America’s Words and Amsterdam’s Example

Since the time of Tocqueville, Americans have been best able to understand themselves through the eyes of an insightful outsider. It should therefore be no surprise that the best summation of the lessons of the 2024 election came not from an American pundit but from a farsighted foreigner. On the morning of November 6, Konstantin Kisin, a British intellectual born in Russia, penned a list of 10 reflections regarding the results of November 5, 2024. The reflections are all the more interesting because America is not his intended audience. As Kisin tells us, his thoughts are mainly for “my British and European friends who are ‘shocked’ and ‘surprised’” and who “didn’t see it coming.”

All 10 comments are worth reading, but several stick out. Thus there is, for example, Kisin’s reflection on wealth creation in the United States:

Americans do not believe in socialism. They believe in meritocracy. They don’t care about the super rich being super rich because they know that they live in a country where being super rich is available to anyone with the talent and drive to make it. They don’t resent success, they celebrate it.

Then there are Kisin’s comments on race relations in the United States. Kisin completely fathoms, and succinctly summarizes, how Americans understand that there are serious sins in the history of their remarkable country, but also why wokeism is not a proper response to these sins. In fact, Kisin continues, most Americans think that it is, instead, a perverse extension of the very same sins:

Americans are sensitive about racial issues and their country’s imperfect history. They believe that those who are disadvantaged by the circumstances of their birth should be given the opportunity to succeed. What they reject, however, is the idea that in order to address the errors of the past, new errors must be made. DEI is racist. They know it and they reject it precisely because they are not racist.

Most important of all is his reflection regarding the impact of the Gaza conflict on the American electorate. All indications are that unstinting oratorical support for Israel and its war only helped the ultimate victors in the election. Exit polls reveal that around two-thirds of voters agree with American support for its ally, with many of those voters asserting that the administration was not supporting Israel enough. Kisin was raised Christian but is partially of Jewish descent, and his words ought to be taught in civics class in Jewish day schools across America: “Americans are the most philosemitic nation on earth. October 7 and the pro-Hamas left’s reaction shocked them to their very core because, among other things, they remember what 9/11 was like and they know jihad when they see it.”

Kisin is exactly right, and another insightful outsider allows us to understand why philo-Semitism in America is so profound. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks recounted how, as a college student, he visited Washington for the first time and was struck by the fact that the memorials for great American figures featured not only images but words as well. The Jefferson Memorial, for example, features not only a statue of the author of the Declaration of Independence but also the words of the document that changed the world. David Chester French’s memorial for Lincoln houses not only the statue of an enthroned president but also the chiseled texts of the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural. In contrast, Sacks continued, the statue in Westminster of Churchill—for whom words were somewhat important—contains only a single word: “Churchill.”

The point, Sacks explained, is that America was inspired by the Hebraic conception of covenant, of a nation dedicated to an idea. Only with this in mind can the story of Jews in America—and the American affection for Israel—be understood.

It bears remembering that America was not the first nation to be inspired by the Jews. As I write these words, the Internet is filled with videos of an anti-Semitic pogrom in Amsterdam. The images ought to be haunting and horrific to anyone, but they are particularly so for those who understand what Amsterdam once meant to Jewish history.

It was in Amsterdam that the Jews of Europe—expelled from England and burned alive in the auto-da-fé of Spain and Portugal—first found a beacon of freedom in the 1600s. As the historian Steven Nadler notes, the fact that this occurred is not happenstance; it “goes right to the heart of Dutch identity in the seventeenth century, particularly as this evolved through the struggle for independence from Spain and the political, social, and artistic forces unleashed by that crusade.” The Dutch, Nadler reflects,

saw their own recent history—their campaign for political sovereignty, liberated from Spain, and for religious freedom from Catholic oppression—reflected in the biblical story of the Israelite struggle for emancipation from bondage in Egypt and the subsequent fight to claim the lands that God had promised them.… By 1648, with the Dutch victory over Spain finalized with the Peace of Westphalia, an equally apt, and equally overplayed, biblical image was available: David vanquishing Goliath. This brilliant vision went beyond the military struggle and colored the internal politics of the new nation. The Dutch found in Hebrew Scripture a rich source of models for both martial and civic virtues: courage, temperance, fortitude, wisdom, and justice. The republic was often likened to the Israelite commonwealth, and its rulers to the Hebrew judges and kings.

Before America, there was Amsterdam. But it was not in the Netherlands that Jews found full equality; that would come only in the country that would place human equality at the core of its creed and consider itself covenantal in seeking to further this vision. That is why Kisin is correct in understanding the philo-Semitism that is still to be found in the American electorate. It is rooted in the fact that, as Sacks put it, “Israel, ancient and modern, and the United States are the two supreme examples of societies constructed in conscious pursuit of an idea.”

What happened in Amsterdam is, of course, a warning for America, for it is, alas, not difficult to imagine a similar mob made manifest on an Ivy League college quad or on the streets of Los Angeles or New York. Nevertheless, at the end of an eventful first week in November, one truth is quite clear. The commonality between America and Israel—and the bond built upon it—endures. And surely, whatever one’s views on the many policy questions facing this country in this season of Thanksgiving, that is a reason for gratitude.