Zev Chafets has written books of fiction and nonfiction, many about aspects of life in Israel, where he lived for many years and served as the director of the Government Press Office, dealing with foreign journalists under Prime Minister Begin.

In “A Match Made in Heaven” (HarperCollins, 231 pages, $24.95), Mr. Chafets has turned his sharp reportorial and rhetorical eyes to the dynamics of the highly unusual love-hate triangle among Christian fundamentalists, Israel, and American Jewry.

Mr. Chafets traces the opening to the Christian right by Israeli leaders, beginning with David Ben-Gurion and stepped up by Menachem Begin. It was Begin’s dalliance that caught the attention of the American Jewish leadership. For one thing, they were unsure of the Israeli right, which had only just come to power following 29 years of rule by the social democratic Labor Party. But as Mr. Chafets writes, they were “scandalized and outraged by the company Begin was keeping.”

For the Israeli right, finding the evangelicals was like finding the 10 lost tribes: Suddenly there was a growing American constituency that, unlike the American Jewish community, supported the notion that the entire land of Israel was God-given to the Jewish people and that any other claims were inferior.

Meanwhile, a former employee of the Anti-Defamation League, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, was (according to Mr. Chafets) rebuffed when he proposed a pro-Israel outreach to the Christian Right. Rabbi Eckstein left ADL and formed the enormously successful International Fellowship of Christians and Jews which, inter alia, raises significant funds for projects in Israel from evangelical donors.

According to Mr. Chafets, the evangelicals (along with conservative Catholic allies, although this is not commented on in the book) have been offering American Jews a “bargain … to add ‘Judeo’ to the name of the firm.”

Mr. Chafets argues that such an offer “is not easily dismissed,” and, indeed, descriptions of America as a “Judeo-Christian culture” are far more soothing than references to America as a “Christian nation.”

Mr. Chafets is frustrated that the offer isn’t being taken up. Christian conservatives are “extending a hand of friendship and wartime alliance to Jews,” he writes, adding that the Jews are succumbing to an “ancient tribal instinct to slap that hand away.”

Mr. Chafets recognizes that accepting the bargain will require American Jews to temper their positions over domestic issues that divide many evangelicals from the greater part of the organized Jewish community — for example, school prayer and abortion rights.

As to the historical mistrust, Mr. Chafets argues that, in any event, the Christian conservatives are not anti-Jewish: “If the conservative Christians they believe to be anti-Semites actually were anti-Semites, life wouldn’t seem so secure to [American Jews].”

Mr. Chafets presents significant evidence that most Christian conservatives support Israel on what we might call secular grounds. In any event, only “a minority of evangelicals cite theological belief as the reason they support Israel.”

Still it is a cause of consternation among many Jews that many evangelicals believe the establishment of Israel portended the Second Coming of Christ, a belief that was only strengthened by the Six Days War, which saw Israel absorb additional biblical territory.

Of course, many Jews responded the same way, although focused on the Jewish Messiah from the House of David. And even the Conservative Jewish prayer book refers to the State of Israel as “the beginning of our redemption.”

Mr. Chafets’s point about eschatology is that either the evangelicals are wrong, in which case the end of days problem won’t materialize, or they will be proved right and, when Jesus returns, the Jews will be sidelined.

Mr. Chafets ignores the possibility that because certain versions of evangelical eschatology include a larger-than-life role for the Jews, when the anticipated events fail to materialize the Jews will be blamed for not fulfilling the role assigned to them.

It is prudent to be aware of such a possibility, but it is still a far cry from a serious threat.

Another fear is that evangelicals are out to convert the Jews. Aside from the fact that this is true today only on the margins, Mr. Chafets argues persuasively that whatever other roles American Jews slip into as they abandon their Jewish identity, “what Jews don’t do is get born again.”

Mr. Twersky is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.