Jiří (or Georg) Mordechai Langer forsook his bourgeois Jewish upbringing in Prague for a life of strict religious observance, studying in the hasidic centers of Poland. He later became a committed Zionist. But he is best known for his books on Jewish mysticism, which helped introduce hasidic thought to Western Jews, and for his friendship with Franz Kafka, whom he tutored in Hebrew. Langer was also a talented Hebrew poet. A collection of his poetry has now been translated into Hebrew, along with a biographical study, by Elana Wolff, that also explores the previously unexamined subject of his sexuality. Kenneth Sherman writes:

The collection Piyyutim ve-Shirei Yedidot is a sequence of sixteen poems written in Hebrew. . . with titles such as “Handsome Lad” and “To My Companion.” Their homoerotic imagery point[s] to the fact that Langer was gay—an item not mentioned by any of Kafka’s biographers. Langer’s older brother, František, who knew of his brother’s sexual orientation and whose Foreword to the English translation of [Langer’s] Nine Gates remains a prime source of biographical information, is also mum on the subject. The omission would hardly matter, except that Langer’s sexuality was an essential part of his art and philosophy. [His biographer Elana]Wolff calls Langer’s disclosure of his homosexuality through his poetry “a daring act of self-expression.”

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.