Today’s Challenge: Living Up to George Washington’s Promise
In 2022, my husband and I attended the 75th annual public reading of President George Washington’s August 21st 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. The event, held in the beautiful, historic Touro Synagogue (built in 1763), confidently extols religious acceptance, a noteworthy goal we are still trying to achieve. That the first US president unabashedly endorsed such tolerance carries lessons we need to keep on teaching.
In 1790, when Washington wrote that letter, the world was in the process of changing. The US, with its colonies formally united under a constitution, was just over a year old — an infant with a new president. Rhode Island had finally ratified the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights, the last of the original US colonies to do so.
Newport’s Jewish community may have been nervous about what the new government would mean for them. The congregation’s warden, Moses Seixas, wrote to the President, reminding him that “Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free citizens, we now (with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events) behold a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance — but generously affording to all liberty of conscience, and immunities of citizenship….”
To my ears, Seixas’ words offer optimism, mixed liberally with uncertainty and wishful thinking. Would this newly founded nation, a radical experiment among the nations, provide a welcoming home?
While the Jews of 18th century Newport prospered, their recent family histories of multiple expulsions (from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in the late 1490s through 1520s) left them understandably concerned. Their community’s Iberian forebearers had fled to, among other destinations, Amsterdam and Recife, Brazil, which was then under religiously tolerant Dutch rule. Then, in 1623, the Portuguese gained control of Brazil, importing the Catholic Inquisition and religious intolerance. Jews sailed north in search of safe harbors, to locations that included New Amsterdam, Barbados and Newport. These refugees founded Congregation Shearith Israel (“Remnant of Israel”) in New Amsterdam in 1654, Nidhe Israel (“Scattered of Israel”) in Barbados in 1654 and Nephuse Israel (“Scattered of Israel”) in Newport in 1658.
The names of these congregations underscore centuries of Jewish dispersion following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE as well as the Jews’ more recent experiences of escaping north from the Iberian Peninsula to the Netherlands and west, via dangerous Atlantic Ocean crossings.
Colonial Rhode Island proved a good landing place. Founded by individuals escaping intolerant, Puritan-dominated Massachusetts, the community felt strongly about religious freedom and church-state separation. Uniquely, the 1663 Royal Charter held that “all and every person and persons may, from time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concernments….”
This philosophy, along with Rhode Island’s growing seaport, offered economic opportunity that turned a temporary sanctuary into a welcoming home — so welcoming that by 1758 the congregation had renamed itself Yeshuat Israel (“Salvation of Israel”). What would this ultimately mean to a people sometimes tolerated, rarely welcomed and often rebuffed? President Washington went an important step further by elaborating:
“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights….”
For President Washington, “inherent natural rights” existed beyond the whim or forbearance of those who ruled. Rights were … well, rights. This was an extraordinary promise to a people that was used to being chased, having to flee from country to country simply because they were Jews.
The challenge of living up to George Washington’s promise — that citizens should “not face bigotry or persecution,” has continued throughout our history and remains central today. Yes, schoolchildren in Rhode Island learn about Washington’s letter. But his message, coming from the first chief executive of the new country, is not only for local ears. Like the Holocaust education advocated by Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, it needs to be taught in every school, public and parochial, secular and religious. George Washington’s words articulate an ideal toward which America must continue to strive.
