In webinar #3 we have the opportunity to listen to 1) the eminent scholar of relations between notable Christian and Jewish Zionists, Professor Shalom Goldman of Middlebury College in Vermont, and 2) Professor Jonathan Rynhold of Bar-Ilan University, one of the leading experts on US-Israeli relations.
Professor Goldman recounts the close partnership of Theodor Herzl and the Anglican priest, William Hechler during the early Zionist movement. Concerning the Mandate period, Goldman tells the fascinating story of the co-operation of both Hayim Bialik (Israel’s national poet) and Joseph Klausner (the outstanding scholar and polymath) with the Anglican Hebraist, Father Herbert Danby. Goldman then describes the important role of Johnny Cash in the strengthening Christian Zionist movement of the 1960s and 70s in the US.
Professor Rynhold highlights 19th-century Protestantism’s teaching of esteem toward the Jews even before Jewish immigration to the US began (re: the Blackstone Memorial of 1891). He goes on to describe the contemporary nature of Christian Evangelical support for Israel, stressing that in the Trump years, marked by the administration’s intense cultivation of Evangelical favor, a disruption of the US’s traditional bipartisan support for Israel has occurred. Speaking a week before the US elections, Rynhold then prognosticates on the relations between the Israeli leadership and a Biden/Harris White House.