On America's 250th birthday today, it is imperative to remember that the United States was originally a Judeo-Christian country, not just a Christian one.
"There’s something treacherous, gross even, about Americans who hate America or are ashamed of it." For me that says it all about those Americans who reflexively hate their own country. As I say often these people speak like communists on the barricades but want to live like free-market capitalists. If this country is so vile and evil then pick another country.
Thank you & your Family’s contribution, dedication, & service to the USA. I appreciated the history lesson of Jewish involvement in the founding of our nation. Maybe one day the antisemite/anti Israel people will understand that the G-d of Israel is in control of everything & everyone. Maybe someday they will come to realize that the Jewish people have been chosen by G-d to spread light upon darkness in the world. Maybe then we can look forward to tolerance, understanding, & peace for everyone. Maybe Moshiach can help facilitate this process. Let’s hope he comes soon! Tomorrow would be fine with me. Happy birthday USA 🇺🇸 🦁
Thank you for mentioning Haym Salomon. I've written about him more than once. Without Salomon, we may still be under the thumb of Great Britain. When trouble came and Washington's Army needed help, he would say, "Call Salomon!" He knew that wonderful American would help, and he did, he gave his fortune all to America...$600,000. But there were more.
There's another famous American who saved his Jewish soldiers. His monument is right here in Knoxville, TN
Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds (b. 1919) of Knoxville, Tennessee, served in the US Army during World War II. He was captured by German forces during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and became the senior non-commissioned officer at the German prisoner-of-war camp Stalag IX-A, a camp near Ziegenhain, Germany. Master Sergeant Edmonds was responsible for the camp’s 1,275 American POWs.
Stalag IX-A, a camp in line with their anti-Jewish policy, the Germans singled out Jewish POWs, and many of them on the Eastern Front were sent to extermination camps or killed.
Close to the end of the war on January 27, 1945, the Germans announced that all Jewish POWs in Stalag IX-A were to report the following morning. Master Sergeant Edmonds ordered all POWs, Jews and non-Jews alike, to stand together. When the German officer in charge saw that all the camp’s inmates were standing in front of their barracks, he turned to Edmonds and said, “They cannot all be Jews.” To this Edmonds replied, “We are all Jews here.” The German took out his pistol, putting it to Edmonds head, but the Master Sergeant did not waver and retorted, “According to the Geneva Convention, we have to give only our name, rank, and serial number. If you shoot me, you will have to shoot all of us, and after the war you will be tried for war crimes.”
The German commandant backed down. Edmonds’ actions are credited with saving up to 300 Jewish-American soldiers from possible death. He never told anyone about this.
After his death in 1985, Edmonds’ wife gave his son, Chris Edmonds, several of the diaries his father had kept while in the POW camp. Chris Edmonds, a Baptist minister, began researching his story, and stumbled upon a mention of the event at the POW camp. He located several of the Jewish soldiers his father saved, who provided witness statements to Yad Vashem. Edmonds is only the fifth United States citizen, and the first American soldier, to earn the honor of “Righteous Among the Nations”.
I was raised in Rogers Park, Illinois with all my Jewish friends. I loved every one of them and always will. We went to school together, played together in each other's homes, our moms watched over us when we were young and out riding our bikes or roller skating. Some of the best times of my life. My beau lived down the street and walked with me to school. I wonder still today what ever happened to Barry Weinstein.
Better to be under the thumb of Great Britain than under the thumb of Qatar. I do say this tongue in cheek, however, the amount of influence allowed Qatar contemporarily in the US through monies poured in (especially in educational institutions) and affiliated airline bases is significant.
Yes, I wrote about it. Qatar is the number one funder of our education with their "choices" program. China is second. So what do we have in our education today? Jihadi and Commie money influencing everything the young minds learn!
Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds was a true hero and I have read his story. It is incredible for not only what he did but also that he never really spoke about it. No self-recognition or aggrandizement. Amazing man!
Amen! There was another famous man who kept silent. His wife discovered his huge volumes of notes in their attic.
Sir Nicholas Winton. In 1939, a British stockbroker single-handedly rescued 669 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. He quietly organized transport to Great Britain and found foster families to save them from the Holocaust.
