The bond between America and the Jewish people did not begin with the creation of the modern State of Israel.It predates even the founding of our great country 250 years ago.
This relationship has never been simply diplomatic.It is covenantal.Long before there was a United States, there was a people learning to govern themselves by the principles God gave at Sinai.The Puritan settlers read that story not as ancient history but as their own unfolding plot.
In 1630, their leader John Winthrop preached a sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity," closing with the word of Moses to the Children of Israel who were about to enter the Promised Land, urging his followers "to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his Ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with him."LIBERTY AND UNITY: WHAT AMERICA’S 250TH ANNIVERSARY ASKS OF US TODAYPresident Donald Trump speaks to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Oct.13, 2025, before boarding his plane to Sharm El-Sheikh.
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)The Mayflower Compact was understood to be a covenant, not a contract, because its signers understood that a contract is transactional while a covenant is consensual and is based upon freedom and personal responsibility.Scholar Os Guinness documents the source of the American Revolution not in the libraries of Greece or the common law of England, but the Jewish idea of a people who choose, freely and morally, to be bound to one another and to God.In his book America Agonistes, he writes, "America’s debt to the Jews is deepest when it comes to the Hebrew contribution to the founding genius of American freedom."Our founders repeatedly expressed admiration for the Jewish contribution to civilization.
John Adams wrote, "The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation….and have influenced the affairs of mankind more and more ha...