Judaism & America’s Founding Fathers

Although Jews comprised a small part of the population of colonial America, the country’s Founding Fathers realized the importance of freedom of worship for even this small minority. George Washington’s 1790 letter to the Touro Synagogue in Rhode Island affirms the American commitment that bigotry would have no place in the US and that Jews would not be a tolerated minority but would “possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.” That commitment has withstood the test of time. While American Jews have always admired the nation’s Founding Fathers for their genius and vision, they tend to ignore that...