In the 19th century, a Russian rabbi named Israel Salanter founded what came to be known as the musar movement, after a Hebrew word that can be translated as “ethics” or “admonishment.” Its purpose was to inculcate in the rabbinic elite a constant striving for virtue and inner perfection that went beyond practical adherence to the demands of halakhah. In conversations with Alex Drucker and Aryeh Grossman, David Silverstein and Shayna Goldberg explore the relationship between law and virtue in Jewish theology, the reasons many Modern Orthodox institutions have shied away from the teachings of musar, and the pedagogical challenges of ethical and spiritual self-cultivation in the 21st century. (Audio, 87 minutes.)

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.