Wilfred M. McClay

Jewish Roots of American Liberty

For much of American history, an impassable gulf seemed to separate Jews and Christians, keeping their respective peoples and cultures far apart. But in recent decades that has begun to change. The rise of a militant secularism, one equally hostile to Israel and to America’s Judeo-Christian values and institutions, has unexpectedly drawn Jews and Christians closer together. In the face of a common civilizational threat, the study of the two traditions’ joint contributions to the West has risen to the fore. Jewish Roots of American Liberty illustrates how the free institutions, principles, and liberties that we value so much in today’s America—including Christianity itself—are securely grounded in Jewish antecedents. The twenty-one chapters that comprise this book offer a sampling of the many ways—Biblical, cultural, literary, and political—that the Hebraic tradition has contributed to the treasury of American self-understanding. Topics range from the titanic influence of the Hebrew Bible on the political culture of the American Founding, to the distinctly Hebraic vision of figures like John Milton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Abraham Lincoln, to the Biblical heroes whose examples run through the canon of the American imagination, and more. Suitable for both classroom use and stand-alone reading, the highly accessible contents of Jewish Roots of American Liberty will inform and inspire those who want to illuminate the bond between the American and Jewish stories and convey the blessings of that bond to a rising generation.