Jewish Roots of American Liberty: The Impact of Hebraic Ideas on the American Story

 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.

Wilfred M. McClay is professor of History at Hillsdale College, where he holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair of Classical History and Western Civilization. His book The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America received the 1995 Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians. Among his other books is the award-winning bestseller, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.

Rabbi Stuart Halpern serves as the senior advisor to the provost and deputy director and chief strategy officer of the Zahava and Moshael J. Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University. He has edited nineteen books, including Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States, Esther in America and The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada. His writings on the Hebrew Bible’s impact on the United States have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Tablet, Jewish Review of Books, First Things, and The Jerusalem Post.