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Vol. 70, No. 1 (Summer 2026) - Celebrating America’s Sestercentennial

America—Founded on Biblical Precepts?

 

Elliot Dorff

“America—Founded on Biblical Precepts” is a reading found in the Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book;1 in Siddur Sim Shalom;2 and, in shortened form, in Siddur Lev Shalem.3 It is a reading that has spanned the development of Conservative prayer books. As described in the Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book, “The selections are drawn alternatively from the classics of American political thought and the Bible.”4 The intention, as the title of the reading indicates, is to show that foundational American convictions are the same as those in the Bible, thus making American Jews feel that the values at the heart of their identities as both Americans and Jews are one and the same, and so Jews should feel at home in America.

Rabbi Louis J. Swichkow, z”l, the rabbi of the large Conservative synagogue in Milwaukee in which I was first educated in Judaism, loved this reading, probably because it spoke directly to what the adults in the congregation, predominantly second-generation Jews whose parents came from Eastern Europe, wanted to believe—as, I am sure, he himself did. The Friday night services were well attended, and at that service before each American holiday (except Christmas) he had the congregation recite this reading responsively out loud. As a result, it has been for me a piece of my identity as an American and as a Jew since I was old enough in my teens to understand it.

Subsequently, though, I became a rabbi and earned a PhD in philosophy, and those backgrounds have led me to compare American convictions with Jewish ones in print.5 Without repeating that material here, let me say that, indeed, some foundational American principles are the same or at least similar to American ones; some are very different. So before analyzing the asserted similarities in the reading, “America—Founded on Biblical Precepts,” I will zoom out to identify two of the most important foundational concepts in the two traditions that are alike and two that are different.

Foundational Principles that Are Similar and Different

Most fundamentally, both American and Jewish sources see the individual as worthy of respect and protection, although for different reasons. In the US Declaration of Independence, we are each created equal and endowed with rights; in the Bible, each of us is created in the image of God. Both traditions then spend considerable time articulating exactly what that precept means for, respectively, American and Jewish ways of thinking and behaving.

This is not obvious: communist societies and dictatorships prioritize, respectively, the interests of the community or of the ruler over those of individuals. The American and Jewish perspectives are also not anarchic. In the United States, it is “We, the people” who together create the Constitution, and we do so “in order to create a more perfect union” (than had been possible under the previous Articles of Confederation), and the Jewish people are in covenant with each other and with God. Still, the fact that the United States and Judaism insist on the value of each individual is an important similarity.

Another foundational similarity is that both traditions are committed to the rule of law. In Deuteronomy 17:13-20, the Torah requires the king to have a copy of the Torah with him, to read it “all the days of his life,” and to “observe faithfully every word of this Teaching as well as these laws.” Similarly, although this is now being sorely tested, American law, since its inception, has been understood to apply to the president and all other government officials. Thus both traditions describe a society governed by law, not by individuals in power.

On the other hand, the two societies differ in important respects. One of those is in how they understand the relationship between individuals and the community. The US Declaration of Independence affirms that we are individuals with liberty. In practice, this means that while it is hard to become an American if a person was not born in the United States, citizens who have not committed a felony can renounce their citizenship at any time by filling out a form in any US embassy or consulate outside the United States.6 Some Americans do that each year, largely for tax reasons.

In contrast, the central Jewish story is Exodus, Sinai, and the trek to the Promised Land, in which we leave Egypt not as individuals but as a group, and at Sinai we get, by traditional count, 613 commandments7 and not a single right. Rights and duties are often reciprocal: for example, my right to my jacket imposes a duty on you not to steal it. In a deep sense, though, if I get up in the morning as a person with rights, then the world owes me. In contrast, if I get up in the morning as a member of a community with duties, then I owe the world.

Furthermore, unlike the voluntary nature of American identity, which any citizen can renounce at will, Jewish identity is organic. A Jew is a member of a body politic, and just as your hand cannot decide to leave your body, so too, once a Jew, always a Jew. So Jews who convert to another religion are apostates and lose the privileges of being Jews—they cannot count as part of a prayer quorum (minyan), be married as a Jew, rely on the Jewish community for financial support or redemption from captivity, etc.—but they can renounce their apostasy and revert to being Jewish at any time with minimal requirements because, as the Talmud says, “A Jew who sinned is still a Jew.”8 American identity is thus strongly individualistic and voluntary, while Jewish identity is organic and much more communitarian.

