Jewish Roots of American Liberty - Encounter Books

Free shipping on all orders over $40


Coming Soon

Jewish Roots of American Liberty

The Impact of Hebraic Ideas on the American Story

$32.99
Available 09/23/2025
Pre-Order

Also Purchase as e-Book

Publication Details

Hardcover / 304 pages
ISBN: 9781641774796
Available: 09/23/2025


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

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 deep kinship that has always existed between the two traditions has risen to the fore. Jewish Roots of American Liberty illustrates how the free institutions that we value so much in today’s America—including Christianity itself—are securely grounded in Jewish antecedents.

The thirty-one essays and documents 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.


About the Authors

Wilfred M. McClay holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College.

Read More

Rabbi Stuart Halpern serves as the Senior Advisor to the Provost and Deputy Director of the Zahava and Moshael J. Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University.

Read More

Related Titles