His incredible story remained entirely unknown for 50 years until his wife discovered a hidden scrapbook detailing his rescues. Since then, his heroic actions have been widely documented and celebrated:
The "British Schindler": The press affectionately dubbed him this for his humanitarian efforts.
Knighthood: Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his "services to humanity" in 2003.
One Life: His legacy was adapted into a 2024 feature film starring Anthony Hopkins.
Winton passed away in 2015 at the age of 106, leaving behind a massive legacy of thousands of descendants who owe their lives to his compassion.
You can read more about his life and efforts on the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust page or explore the historical context via the USC Shoah Foundation.
The Czech Kindertransport Winston organized amazingly was finally reunited with the children he saved.
His humanitarian accomplishments remained unknown and unnoticed by the world for nearly 50 years until 1988 when he was invited to a program where he was honored and the audience was made up of the children he saved. If they hadn't been rescued and brought over to England these children would have been killed by the Nazis. Sir Nicholas Winton was born in Hampstead, London in 1909. For nine months in 1939 he rescued 669 children from Czechoslovakia and kept it silent for those many years.
Thank you for this information. I will definitely read up on Mr. Winton. It is hard to imagine how much better this world would be if the number of righteous people who would protect others (Jews, non-Jews, white, black...it doesn't matter) and live up to the highest morals exceeded those who are so hateful and evil. Again thank you for your post.
I'm sure the Lord rewarded Mr. Winton for such wonderful mitzvahs over and over again and then keeping it totally quiet for so many decades. We would never have known if his wife hadn't decided to clean the attic.
Here is a short video of the gathering of all the children they could find and the honor given to Sir Winton. Years ago, I watched the full program, you can probably find it on youtube.
I very much appreciate the helpful history of Jewish contribution. Our contributions are too often left out, or otherwise dismissed.
However, we are not a Judeo-Christian country, either. We used Judeo-Christian values to establish and clarify our own. But we were founded as a country with religious freedom. For all. In fact, the only mention of anything related to "God" are references to "Nature's God," "the Supreme Judge of the world," and "the protection of divine Providence."
I personally think it's just as dangerous to say we are a Judeo-Christian country as it is to say we are a Christian country. Both imply we are a country based on religion. Both exclude others
We are a Judeo-Christian country from 1620 to 1787. You may not like it but we were.
Sure, we have freedom of religion but for those 167 years, those were the two religions. In fact three of my four grandparents had ancestors who came here from 1630 to 1640 from the UK.
In the UK at that time men's first names were William, George, Geoffrey etc. Want to know my male ancestors names back then in 17th century America? Where do you think these names came from?
Luke, Enoch, Samuel, Ebenezer, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Jonah.
That's right The Old Testament from the King James Bible. To Jews that wold be the Tanach and the books are the same in these two religious tomes, just the order changed. I still have some of these 250 year old bibles belonging to them.
If you were right there would be names like Mohammed and Vinad, and there were a lot of Hindus and Muslims. Well, there were not.
What the population was at any given time (including Jews Stuyvesant tried to have sent back) does not make us a Judeo-Christian country. Or even a Christian country, as Christians were the vast majority of the population. To be a Judeo-Christian country means we would have had laws written in to our constitution that were specifically Christian (or Jewish) laws or declared ourselves a Christian country. Much as 23 Muslim countries have Islam as the State religion written into their constitutions and included in government and as Israel has laws related to Judaism.
Thank you thank you, for such an inspiring and uplifting article. May America be blessed with another 250 years, rid of all those that hate America. This great article should be sent to every leading politician in the USA.
The islamist cancer spreading throughout the world has Jew hate on its agenda, amongst other evil ways. It’s time the world fought back, through education and learning. May God bless America.
Throughout history antisemitism (Jew hatred and violence towards Jews) has often heralded the end of civilizations. We are like the canary in the coal mine - it remains to be seen if the American canary is still alive. Certainly this time has been one of the most publicly anti-Jewish, anti-Israel and anti-Zionist times that I can ever remember and I was born in the late 1950's.
