President Washington and the Jews

Washington’s Birthday isn’t a Jewish holiday, but maybe it should be. Our country’s first president made a statement about religious liberty that is still a touchstone for tolerance, saying that the United States the United States should give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” Washington wrote this 1790 in a letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island (interior shown above). Touro Synagogue was built in 1763 in a style that blends traditional Sefardi layout and decoration with the neoclassical architecture of 18th-century America.

During and after the American Revolution, the synagogue was one of the most important buildings in Newport. It survived a British occupation of Newport partly because it was used as a hospital, and during George Washington's visit to Newport in 1781, to meet with Generals Lafayette and Rochambeau to plan the final battles of the Revolution, a town meeting was held at the synagogue. Later, Touro Synagogue served as a meeting place for the Rhode Island General Assembly, the Rhode Island Supreme Court, and the town of Newport.

Touro Synagogue still has an active congregation, Jeshuat Israel, which follows Sefardi Orthodox liturgy.
Jews had come to Rhode Island in 1658, only four years after America’s first Jews arrived in New Amsterdam, because of the guarantee by Roger Williams (right) of religious freedom and liberty of conscience. The acceptance of the Jewish community in Newport and President Washington’s letter to the congregation contrast with the situation in some other states. Connecticut law during this period prohibited Jews from settling in that state, even though there was already a small Jewish community in New Haven, and the first synagogue in Massachusetts was not founded until 1842.

I think of Washington’s letter whenever politicians attempt to define the United States as a Christian nation, suggest that people of any other religion are interlopers, or demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. For the record, we revere the Ten Commandments as much as anyone—perhaps more, because we had them first—but Jewish tradition does not place those ten above all other instructions in the Torah. Furthermore, although the Bible texts, from Exodus and Deuteronomy, are the same, Jews and Christians divide the text into discrete commandments differently, so that our Ten are not quite the same as others’ arrangements of them.