This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.

Most Americans know that the roots of our liberty are often traced to

enlightenment thinkers like Locke, Montesquieu, and Jefferson, or perhaps to the New Testament

and the Christian ideas about morality that helped shape Western civilization. Far fewer people

know about the Old Testament, the Jewish roots of American liberty. But they should. Here's Rabbi Dr.

Stuart Halpern, co-author of the phenomenal book Jewish Roots of Liberty, with the story of Samson,

the Bible's anti-hero.

When we typically think of biblical heroes, we don't picture crazy-haired, crazy-behaved, wild men with bulging muscles.

And yet there's a figure, Samson, the biblical anti-hero.

For those in need of a quick refresher,

Samson is a character whose tale is told in the book of judges,

the wild Western era of ancient Israel.

When no one was in charge, there was no king. Each person did as was right in his own eye. In need of a tribal chieftain to lead them against the Philistine enemy,

there arose a young man dedicated from birth as a Nazare. He was not allowed to cut his hair

and not allowed to drink wine nor to approach dead bodies lest he be ritually impure.

Now this was a wild man with wild passion.

He quickly took a liking to local Philistine women, got embroiled in all sorts of fistfights,

and defended Israel in one particularly memorable episode by tying torches to the tales of foxes,

lighting on fire the Philistine fields in an attempt to throw off their yoke.

Eventually, Samson fell under the spell of a local woman named Delilah.

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