Bauer believes Israel and America are fighting essentially the same battle, the battle against Islamic terrorism. “The only solution is to completely defeat the enemy and then figure out what a just peace is.”

But for the Christians, this blossoming relationship is about much more than politics. Evangelical Christians’ support for a safe and secure Israel with borders stretching perhaps from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, and their oft-expressed love for the Jewish people (“the apple of God’s eye”), are rooted in deeply held religious beliefs.

They believe God promised Israel to the Jews. It is the Holy Land. The land where Jesus lived and died. The land where Jesus will return to save the world. “When you add this belief that Israel is their spiritual homeland,” says Rabbi Eckstein, “to their belief that we are in a global battle against terrorism, it is a powerful mix.”

It is the kind of support rarely offered to Jews—especially these days. “Let’s be honest,” says Rabbi A. James Rudin, who was director of inter-religious affairs during his more than 30 years with the American Jewish Committee. “It’s hard to ignore their support even, as my father used to say, if they’re doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.”

Further adding to their appeal as suitors, Evangelicals have considerable political muscle. A recent Gallup poll reported that 41 percent of voting-age Americans are born-again or Evangelical Christians. Most, of course, are active, committed Republicans, and they have been the catalyst for the shift in political power from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and Southwest.

“Israelis have known for a long time that Evangelicals are about the strongest supporters Israel has,” says Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “It’s been a shock to Jews in America, but I think it is beginning to catch on now.”

It is not a shock to Eckstein, who for years was the lone Jewish voice in the wilderness working to build bridges between the two groups. “More and more Jews see the Evangelical community as a strategic ally for Israel,” he says. “In fact, the Evangelicals may now be seen as even more important allies than the American Jewish community itself. But are Jews willing to have a beer with them? I’m not so sure.”

At first glance, this alliance looks like a very bizarre mixed marriage. Jews are mainly urban, educated, liberal Democrats. They also tend to be secular. “We take refuge in our ethnicity rather than our spirituality,” says Rabbi Gerald Meister, an adviser to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Christian relations. Jews are extremely uncomfortable with God talk, even if it’s other Jews doing the talking.

Evangelicals, on the other hand, are unabashed in expressing their love for Jesus and their devotion to the Gospel. They tend to be similarly blunt about their social agenda. On nearly every key domestic issue—abortion, gay rights, school prayer, school vouchers, gun control, separation of church and state, affirmative action—they hold a different position from that of most Jews.

There are, to be sure, exceptions. On the Jewish side, there’s a small but growing group of Republicans that includes Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, and the rest of the neocons. In the Christian camp, it’s important to note that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Richard Gephardt, and Jimmy Carter are all Southern Baptists.

This yawning gap on so many critical issues, however, continues to keep many Jews from welcoming Christian support. Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, believes it is dangerous for Jews to compromise their beliefs. “If the American Jewish community buys the support of the religious right by its acquiescence on domestic policies, that would damage our religious freedom and our tradition of pluralism and tolerance,” he says. “It will be a disaster for America and for Jews.”

Of course, this match between Evangelicals and Jews may be no less odd than the coming-together of leftists, human-rights activists, atheists, and assorted liberals with Islamic fundamentalists. Though they are ideologically light-years apart on virtually every issue, they demonstrate together because they share a hatred of George W. Bush and the conviction that Israel is an imperialist oppressor.

“America is a nation of millions who believe like me that Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron, and Jericho are part of the biblical heartland,” Elon says. “We can argue about the Messiah, when he will come, how he will come, but we agree about the basics. And this is more important than anything else.”

The alliance gives Jews a lot more clout when they campaign on behalf of Israel. It is not Jews alone beseeching Congress and the White House on Middle East policy. When Evangelicals speak out, too, it doesn’t look as though American foreign policy is being disproportionately shaped by a small minority with a powerful lobby and an insider’s knowledge of the system.

“It’s not President Bush being blackmailed or pressured by the lobbyists of a minority,” Elon says. “It’s good for American Jews to understand that they have friends in the White House and on Capitol Hill who will honor the Bible and protect Israel because of their own beliefs.”

American Jewish support for Israel is also affected by the reality on the ground in the Middle East. When Israel appears to be too aggressive or too forceful or to be mistreating the Palestinians, liberal American Jews get uncomfortable. Though few would admit it publicly, they are at times embarrassed about Israel among their liberal Christian friends who sympathize with the long-suffering Palestinians and see Israel as some sort of reckless Goliath. The settlements, the fence, the depictions of soldiers shooting at kids, Ariel Sharon’s belligerence: All of it causes great angst among secular, liberal Jews.

“We are not supposed to be victors,” says Rabbi Gerald Meister. “We are not supposed to survive well.”

Binyamin Elon is more brutally blunt: “I’m not going back to Auschwitz to regain anybody’s sympathy.”

The Evangelicals, however, suffer no doubts about the rightness of the cause. “It would be a terrible mistake to try to create a Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan in the West Bank,” Gary Bauer says without a hint of self-consciousness. He believes the land belongs to Israel and economic incentives should be used to “encourage” West Bank Palestinians to go somewhere else.

He is equally unambiguous on the subject of Palestinian suffering: “The suffering of the Palestinian people is due to the actions of their leaders and to the behavior of the other Arab and Muslim states.”

Dr. John Hagee is pastor and impresario of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, a sprawling, colonnaded, 5,000-seat facility that is so active it has to hold Sunday-morning services in two sessions. With as many as a dozen ministers on staff, its own television programming, and a robust business selling books and videotapes, Cornerstone is typical of the thriving mega-churches throughout the South and Southwest.

Hagee is a passionate supporter of Israel with a long history of involvement in the cause. He recalls sitting in the kitchen of the family home in Channelview, Texas, as a boy, listening to the radio one day in 1948 when the news broke that the U.S. had recognized the state of Israel. Hagee has a vivid memory of his father, a pastor and a Bible scholar, looking across the table at him. “He was a man of few words,” Hagee remembers, “and he said to me, ‘This is the most important biblical event of the twentieth century.’ We both cried with joy, and to this day I believe that to be exactly true. Every major prophet in the Old Testament said that the state of Israel would be reborn. Isaiah 66:8 says Israel will be born in a day, and it happened just like the prophets said it would.”

Every fall, Cornerstone hosts “A Night to Honor Israel.” At last year’s event, the church was packed, the program was beamed around the world by satellite, and the keynote speaker was Tom DeLay. There were also video appearances by Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu.

At one point, enormous American and Israeli flags were unfurled side by side from the ceiling, and the church choir (and many in the congregation) sang “The Star Spangled Banner” and “Hatikvah.” Hagee talked about the importance of Israel for twenty minutes, and before the evening was over, he presented a check for $1.5 million to the president of United Jewish Communities.

This kind of extraordinary Christian support for Israel still comes as something of a shock to most East and West Coast Jews (not to mention most East and West Coast mainline Protestants and Catholics).

When talking about the founding of Israel and its early days as a nation, Hagee sounds as awestruck and full of wonder as the World War II generation of American Jews once did. “The Jewish people came from 66 nations of the world, speaking every conceivable language,” he says in sonorous, gravelly, preacherlike tones. “And they started studying Hebrew, and miraculously the Hebrew language was reborn. And a nation that started out draining the swamps and fighting mosquitoes became a powerful, forceful nation in the Middle East. It is an enormous miracle. Israel is the only nation ever created by a sovereign act of God.”