Born in 1798 to a respected Quaker family in Pennsylvania, Warder Cresson was attracted as an adult to various new Protestant sects, and took an especially keen interest in the Hebrew Bible. In 1844 he set off for the Land of Israel, having secured the position of American consul to Jerusalem, although by the time he arrived he found a letter revoking the appointment. Alan Dowty tells his story:

[In the 1840s Cresson] was drawn increasingly to Judaism, coming into contact with Rabbi Isaac Leeser of Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia, an important Jewish leader of his time. . . . Like most devout Christians, Cresson read the Old Testament (that is, the Jewish Bible) closely; unlike most, he came to feel that it was definitive and [more authoritative than] the Christian scriptures that came later. [While] Cresson embraced the goal of the Ingathering of the Exiles, he rejected the attendant notion that this required Jews to convert to Christianity. . . .

In March 1848, after nearly four years in Jerusalem, Cresson converted to Judaism and took the name Michael Boaz Israel ben Avraham. Dowty continues:

Cresson returned to Philadelphia in September of the same year, eager to bring his family into [his new faith]. But his wife . . . and most of his family, claiming that Cresson was clearly out of his mind, lodged a charge of lunacy and obtained a verdict of insanity from a sheriff’s jury.

Cresson appealed the verdict and remained unconfined pending trial, which took place two years later, in May 1851. . . . Cresson’s lawyer argued that the basis of the lunacy claim was what would today be called anti-Semitism, [accusing Mrs. Cresson of] “endeavoring to stigmatize the venerable faith of Israel.” In his charge to the jury, the judge instructed them not to take religious beliefs into account in determining whether Cresson was insane. Accordingly, the jury took very little time to declare Cresson sane. The case was widely publicized at the time and the outcome was applauded by most major newspapers. It is considered a landmark in the defense of religious liberty.

Cresson, unsurprisingly, divorced his wife. He quickly returned to Jerusalem, marrying a woman in the Sephardi community and fathering two children (neither survived beyond childhood). . . . In his later years he tried to further pre-Zionist Jewish settlement by building an agricultural colony in the Valley of Refaim, the area later developed as Jerusalem’s German Colony. But it appears that he was never able to raise the necessary funds.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.