Another significant difference between the two systems of thought and law stems from the stated mission of both groups. The US Declaration of Independence declares that “to secure these rights governments are instituted among men,” and the Preamble to the US Constitution describes a number of important, pragmatic goals for the government. While much of the Bible delineates how the Jewish community should behave to have a safe, just, and thriving society, akin to the pragmatic goals of the Preamble, ultimately the goal of Jewish law and thought is to create “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6) and even “a light to the nations” (Isaiah 42:6). Some American governments have sought to spread American style democracy to the rest of the world, but that aspiration is not built into the founding documents or even the law of the United States, while the Bible itself articulates aspirational goals for the Jewish community.

With these general comparisons of the two societies’ foundational convictions in mind, I will evaluate the degree to which the passages in the reading “America—Founded on Biblical Precepts” do accurately assert the same, or at least similar, viewpoints or values. The original reading in the Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book, reproduced in Sim Shalom, had eight such comparisons, but I will analyze only the four comparisons in Siddur Lev Shalem, the movement’s current prayer book, where the reading is called “America’s Biblical Heritage.”

First Comparison: Creation

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

—Declaration of Independence

Have we not all one Creator? Has not one God created us?

—Malachi 2:10

What these two excerpts share is the perspective that every person has, presumably in addition to that person’s parents, a divine creator, and that consequently all human beings are equally of divine worth. The two readings differ, though, in several ways.

First, Thomas Jefferson deliberately wrote “their Creator” rather than “God” because he, like most of the Founding Fathers, was a deist, not a theist. That is, he believed in a creative force but not a personal God. Malachi uses both the terms “Creator” and “God” in the parallelism common in biblical passages, indicating that he believed that they were one and the same, that our Creator was a personal God.

Second, although Jefferson wrote that “all men” are created equal, and although he might have meant all human beings, what the Founding Fathers wrote in the Constitution did not include all men. Only three-fifths of slaves were to count for purposes of calculating how many representatives a state would have in the House of Representatives9 (and that was a compromise, for the northern states did not want any slaves to count because they could not vote and because that would raise the representation of slave states). “Indians not taxed” were not counted; women did not count at all. It is not clear how expansive Malachi’s “all” and “us” are, but he seems to be referring to all human beings.

Third, and possibly most important, the lesson that Jefferson derives from human equality is that we all have rights. It is highly unlikely that this is what Malachi had in mind, given the duties-based conception at the heart of the Exodus-Sinai story. Malachi probably meant that we should respect every other person as a creature of God, which, in his mind, probably meant that we should fulfil our duties to each other.

Second Comparison: Justice

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

—Preamble to the US Constitution

Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive in the land that ADONAI your God gives you.

—Deuteronomy 16:20

These two excerpts obviously share a commitment to justice. What, though, does that mean in the two cultures and legal systems? As I describe in my essay, “Justice,” in our movement’s Torah commentary, Etz Hayim, justice involves both procedural and substantive concerns.10 However, even a brief comparison of how justice in both senses is understood and applied in the American and Jewish traditions reveals major differences. With regard to procedure, the Torah requires, for example, two witnesses to confirm any claim, and the Rabbis require that the witnesses not be related to each other or to the litigants or culprits. In American law the testimony of only one witness or even circumstantial evidence can establish financial liability or even criminal guilt and the witnesses can be related to each other or to the parties involved.

With regard to substantive justice, Jewish law is much more demanding than American law in its provisions for supporting the poor, the sick, and the stranger. I describe more of these differences with their sources from both traditions in my book, To Do the Right and the Good: A Jewish Approach to Modern Social Ethics.11 So yes, both systems are committed to justice, but what that commitment entails is understood very differently in the two cultures and legal systems. That there should be such differences should not be surprising, for the problem of defining justice is the subject of one of the first books in Western philosophy, Plato’s Republic, and that topic continues to occupy philosophers, legislators, and jurists to our own day.

Third Comparison: Liberty

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

—The Bill of Rights (the First Amendment to the Constitution)

Proclaim liberty through the land, for all its inhabitants.

—Leviticus 25:10

Here again, there is a common theme in these two passages—that of freedom or liberty—but the liberties promised are very different. After Congress had completed the Constitution in 1787, they had what I often call an “oops” moment, for they had forgotten to include in that document the very freedoms that led them to revolt against England. So just four years later, on December 15, 1791, the first ten amendments that articulated those rights and gave them Constitutional status were ratified when three-fourths of the states approved 10 of the 12 proposed amendments that had been sent to them by Congress in October 1789. This excerpt, from the First Amendment, bans Congress from establishing a national religion or prohibiting the free exercise of any religion or from “abridging” the freedoms of speech, the press, assembly, or petition. The second through eighth amendments guarantee other specific rights. Then, to avoid another embarrassing need to add to the Constitution rights that they had not thought of, Congress established, in the Ninth Amendment, that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people,” and, in the Tenth Amendment, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

