Richard Silverstein has hardened his heart. He’s had to.

“It’s very lonely to be a progressive Jew in the blog world,” says the 54-year-old Seattleite behind the liberal Jewish blog “Tikun Olam.” “I’ve worked very hard at building relationships with like-minded people because, internally, I’m dialoguing with a lot people who strongly disagree with me or hate my guts.”

This is a surprising appraisal from a man who over the phone and in person comes across as rather soft spoken. In his non-virutal life he is a stay-at-home father of three and a former fundraiser for Jewish charities with an “affinity” for technology and a love of writing and world music.

But in his life as a blogger, Silverstein is a magnet for vitriol. A regular opponent of U.S. and Israel policy and a self-identified “progressive Zionist,” he has attracted a mob of critics. Some of these levy the kind of harsh detraction suffered by anyone who throws his hat into the grand-royale of the blogosphere, especially those who venture into Middle East politics. Then there are a few who have gone out of their way to mock and ridicule him, even designing Web sites that depict him pornographically and attack his family.

“When it first started it was very, very hard,” Silverstein says. “I’m a very thin-skinned person. I would get depressed about it.”

As a subject of several articles on blogging etiquette in the press, Silverstein has acquired a reputation as something of a punching bag. The International Herald-Tribune wrote about him when it covered an effort to formulate a set of rules to guide discussion on the Web. The Forward told his story when it took a closer look at the world of Jewish bloggers. And, of course, the coverage only opened him to further criticism, some of which painted him as a complainer who couldn’t take what he dished out.

Silverstein launched “Tikun Olam” four years ago as an outlet for his writing, a place to record his beliefs and interests. He wrote about world music and his family. He translated Yiddish poetry he liked into English. The blog always covered issues of social justice — its name translates as “Heal the World” — and continues to reflect a range of non-political interests. But over years that coincided with the second intifada and the dissolution of the Middle East peace process, Silverstein increasingly devoted more words to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

“I was feeling more and more concerned about what was going on there and thought it was a good way to put a progressive message out there for people to read,” he recalls.

Today, the blog draws between 800-1,000 visitors a day, according to Silverstein, a tiny number by the standards of the Web. But it has an active readership and, curiously, not one that generally supports Silverstein’s politics. More than half of those who try to post comments on his site deeply disagree with his views, he says. He uses software to block certain people from posting comments on his blog, and some from even reading it, a move criticized by his detractors.

This is a phenomenon that Silverstein doesn’t quite understand: why people who can barely tolerate his opinion return again and again to comment on it. He visits other blogs, and he observes a different atmosphere. Recently, he e-mailed the liberal satirical blog SadlyNo.com to tell its moderators about a new advice column guest written by Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor and staunch defender of Israeli policy. Both blogs responded with posts mocking the lawyer.

“I am jealous because every single comment there was funny and supportive and I spend a lot of my time responding to people who disagree with me. But I feel like that’s part of what I need to do as a blogger,” he says. “I’m gonna have to be arguing with my fellow Jews and fellow Zionists who may be more conservative than I am.”

Recently, Silverstein has begun to explore Israeli democracy more broadly. When vague news reports broke about the case of Azmi Bishara, an Israeli-Palestinian and former Knesset member who fled the country after he was investigated on charges of espionage, Silverstein received attention as one of a few bloggers to write about it daily. His coverage was notable, because at the time the Israeli government barred Israeli journalists from reporting details of the investigation citing national-security concerns.

In Silverstein’s view, the case was indicative of a problem in Israeli democracy, which, he says, disenfranchises Israeli-Arabs.

“I would like to see Israeli-Arabs feel they can be invested in their country as fully as Israeli-Jews,” he says. “I realize that is not something that can be accomplished overnight. I’m not expecting Israel to turn into a full-fledged democracy in that sense tomorrow or next month. But I don’t think many people are writing about it in blogs or elsewhere in those terms.”

But the search for like-minded allies in the blogosphere has been difficult.

“I’ve always spent a lot of time writing to other bloggers, just trying to reach out and saying we need to have solidarity with each other. We need to come together when we are attacked. To that extent, I’ve been surprised that some of the other bloggers I’m close to haven’t felt that need,” he says. “It’s just like herding cats…You have to accept that the blog world is a very independently minded place.”