Anti-Jewish sentiment manifested itself differently then. Jews were excluded neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, so we built our own. I was born at the newly minted Mount Sinai hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota because Jewish doctors were denied hospital privileges elsewhere. Jews built their own country club, because every other club had a ban on Jews.
But the prejudice, while just as painful, was much more underground. There were never marches where men chanted "Jews will not replace us." The Democratic Party represented support for the (then) new State of Israel instead of the antipathy that reeks from the party today. Our bastions of higher education were not yet fomenting Jewish hatred due to the influx of Arab money to their coffers. We could not yet realize people being openly homosexual/lesbian, nor could we imagine "Queer" and bizarrely how "Queer" became anti-Jew, even in the face of the reality that Queer would be murdered on-site in Gaza. I have seen too many "Queer" people interviewed state that they would prefer dead Jews over the "genocide" in Israel. It boggles the mind. Holocaust denial in the face of the extensive Nazi coverage of themselves from 1933-1945. Facts are not facts. Reality is debatable.
I hold fast to two images I hold in my mind; one is an IDF soldier in a jet fighter - we will never go back to being "wandering Jews" expelled from this country or that because we have Israel. Jews will always need Israel. But I am an American Jew who recalls Washington's letter and blessing in a letter to the first synagogue in the new America in Newport, Rhode Island; "may the children of Abraham who dwell in the this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants- while everyone shall sit safely under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid."
I think it is important to note that Lin Manuel Miranda put those lines in his George Washington in "Hamilton" when Washington explains why he wants to retire as President and peacefully pass the reigns of power to the next President.
We had that peaceful transition until 2020, and we bizarrely re-elected the man who caused a riot at the Capitol because he was and is a sore loser.
We are losing our footing. The canary appears to be breathing its last. The question will be how and if we survive it. If we do, we will be a different country. What we will look like is impossible to predict. 50 years ago was a celebration. Today felt like a funeral to me. A lot of sadness mixed with apprehension about what will come next in The American Experiment. Will there be a place for me and my children as both patriotic Americans AND as Jews?
You can hate Trump, but thank God he won or there would already be a nuclear Iran and heaven knows where Israel would be. No one has done more for Israel and Jews in words and deeds, starting his first term and moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
Trump has acted in much more pro-Israel ways than the Democrats but he is also allowing Iran to quietly re-arm. We set back their ability to build nuclear weapons by only a few weeks, despite his bluster. Trump is transactional; he will go where the money is FOR HIM. The Middle East is a powder keg. Israel is imploding from the inside out. 10/7 opened wide the existing political cracks. We can breathe easily when Israel acts as one, but they are fractured. Too many IDF soldiers are called back again and again because 300,000 or so Haredi men refuse to participate in defending the country (except pray) while Israel supports them 100% Something has got to give. Trump and Bibi are too closely aligned as fascist leaders. It's not a good situation.
Thank you, My family’s history is rooted in a deep gratitude for the life we have built in America. After surviving the hardships of WWII in Soviet Russia, my parents returned to Poland only to face the tyranny of Communism. As an immigrant, I see a profound contrast between the world I grew up in and the freedom my daughters enjoy in the United States. Our journey here was a formal, five-year legal process driven by my mother’s desire to ensure that future generations would live in a free society. America is in fact a Judeo-Christian country. Pilgrims crossed an ocean to worship freely, to make a new life, viewed themselves through the Hebrew Bible, crossing the Red Sea, to their Promised Land, “New Israel”. William Bradford brought Hebrew to the new world, he considered it to be the oldest existing language. The Pilgrims, like the Israelites, experienced religious oppression, migration, endured dire conditions: starvation, sickness, death, ultimately freedom and a blessing in their new land in America. The first Thanksgiving 1621 is connected to the Jewish blessings of (Birkat HaGomel) thanking God for crossing the ocean, arriving at a destination, surviving illness and freedom from imprisonment. 53 Pilgrims survived, nearly half died during the first brutal winter.
Indeed, not just America, but all of Western Civilization, including art, culture, education, and all--is mostly built on Greek Philosophy and The Old Testament.
