A RELIGION, NOT A RACE:

George Washington pioneered in the struggle for human rights when he praised the Continental Army on April 18, 1783, for having "assisted in protecting the rights of human nature, and establishing an Asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and Religions." Washington made his position on human rights specific to the Jews in his letter of August 17, 1790, to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, declaring that "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 [conduct] themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support." For Washington, no one in America should be "afraid" of being "of the Stock of Abraham" because "All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship." Washington's advocacy for Jews clearly contrasts painfully with his notorious position as a major slaveholder.

America was a beacon of hope and change for Jews a century before Washington assured the Jews of Newport that they could enjoy "their inherent natural rights" in this new nation. The first Jewish settlers in what would become the United States arrived in 1654 to what is now New York from Brazil, where they were the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1496. In the years that followed, Jews invested in the idea of America as a foundation for creating and cultivating their sense of home, identity, and security. Values and ideals, as much as the natural landscape of open frontiers and endless skies and the promise of economic opportunity, made America a place where Jews could feel at home and safe.

For the Jewish people, with a history through the ages of persecution, oppression, and alienation, liberal democracy in America opened the possibility of unprecedented safety and freedom even during decades of severe discrimination and prejudice against them in America. For Jews with so much at stake, the commitment to American liberal democracy became a kind of civic religion. Emulating the rhetorical strategy of the prophet Jeremiah and the New England Puritans, as elucidated by Sacvan Bercovitch, Jews often thought and spoke of America in moral and religious terms of reckoning, renewal, and redemption.

For generations, Jews have understood the American story as undergoing perennial renewal in response to the ceaseless demand of ethical and moral leadership. For such Jewish writers, thinkers, activists, and leaders in the New Covenant, the American narrative becomes, in Philip Gorski's phrase, a "covenant narrative" designed to secure a democratic future.

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