The early British settlers in North American took their Bible seriously—including the verses in Genesis (12: 1-3) that promised a special blessing to those who blessed the children of Abraham. Amazingly, leading scholars and preachers emphasized this promise even before a significant number of Jews had found their way to the New World. Ironically, the original center of antisemitic sentiment was in New York (then New Amsterdam), which later developed the largest, most productive Jewish community on earth. John Adams and George Washington praised and welcomed Jewish settlers, and even befriended Mordecai Manuel Noah who developed a plan to build a “New Israel” on an island in the Niagara River in upstate New York. Later, Warder Cresson, a prominent Quaker (and briefly a convert to Mormonism), became America’s first consul to Jerusalem, where he debated Herman Melville on the Holy Land’s future and tried to deploy American aid in rebuilding a new Jewish commonwealth, based on scientific agriculture, in the then desolate site of ancient Judea.

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