returning the lost object would be undignified is exempt.

[W]e also find examples where the Torah either commands one to feel certain emotions or at least demands one to regulate particular emotions.

The Divine Presence is said not to rest only upon those who are melancholy or in a state of excessive levity, but only upon those who experience the joy associated with fulfilling commandments. . . .

Emotional regulation applies to both pleasant and unpleasant emotions. When certain sages became too joyous at weddings, another sage had to intervene in order to reset his colleagues’ emotions. . . . The Talmud directs us to [the passage] where the prophet Elisha, experiencing a state of anger, needed a musician to play for him in order to ready himself for prophecy (2Kings 3:14-15).

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.