In all these cases, these are rights against governmental interference, but despite their Constitutional status, the Supreme Court has interpreted these amendments in ways that do indeed “abridge” them, and Congress has adopted laws that limit them as well. With regard to freedom of speech, for example, one may not say things that were directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless actions, as, for example, a riot,12 and with regard to the free exercise of religion, Congress adopted the Edmunds Act, also known as the Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882. Signed into law on March 23, 1882, by President Chester A. Arthur, it declared polygamy a felony in federal territories, punishable by “a fine of not more than five hundred dollars and by imprisonment for a term of not more than five years,” deliberately making illegal the polygamous practice of the Church of Latter Day Saints. (Sephardic Jews and Muslims also have historically allowed polygamy, but those groups were very small in the United States of that time and were not the target of this legislation.) Thus, despite the Amendment’s promise not to “abridge” the rights of which it speaks, American law has done just that.

The verse in Leviticus is not liberty against a government at all. It is, in context, the liberty to reclaim the land of one’s family every fifty years, despite its being sold in the interim to other people. Yes, the verse is engraved on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia as a way of celebrating American freedoms, but that is a use of the verse counter to its original meaning. The authors of this reading in our prayer books are similarly using the verse against its contextual meaning. Moreover, the Torah definitely does not assert the liberty of Jews to adopt another religion or say anything they want. Indeed, what is known as the Second Commandment of the Decalogue (Exodus 20:3-6; Deuteronomy 5:7-10), the chapters of warning in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, and many verses in Deuteronomy ban worshipping other gods and describe dire warnings if the Israelites go astray in that way. With regard to the freedom of speech, the Torah—and the Rabbis later on—prohibit many forms of speech that American law allows.13 So juxtaposing these two excerpts not only reads the Leviticus verse out of context, but also misstates the position of Judaism to be the same as the freedoms of speech and religion affirmed in the First Amendment.

The author of this reading is not identified in any of the three prayer books that include it. It may have been Rabbi Morris Silverman, for it first appears in the prayer book he edited. He surely knew the dissonances that I described in the previous paragraph, so why did he use the verse in Leviticus that way? My guess is that it was either motivated by the same usage on the Liberty Bell and/or by the desire to make American Jews feel at home in America. It no doubt was also a way to acknowledge and express gratitude for the freedoms we have in the United States—in sharp contrast to the ways Jews were treated in many other nations throughout history. So interpreting the verse in Leviticus to reinforce a sense of congruence in American Jews’ Jewish and American identities was worth whatever dissonance that caused with its meaning in context.

There is another biblical text that more accurately affirms the kind of religious liberty and pluralism that the First Amendment asserts, but it is messianic. Micah, in the first three verses of Chapter 4, first quotes his teacher Isaiah (2:2-4), but then he adds two verses that change Isaiah’s vision of everyone in the future becoming Jewish to a religiously pluralistic, hoped-for future:

  1. In the days to come,
    The Mount of the LORD’s House shall stand
    Firm above the mountains;
    And it shall tower above the hills.
    The peoples shall gaze on it with joy
  2. And the many nations shall go and shall say:
    “    Come,
    Let us go up to the Mount of the LORD,
    To the House of the God of Jacob;
    That we may be instructed in His ways,
    And that we may walk in His paths.”
    For instruction shall come forth from Zion,
    The word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
  3. Thus, He will judge among the many peoples,
    And arbitrate for the multitude of nations,
    However distant;
    And they shall beat their swords into plowshares
    And their spears into pruning hooks.
    Nation shall not take up
    Sword against nation;
    They shall never again know war;
  4. But every man shall sit
    Under his grapevine or fig tree
    With no one to disturb him.
    For it was the LORD of Hosts who spoke.
  5. Though all the peoples walk
    Each in the names of its gods,
    We will walk
    In the name of the LORD our God
    Forever and ever.14

The biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt was a pervasive and powerful influence on the American colonies and the early United States, providing a foundational narrative of liberation and national identity. Colonists, particularly the Puritans, viewed their migration to America as a new exodus, escaping British oppression (Pharaoh) and establishing a “New Israel.” This “chosenness” narrative continued into the Revolution, with patriots like John Adams and Thomas Paine comparing King George III to Pharaoh and the colonists to the enslaved Israelites, with George Washington as Moses. The theme was so strong that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin proposed designs for the Great Seal of the United States based on the Exodus story.15 So either the passage quoted above from Micah or a reasonably short selection of biblical verses describing the Exodus (e.g., Exodus 2:7-11; Deuteronomy 26:5-9) would have been a more fitting match to the First Amendment for this reading, both in what each text says about liberty and in the intentions of the writers of both passages as to its nature.