Thank you for this wonderful and detailed explanation of how the Torah is an indelible aspect of American ethos.
During my career as an appellate prosecutor I learned that many of Connecticut’s criminal statutes came directly from the Torah, citing chapter and verse.
To this day, Connecticut has a two-witness rule in capital cases drawn directly from the Torah.
There’s no denying this connection to America’s founding principles. Rather there’s only the ability to ignore it.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks documents the importance of the Old Testament to the English Revolution of Oliver Cromwell. This is the origin of the faith of the Pilgrims who fled England for their new homeland in the United States. The writer George Elliot studied the Talmud with a Jewish friend when writing her novel Daniel Deronda which also promoted Zionism before Herzl.
So much knowledge here. If only every Americans jew knew all of this not to mention every single college student, especially at thd most prestigious schools.
Race, a truly wonderful article. Before October 7—and especially before the aftermath of October 7—this article would have resonated with me so deeply. I was fiercely patriotic. I loved both Canada and America.
But something changed in me. It's almost like losing a best friend, a true love, or even a parent. You still care. You still remember what they meant to you. But the relationship is no longer the same.
I think I always looked at Germany as an exception to the rule. I never believed that Jews could once again feel this way in Canada or the United States. But now I realize how transient patriotism and belonging can be for Jews. When times are good, we're part of the country. When things turn, we quickly discover how conditional that belonging can be.
I'm glad you still have that deep love and patriotism for America. I truly am. But for me, it isn't there anymore. I care about America. I care about Canada. But I no longer consider either one my true home.
The irony is that my only real patriotism now is toward Israel—a country I have never even visited. Because after everything I've seen since October 7, I have come to believe that Israel is the only true home the Jewish people have.
That's the reality for me. And frankly, that's the sadness of it.
"There’s something treacherous, gross even, about Americans who hate America or are ashamed of it." For me that says it all about those Americans who reflexively hate their own country. As I say often these people speak like communists on the barricades but want to live like free-market capitalists. If this country is so vile and evil then pick another country.
Thank you & your Family’s contribution, dedication, & service to the USA. I appreciated the history lesson of Jewish involvement in the founding of our nation. Maybe one day the antisemite/anti Israel people will understand that the G-d of Israel is in control of everything & everyone. Maybe someday they will come to realize that the Jewish people have been chosen by G-d to spread light upon darkness in the world. Maybe then we can look forward to tolerance, understanding, & peace for everyone. Maybe Moshiach can help facilitate this process. Let’s hope he comes soon! Tomorrow would be fine with me. Happy birthday USA 🇺🇸 🦁
Thank you for mentioning Haym Salomon. I've written about him more than once. Without Salomon, we may still be under the thumb of Great Britain. When trouble came and Washington's Army needed help, he would say, "Call Salomon!" He knew that wonderful American would help, and he did, he gave his fortune all to America...$600,000. But there were more.
There's another famous American who saved his Jewish soldiers. His monument is right here in Knoxville, TN
Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds (b. 1919) of Knoxville, Tennessee, served in the US Army during World War II. He was captured by German forces during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and became the senior non-commissioned officer at the German prisoner-of-war camp Stalag IX-A, a camp near Ziegenhain, Germany. Master Sergeant Edmonds was responsible for the camp’s 1,275 American POWs.
Stalag IX-A, a camp in line with their anti-Jewish policy, the Germans singled out Jewish POWs, and many of them on the Eastern Front were sent to extermination camps or killed.
Close to the end of the war on January 27, 1945, the Germans announced that all Jewish POWs in Stalag IX-A were to report the following morning. Master Sergeant Edmonds ordered all POWs, Jews and non-Jews alike, to stand together. When the German officer in charge saw that all the camp’s inmates were standing in front of their barracks, he turned to Edmonds and said, “They cannot all be Jews.” To this Edmonds replied, “We are all Jews here.” The German took out his pistol, putting it to Edmonds head, but the Master Sergeant did not waver and retorted, “According to the Geneva Convention, we have to give only our name, rank, and serial number. If you shoot me, you will have to shoot all of us, and after the war you will be tried for war crimes.”
