[City Journal] The Great Jewish-American Entanglement

An interlocked mix of faith, politics, and identity lies at the root of America’s unique bond with the Jewish people, argues Walter Russell Mead.

The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel and the Fate of the Jewish People. By Walter Russell Mead. Knopf; 654 pages; $29.99.

Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead’s The Arc of a Covenant (2022) is a 654-page monument to America’s exceptional bond with the Jewish people, but a similar point is made, in far fewer words, by drawing a simpler contrast with another nation that self-identifies as exceptional. In 1789, France and America marked their entry into modernity by granting Jews equal rights as full-fledged citizens. At the time, only about 1.000 of them lived in the thirteen colonies to France’s more substantial community of 40.000, spread primarily around Bordeaux (largely Sephardic Jews from Portugal) and Alsace-Lorraine (Ashkenazi and German-speaking). Yet through the latter half of the 19th century, two emigration waves — from Germany in the 1840s and Russia in the 1880s — worked to turn America into the world’s largest Jewish community — 2 million — by the time immigration laws were tightened in 1924.

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