‘Weird and wonderful’

Interview: Writer Zev Chafets explores the controversial love-hate relationship between Jews and evangelicals | Marvin Olasky

Zev Chafets, born and raised in Michigan, moved to Israel in 1967 and became director of Israel's Government Press Office, then returned to the United States in 2000. He is the author of A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists, and One Man's Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical Alliance (HarperCollins, 2007).

Although he is an agnostic, Chafets told the Los Angeles Times recently that in the war against terror, "I'd rather be in a bomb shelter—or a foxhole—with Jerry Falwell than with Jerry Seinfeld." With the death of one of Israel's major Christian backers, how is the Israel-evangelical relationship likely to develop in the post-Falwell era?

WORLD: I've met your wife Lisa Beyer, a non-Jewish Time editor who was the chief of that magazine's Jerusalem Bureau, so I have a sense of why you'd want to explore an alliance that you call (in your new book's subtitle) the "weird and wonderful" Jewish-Protestant alliance. Could you explain a bit about your background?