Jews and America, A Unigue Relationship

I found an brilliant essay on this topic by Rabbi Daniel Lappin. America it turns out has deep ties to Judaism as our founders were largely Protestant and their Puritan underpinnings and believed the Jews were God's Chosen People and deeply held to the teachings and based their laws on Torah in the noahide tradition. They considered Jews the teachers and scholars and most understood Hebrew as their Bibles at least the Old Testament were in Hebrew. This a must read essay, I learned a tremendous amount as I always do from his writings. I would love to attend one of his lectures, a brilliant and good man.

Living as Jews in Christian America
June 10, 2005
By Rabbi Daniel Lapin, President, Toward Tradition

As a boy I hungrily absorbed the eye-opening Torah teaching of my father, the late Avraham Chayim Lapin z”tzl, along with his terrifying tales of the viciousness of Lithuanian and Polish “goyim” that he endured while a student at Telshe Yeshiva in pre-World War II Europe. I quickly came to understand. “Goyim” hate Jews and try to hurt them. That is all there was to it.
Later, as a student at that famed yeshiva located amidst some of the worst slums of northern England, I learned the rough-and-ready science of self defense on the streets of Gateshead. Lurking in the dark alleys that lay between the Beit Midrash and our lodgings, Gateshead “goyim” waited eagerly to prey and pounce upon me and my fellow talmidim. The contrast between those sinister streets full of Tyneside louts with their foul mouths and flying fists and the refined atmosphere of the yeshiva was almost beyond comprehension. My uncles, the distinguished roshei yeshiva, Reb Leib Gurwitz z”tzl and Reb Leib Lapian z”tzl, occasionally commented upon the bloody battle scars borne by their students. Although they would remind us that “goyim” hate Jews, almost as the fulfillment of ancient prophecies, I think they both would have preferred us to evade trouble rather than confronting it. I think they also suspected that their nephew derived more than a little unholy glee from inflicting retaliatory punishment upon our tormentors.