The German commandant backed down. Edmonds’ actions are credited with saving up to 300 Jewish-American soldiers from possible death. He never told anyone about this.
After his death in 1985, Edmonds’ wife gave his son, Chris Edmonds, several of the diaries his father had kept while in the POW camp. Chris Edmonds, a Baptist minister, began researching his story, and stumbled upon a mention of the event at the POW camp. He located several of the Jewish soldiers his father saved, who provided witness statements to Yad Vashem. Edmonds is only the fifth United States citizen, and the first American soldier, to earn the honor of “Righteous Among the Nations”.
I was raised in Rogers Park, Illinois with all my Jewish friends. I loved every one of them and always will. We went to school together, played together in each other's homes, our moms watched over us when we were young and out riding our bikes or roller skating. Some of the best times of my life. My beau lived down the street and walked with me to school. I wonder still today what ever happened to Barry Weinstein.
Better to be under the thumb of Great Britain than under the thumb of Qatar. I do say this tongue in cheek, however, the amount of influence allowed Qatar contemporarily in the US through monies poured in (especially in educational institutions) and affiliated airline bases is significant.
Yes, I wrote about it. Qatar is the number one funder of our education with their "choices" program. China is second. So what do we have in our education today? Jihadi and Commie money influencing everything the young minds learn!
It scares me Liat...I don't like it at all.
Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds was a true hero and I have read his story. It is incredible for not only what he did but also that he never really spoke about it. No self-recognition or aggrandizement. Amazing man!
Amen! There was another famous man who kept silent. His wife discovered his huge volumes of notes in their attic.
Sir Nicholas Winton. In 1939, a British stockbroker single-handedly rescued 669 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. He quietly organized transport to Great Britain and found foster families to save them from the Holocaust.
His incredible story remained entirely unknown for 50 years until his wife discovered a hidden scrapbook detailing his rescues. Since then, his heroic actions have been widely documented and celebrated:
The "British Schindler": The press affectionately dubbed him this for his humanitarian efforts.
Knighthood: Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his "services to humanity" in 2003.
One Life: His legacy was adapted into a 2024 feature film starring Anthony Hopkins.
Winton passed away in 2015 at the age of 106, leaving behind a massive legacy of thousands of descendants who owe their lives to his compassion.
You can read more about his life and efforts on the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust page or explore the historical context via the USC Shoah Foundation.
The Czech Kindertransport Winston organized amazingly was finally reunited with the children he saved.
His humanitarian accomplishments remained unknown and unnoticed by the world for nearly 50 years until 1988 when he was invited to a program where he was honored and the audience was made up of the children he saved. If they hadn't been rescued and brought over to England these children would have been killed by the Nazis. Sir Nicholas Winton was born in Hampstead, London in 1909. For nine months in 1939 he rescued 669 children from Czechoslovakia and kept it silent for those many years.
Thank you for this information. I will definitely read up on Mr. Winton. It is hard to imagine how much better this world would be if the number of righteous people who would protect others (Jews, non-Jews, white, black...it doesn't matter) and live up to the highest morals exceeded those who are so hateful and evil. Again thank you for your post.
I'm sure the Lord rewarded Mr. Winton for such wonderful mitzvahs over and over again and then keeping it totally quiet for so many decades. We would never have known if his wife hadn't decided to clean the attic.
Here is a short video of the gathering of all the children they could find and the honor given to Sir Winton. Years ago, I watched the full program, you can probably find it on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_nFuJAF5F0
Wonderful post! Gratitude and Happy July 4th!
Let’s also remember that The Lord Jesus is a Jew! His love and kindness is an example for all!
I very much appreciate the helpful history of Jewish contribution. Our contributions are too often left out, or otherwise dismissed.
However, we are not a Judeo-Christian country, either. We used Judeo-Christian values to establish and clarify our own. But we were founded as a country with religious freedom. For all. In fact, the only mention of anything related to "God" are references to "Nature's God," "the Supreme Judge of the world," and "the protection of divine Providence."
