What We Talk About When We Talk About Israel
In search of atmosphere and inspiration as I contemplated Walter Russell Mead’s magisterial new book about Israel and Jews in the American imagination, I took the bus from my street in Jerusalem across town to the American Colony. Founded in 1881 by fervent Protestants from Chicago, the colony was one of several attempts by 19th-century Americans to settle the Holy Land. Part of the idea was to induce Jews to take up farming by education or example, thus sparking a Jewish restoration that would in turn bring the Second Coming of Christ. But what made sense in Illinois made less sense in Ottoman Palestine, and the believers ultimately had to admit that real Jews weren’t particularly interested. Today the messianic compound is a luxury hotel.
The American Colony, where I’m writing these lines on a table in the courtyard, is one physical incarnation of the thesis of . Mead, a distinguished professor of foreign affairs, columnist, and author, would like to take us
