The Sanity of John Fetterman

Let us ponder the strange similarities linking the striking stories of Warder Cresson and John Fetterman. Ostensibly these two individuals, whose lives are separated by more than a century, have nothing to do with each other. Yet both embody, in their own way, archetypal American tales, in that they reflect the bonds between this country and the Jewish people and the way these bonds have endured despite the efforts of some to undo them.

Warder Cresson’s 19th-century tale has already been told in these pages (“The Forgotten Proto-Zionist,” December 2019). The first person appointed American consul to Jerusalem, he was born a Quaker and proceeded as an adult to join the Shakers, an ecstatic form of Christianity. He then embraced Mormonism, then adopted the teachings of Seventh-day Adventists and then the teachings of the frontier Restorationist movement. After embracing these four different denominations—all of which had been created in America within decades of each other—Cresson set sail for the Middle East, ultimately returning from Jerusalem an Orthodox Jew, predicting a Jewish return to the Holy Land.

It was at this point that the woman he had married before his departure had him declared legally insane, utilizing the declaration to seize control of Cresson’s property. The application of lunacy to Cresson seemed solely based on his conversion to Judaism; in contrast to his many other previous conversions, it was only a love for the Jewish people that was considered crazy. Cresson, in turn, sued, instigating a multiyear trial in which he had to litigate his sanity, ultimately establishing, in his attorney’s words, that “the only charge left with which to accuse my client is that he became a Jew.” He emerged from his battle victorious and returned to Jerusalem, establishing as a legal principle that concern for the Jewish presence in the Holy Land does not mean that one has lost his mind.