I personally think it's just as dangerous to say we are a Judeo-Christian country as it is to say we are a Christian country. Both imply we are a country based on religion. Both exclude others
Thank you for considering this.
We are a Judeo-Christian country from 1620 to 1787. You may not like it but we were.
Sure, we have freedom of religion but for those 167 years, those were the two religions. In fact three of my four grandparents had ancestors who came here from 1630 to 1640 from the UK.
In the UK at that time men's first names were William, George, Geoffrey etc. Want to know my male ancestors names back then in 17th century America? Where do you think these names came from?
Luke, Enoch, Samuel, Ebenezer, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Jonah.
That's right The Old Testament from the King James Bible. To Jews that wold be the Tanach and the books are the same in these two religious tomes, just the order changed. I still have some of these 250 year old bibles belonging to them.
If you were right there would be names like Mohammed and Vinad, and there were a lot of Hindus and Muslims. Well, there were not.
What the population was at any given time (including Jews Stuyvesant tried to have sent back) does not make us a Judeo-Christian country. Or even a Christian country, as Christians were the vast majority of the population. To be a Judeo-Christian country means we would have had laws written in to our constitution that were specifically Christian (or Jewish) laws or declared ourselves a Christian country. Much as 23 Muslim countries have Islam as the State religion written into their constitutions and included in government and as Israel has laws related to Judaism.
Race, thank you for your incredible post. I agree! It IS unAmerican to be antisemitic. We need to make it a drumbeat.
We need to point out the absurdity of antisemitism . Of openly hating.
There are people on both sides who are not yet poisoned. We must reach them
Thank you thank you, for such an inspiring and uplifting article. May America be blessed with another 250 years, rid of all those that hate America. This great article should be sent to every leading politician in the USA.
The islamist cancer spreading throughout the world has Jew hate on its agenda, amongst other evil ways. It’s time the world fought back, through education and learning. May God bless America.
Throughout history antisemitism (Jew hatred and violence towards Jews) has often heralded the end of civilizations. We are like the canary in the coal mine - it remains to be seen if the American canary is still alive. Certainly this time has been one of the most publicly anti-Jewish, anti-Israel and anti-Zionist times that I can ever remember and I was born in the late 1950's.
Anti-Jewish sentiment manifested itself differently then. Jews were excluded neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, so we built our own. I was born at the newly minted Mount Sinai hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota because Jewish doctors were denied hospital privileges elsewhere. Jews built their own country club, because every other club had a ban on Jews.
But the prejudice, while just as painful, was much more underground. There were never marches where men chanted "Jews will not replace us." The Democratic Party represented support for the (then) new State of Israel instead of the antipathy that reeks from the party today. Our bastions of higher education were not yet fomenting Jewish hatred due to the influx of Arab money to their coffers. We could not yet realize people being openly homosexual/lesbian, nor could we imagine "Queer" and bizarrely how "Queer" became anti-Jew, even in the face of the reality that Queer would be murdered on-site in Gaza. I have seen too many "Queer" people interviewed state that they would prefer dead Jews over the "genocide" in Israel. It boggles the mind. Holocaust denial in the face of the extensive Nazi coverage of themselves from 1933-1945. Facts are not facts. Reality is debatable.
I hold fast to two images I hold in my mind; one is an IDF soldier in a jet fighter - we will never go back to being "wandering Jews" expelled from this country or that because we have Israel. Jews will always need Israel. But I am an American Jew who recalls Washington's letter and blessing in a letter to the first synagogue in the new America in Newport, Rhode Island; "may the children of Abraham who dwell in the this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants- while everyone shall sit safely under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid."
I think it is important to note that Lin Manuel Miranda put those lines in his George Washington in "Hamilton" when Washington explains why he wants to retire as President and peacefully pass the reigns of power to the next President.
We had that peaceful transition until 2020, and we bizarrely re-elected the man who caused a riot at the Capitol because he was and is a sore loser.
We are losing our footing. The canary appears to be breathing its last. The question will be how and if we survive it. If we do, we will be a different country. What we will look like is impossible to predict. 50 years ago was a celebration. Today felt like a funeral to me. A lot of sadness mixed with apprehension about what will come next in The American Experiment. Will there be a place for me and my children as both patriotic Americans AND as Jews?
