On March 25, 2026, Dr. Ruth Wisse delivered the Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Being invited to offer this address is the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. Her talk, “A Message from the Blue and White in the Red, White, and Blue,” offered recommendations in honor of America’s 250th birthday drawn from the wellspring of the story of Israel—whose modern national colors are blue and white—as laid out in the Hebrew Bible millennia ago.

Remarkably, the talk unintentionally echoed a long-forgotten speech by John Quincy Adams, one of America’s foundational figures.

The Shema

Wisse drew particular focus to the prayer in Deuteronomy 6 known as the Shema, from the Hebrew word for “hear” that begins verse 4: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

The Shema, Wisse noted, “tells us to love God and follow His commandments.” The passage, then emphasizes, no less than seven times, the regularity with which commitment to the covenant must be expressed. “Teach them to your children (1). You shall speak of them when you sit in your home (2) and when you walk outdoors (3), when you lie down (4) and when you rise (5). You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for a reminder between your eyes” (6).

This last part is understood by the Jewish tradition to mandate the wearing of tefillin, phylacteries, the small black boxes with leather straps that, as Wisse puts it, “join the head to the heart.” Then, Deuteronomy continues, “And you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates” (7), which is fulfilled by the presence of a mezuzah containing the Shema that is affixed to doorposts in Jewish homes. Wisse warned that Americans can and should echo this Hebraic practice to ensure that the United States’s founding principles are sustained.…