Interfaith Friends and Ideological Foes : American Jews, Evangelicals, and Israel, 1963–2018

Interfaith Friends and Ideological Foes traces the underappreciated role of Jewish communal organizations in fostering interfaith relationships with evangelicals from the mid-twentieth century into the first two decades of the twenty-first.

Interfaith Friends and Ideological Foes examines the evolution of the relationship between American Jews and evangelicals. Amy Weiss argues that Jewish interfaith partnerships with evangelicals developed as a necessary, adaptive strategy to deal with the shifting American political landscape. As evangelicals moved from a subculture to the mainstream, and as their political influence grew, their steadfast defense of Israel made them attractive partners for Jewish communal organizations. Jewish groups acknowledged-and accepted-a certain amount of ideological inconsistency to secure broad political support for Israel. This book speaks directly to today''s challenges regarding polarization and the difficulty of coalition-building. Pundits and the public tend to describe the present as an especially divided time in history. Intensified support for white Christian nationalism, the rise of antisemitism, and debates surrounding Israeli governmental policies have all created a divisive American landscape. Support for Israel, at almost any cost, has shaped the policies of major American Jewish organizations, sometimes leading them to act in profound tension with the views of their constituents and their own longstanding commitments to American democracy and religious pluralism. Th evidence presented in this book upends established claims about Jewish organizations'' commitments to promoting religious pluralism. It also helps to explain how support for Israel has become increasingly associated with the American political right.