I feel the same way. We are at a precarious moment. For us and Israel
You can hate Trump, but thank God he won or there would already be a nuclear Iran and heaven knows where Israel would be. No one has done more for Israel and Jews in words and deeds, starting his first term and moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
Trump has acted in much more pro-Israel ways than the Democrats but he is also allowing Iran to quietly re-arm. We set back their ability to build nuclear weapons by only a few weeks, despite his bluster. Trump is transactional; he will go where the money is FOR HIM. The Middle East is a powder keg. Israel is imploding from the inside out. 10/7 opened wide the existing political cracks. We can breathe easily when Israel acts as one, but they are fractured. Too many IDF soldiers are called back again and again because 300,000 or so Haredi men refuse to participate in defending the country (except pray) while Israel supports them 100% Something has got to give. Trump and Bibi are too closely aligned as fascist leaders. It's not a good situation.
'Fascist'???
Thank you, My family’s history is rooted in a deep gratitude for the life we have built in America. After surviving the hardships of WWII in Soviet Russia, my parents returned to Poland only to face the tyranny of Communism. As an immigrant, I see a profound contrast between the world I grew up in and the freedom my daughters enjoy in the United States. Our journey here was a formal, five-year legal process driven by my mother’s desire to ensure that future generations would live in a free society. America is in fact a Judeo-Christian country. Pilgrims crossed an ocean to worship freely, to make a new life, viewed themselves through the Hebrew Bible, crossing the Red Sea, to their Promised Land, “New Israel”. William Bradford brought Hebrew to the new world, he considered it to be the oldest existing language. The Pilgrims, like the Israelites, experienced religious oppression, migration, endured dire conditions: starvation, sickness, death, ultimately freedom and a blessing in their new land in America. The first Thanksgiving 1621 is connected to the Jewish blessings of (Birkat HaGomel) thanking God for crossing the ocean, arriving at a destination, surviving illness and freedom from imprisonment. 53 Pilgrims survived, nearly half died during the first brutal winter.
Indeed, not just America, but all of Western Civilization, including art, culture, education, and all--is mostly built on Greek Philosophy and The Old Testament.
Thank you for this wonderful and detailed explanation of how the Torah is an indelible aspect of American ethos.
During my career as an appellate prosecutor I learned that many of Connecticut’s criminal statutes came directly from the Torah, citing chapter and verse.
To this day, Connecticut has a two-witness rule in capital cases drawn directly from the Torah.
There’s no denying this connection to America’s founding principles. Rather there’s only the ability to ignore it.
Thanks again.
Antisemitism is evil and unAmerican. But so is Zionism.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks documents the importance of the Old Testament to the English Revolution of Oliver Cromwell. This is the origin of the faith of the Pilgrims who fled England for their new homeland in the United States. The writer George Elliot studied the Talmud with a Jewish friend when writing her novel Daniel Deronda which also promoted Zionism before Herzl.
So much knowledge here. If only every Americans jew knew all of this not to mention every single college student, especially at thd most prestigious schools.
Race, a truly wonderful article. Before October 7—and especially before the aftermath of October 7—this article would have resonated with me so deeply. I was fiercely patriotic. I loved both Canada and America.
But something changed in me. It's almost like losing a best friend, a true love, or even a parent. You still care. You still remember what they meant to you. But the relationship is no longer the same.
I think I always looked at Germany as an exception to the rule. I never believed that Jews could once again feel this way in Canada or the United States. But now I realize how transient patriotism and belonging can be for Jews. When times are good, we're part of the country. When things turn, we quickly discover how conditional that belonging can be.
I'm glad you still have that deep love and patriotism for America. I truly am. But for me, it isn't there anymore. I care about America. I care about Canada. But I no longer consider either one my true home.
The irony is that my only real patriotism now is toward Israel—a country I have never even visited. Because after everything I've seen since October 7, I have come to believe that Israel is the only true home the Jewish people have.
That's the reality for me. And frankly, that's the sadness of it.