Favorable views of the Israeli people among evangelicals – long the most reliably pro-Israel constituency in American life – have dropped 10 points in a single year, according to a recent Pew survey.
Among evangelicals under 30, only 32% now hold a favorable view of Israel at all. Researchers point to a generation that never absorbed the theological case its parents and grandparents took for granted.
The architects of Christian Zionism – men like Jerry Falwell Sr. and John Hagee – built a movement in the previous generation. Their grandchildren have largely been left to work it out on their own, at a time when social media is working overtime against them.
We do not believe the answer to that erosion is another slick campaign or more talking points. We believe the answer is a Shabbat table, 25 hours with the phones off, and a bowl of chicken soup.
Last week, nearly 100 young leaders from Eagles’ Wings arrived in Efrat for Kabbalat Shabbat. For most, it was the first time they had ever set foot in a synagogue. By the end of the service, they were dancing in circles with their hosts, and that night more than two dozen Efrat families walked their guests home for Shabbat dinner. One of the host families was Aliza and Rabbi Leo Dee, who asked their guests a simple question: what had surprised them most about Israel?
One of the young men answered that what struck him most was the tangible feeling of God’s faithfulness. He explained that he had come expecting to see a country, and instead he had witnessed a covenant. He had met a nation that has endured exile, genocide and, in that very room at the Dee residence, personal tragedy of the most devastating kind, still light Shabbat candles, still bless their children, and still sing songs to God at a dinner table until midnight.
That observation carries more theological weight than the young man may have realized. For much of Christian history, the argument ran in precisely the opposite direction: that Jewish suffering and dispersion were themselves the proof of a broken covenant, that the Jews had been superseded, and that the Church had inherited what Israel forfeited.
Replacement Theology is a doctrine that has done enormous damage throughout history, and is resurfacing in the younger generation today.
What this young man articulated at the Shabbat table was that the remarkable endurance of the Jewish people and the flourishing of a sovereign Jewish state is not a footnote to that old theology but its clear refutation.
He did not arrive at that conclusion through a lecture or a seminar. He arrived at it over soup, songs, and a Jewish family willing to go a bit outside of their comfort zone.
Shabbat is an underused platform for advocacy
Shabbat is the platform we believe is radically underused in Israel advocacy: not better messaging, but more open doors.
Efrat happens to be one of the best-positioned communities in Israel for these experiences as a dense neighborhood of English-speaking olim (immigrants to Israel) who often describe themselves as outsiders in Israeli life, still working in a second language and translating a culture that isn’t quite their own. But that same status makes them uniquely suited to be the bridge to America’s next generation.
Israel365 and Eagles’ Wings intend to build on Shabbat in Efrat and to extend this model to other English-speaking communities across Israel, building a standing network of Jewish families ready to host visiting Christian delegations for Shabbat, trip after trip, year after year.
Fortunately, the crisis Pew documented is largely generational, not ideological. Young evangelicals were not lost to an argument; they simply were never invited to meet the Jewish people for themselves. The correction, we believe, will be won one Friday night at a time, in the homes of ordinary Israeli families willing to set a few more places at the Shabbat table.
Rabbi Tuly Weisz is founder of Israel365. Bishop Robert Stearns is founder and president of Eagles’ Wings.