America’s Founders and Israel’s City of Faith

As Jerusalem Day is commemorated this year beginning Sunday evening, May 25th, all Americans have reason to celebrate. While the occasion marks the reunification of Jerusalem by Israel during 1967’s Six Day War, it is, at its core, dedicated to both the historical and contemporary significance of the city. And Jerusalem’s eternal resonance as a symbol of covenantal community is something the American Founders well understood.

Roughly two weeks before the start of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, in front of the General Assembly of the state of Connecticut, pastor Elizur Goodrich offered a comparison between the emerging nation and the ancient Israelite city in his speech “The Principles of Civil Union And Happiness Considered And Recommended.” 

He started by citing Psalm 122’s third verse, “Jerusalem is builded, as a city that is compact together.” The city, he emphasized, was federalized by faith. “It’s [sic] inhabitants were not a loose, disconnected people, but most strictly united, not only among themselves, but with all the tribes of Israel, into a holy nation and commonwealth, under … their king and their God.” Jerusalem housed the legal, political and religious authorities, a separation of powers that America would be wise to imitate. “Hence both by divine appointment, and the common consent of the nation, it was established as the local centre of communion in all the privileges of their civil and sacred constitution. There were the thrones of judgement, the thrones of the house of David, and the supreme courts of justice, and of the public administration [the Levites and Priests who served in the Temple].”

If the newborn America was to flourish like biblical Israel, it would be through a polity similarly composed through covenant and guided by righteousness. “[O]n the walls of our Jerusalem: Let not these walls be daubed with the untempered mortar of injustice, jealousy and discord; but may they be cemented by the uniting principles of justice, benevolence and public spirit,” he preached. 

If those who were forming the new nation maintained “a noble spirit of true patriotism, having no narrow and private interests at heart; but seeking the good of our Jerusalem, build it up on the great foundations of truth and righteousness. Then peace will be within our walls, and prosperity within our palaces.” In this way, he prayed, “the United States, may, after the model of Jerusalem, be ‘builded, as a city that is compact together.’”

George Washington shared Goodrich’s belief in Jerusalem as a model for America. In over 50 letters and speeches, both as a general and as America’s first president, Washington spoke of his aspiration that the country be a place wherein each individual should “sit under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid.” This image, a prophetic vision of a Messianic-era of the city sparkling with serenity and prosperity, is drawn from Micah 4:4. It also appears in 1 and 2 Kings, Zechariah, and in the apocryphal 1 Maccabees.

George Washington shared Goodrich’s belief in Jerusalem as a model for America. In over 50 letters and speeches, both as a general and as America’s first president, Washington spoke of his aspiration that the country be a place wherein each individual should “sit under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid.”  

As the historian Jon Meacham has noted, “The image of every man being free from fear, comforted by the shade of his own conscience, is vivid and enduring, and places the ideal and the reality of liberty and mutual understanding at the heart of the American tradition from the first year of the first presidency.”

American towns and cities named for Jerusalem can be found in Arkansas, Ohio, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island and Virginia. The island of Saint Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands even houses a small neighborhood called Jerusalem and Figtree Hill.

Though most Americans might not be aware of this history, Jerusalem Day provides an apt moment to teach it. After all, the Jewish people’s beloved city, miraculously rebuilt in our own era, stands everlasting as a source of inspiration for all those whose hearts possess faith in truth and righteousness, justice, liberty and public spirit. 

Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” which examines the Exodus story’s impact on the United States, “Esther in America,” “Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.”