Even before it existed, Israel was on American minds. Colonial preachers called their new land Canaan; Herman Melville saw Americans as “the peculiar, chosen people, the Israel of our time”. In the Second Great Awakening of the late 18th and…

Even before it existed, Israel was on American minds. Colonial preachers called their new land Canaan; Herman Melville saw Americans as “the peculiar, chosen people, the Israel of our time”. In the Second Great Awakening of the late 18th and…