Israel Matzav

America and Israel

America didn’t begin at Philadelphia in 1776 or 1787, or at Plymouth in 1620. In a very real sense, it started at a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula more than 3,000 years ago. America was founded on those values – liberty, justice and righteousness – originally articulated in the Torah.

The first settlers on these shores and the Founding Fathers alike were inspired by a Jewish worldview. Like the Israelites, they believed they too had come into the wilderness to create a new society – one dedicated to a Biblical vision.

The first American holiday, Thanksgiving, is based on a commandment in Leviticus, when the Children of Israel are told -- after they entered the Promised Land -- to have a “thanksgiving unto the Lord,” from their first crops.

So strong was the bond that Cotton Mather, the famous Puritan minister, wanted to make Hebrew the official language of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. For the Great Seal of the United States, Benjamin Franklin proposed a depiction of Moses leading the Children of Israel through the Red Sea.

Daniel Webster, who was born during the Revolution, and was close to the Founding Fathers (intellectually, as well as chronologically) said of the Jews: “I feel, and have ever felt, respect and sympathy for all that remains of that extraordinary people who preserved through the darkness of so many centuries, the knowledge of one supreme spiritual Being …. The Hebrew Scriptures I regard as the fountain from which we draw all we know of the world around us, and of our own character and destiny as intelligent, moral and responsible beings.”

Webster echoed the sentiments of John Adams, who declared, “I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation.”

That appreciation for the people who introduced mankind to what’s come to be known as the Judeo-Christian ethic is reflected in the institutions the Founders established on these shores.

As my friend Rabbi Daniel Lapin of Toward Tradition explains, over the course of history, only two nations were founded on a vision – ancient Israel and the United States of America. For each, the vision (in one case, articulated in Mosaic Law and, in the other, initially set forth in the Mayflower Compact) actually preceded possession of the land.

Every president of the United States, from George Washington to George W. Bush, has taken the oath of office on a book that includes the story of the patriarchs and prophets, the Exodus, the encounter at Sinai and the possession of the Promised Land.

The rights and duties set forth in the United States Constitution are echoes of a far older covenant. It’s no coincidence that the first amendments to the Constitution (designated The Bill of Rights) are ten in number, as are the first commandments given at Sinai.

Throughout our nation’s capital, testaments to America’s Jewish heritage are chiseled in stone.

A representation of The Ten Commandments is engraved on each of the oak doors leading to the Supreme Court’s courtroom. A frieze of Moses adorns the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. In the National Archives Building, near the Declaration of Independence, the Roman numerals one through 10 are set in the floor.

More than Rome or Athens, London or Paris, the light that guided our infant republic shone forth from Jerusalem.

The US and Israel are soul mates -- two nations joined at the heart. Colonial America was only the beginning.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:38 PM