Fourth Comparison: Peace

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in … to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

—Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift sword against nation, and they shall not again know war. People shall dwell under their own vines, under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.

—Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3-4.

The chosen biblical verse is part of the verses I suggested above for the theme of liberty, but that works only if the next verse (4:5) in the Micah excerpt is added, as I did above in the third comparison. The verses quoted in the reading from both Isaiah and Micah do indeed look forward to a time of peace, as did Lincoln’s address, and because they both are dreams of a future of peace, this selection from the Bible is apt. Another possibility would be Psalm 34:15: “Seek peace and pursue it.”

In any case, the desire for peace in the ideologies of Judaism and the United States are certainly similar. Unlike some of the nations of Europe, Russia, and China, the United States has never sought to establish a colonial empire. Some of the colonies have been given the choice of becoming independent, as the Philippines did; of becoming states, as Hawaii and Alaska did. Others, like Guam and Puerto Rico, remain American territories. This, of course, does not mean that the United States has refrained from engaging in wars, including some like those in Vietnam and Afghanistan, that ended badly. War and conquest, though, are not the desired state of affairs in American ideology, as they were in colonial empires from at least as far back as Alexander the Great to the European empires of the last few centuries.

The Pharisees who shaped the rabbinic tradition opposed the Zealots’ efforts to fight Rome, choosing instead to establish the Sanhedrin in Yavneh. This decision to avoid war with Rome did not extend to the point of making Judaism pacifist. Jews have fought in wars for the country in which they lived through the ages, and the State of Israel has unfortunately had to engage in multiple wars and other military operations. That said, peace, not war, was the goal. That is articulated at least three times each day at the culmination of the Amidah, at the end of all forms of the Kaddish except the half-Kaddish, and at the end of Birkat ha-Mazon (the blessings after meals) as well, in each case, reminding the person saying the prayer that peace is the Jewish goal. This is also expressed in these two rabbinic passages:

Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta said: See how desirable is peace! When the Holy One sought to bless Israel, He found no term that included all the blessings He wished to bestow upon them except for peace. How do we know this? Because it is written, “May Adonai grant His people strength; may Adonai bless His people with peace” (Psalms 29:11).16

“Seek peace and pursue it” (Psalms 34:15). The Law does not order you to run after or pursue the other commandments, but only to fulfill them on the appropriate occasion. But peace you must seek in your own place and pursue it even to another place as well.17

In sum, many important American convictions are indeed the same or similar to Jewish ones, but some of the foundational beliefs and values of Judaism and the United States diverge; even a common belief or value is sometimes interpreted or applied in different ways in the two traditions. Despite bouts of antisemitism at various points in American history—in particular, in the first decades of the twentieth century and again in recent years—we Jews have rightfully been grateful for the opportunities we have had and the way we have been treated in the United States, motivated at least in part by the beliefs and values these two traditions share. The author of this reading sought to capture the feeling of many Jews that they are part of America and are grateful to America. In that, despite my demurs above, the writer was certainly correct.

Rabbi Elliot Dorff, PhD serves as the rector and Sol and Anne Dorff Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy at American Jewish University. His most recent book is Ethics at the Center: Jewish Theory and Practice for Living a Moral Life (Jewish Publication Society/University of Nebraska Press, 2024).

  1. 1 Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book, Rabbi Morris Silverman, ed. (Rabbinical Assembly/United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 1946), 353-354.

  2. 2 Siddur Sim Shalom, Rabbi Jules Harlow, ed. (Rabbinical Assembly/United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 1985), 821-823.

  3. 3 Siddur Lev Shalem, Rabbi Edward Feld, ed. (Rabbinical Assembly, 2016), 453.

  4. 4 Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book, 353.

  5. 5 See Elliot N. Dorff, To Do the Right and the Good: A Jewish Approach to Modern Social Ethics (Jewish Publication Society, 2002), chap. 1; and Elliot N. Dorff, Ethics at the Center: Jewish Theory and Practice for Living a Moral Life (Jewish Publication Society, 2024), chap. 3.

  6. 6 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) Section 349(a)(5). See U.S. Department of State, “Relinquishing U.S. Nationality Abroad,” https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/us-citizenship/Relinquishing-US-Nationality-Abroad.html.

  7. 7 b. Makkot 23b-24a; b. Yevamot 47b; Maimonides, Sefer Ha-Mitzvot, Positive Commandments 1:1.

  8. 8 b. Sanhedrin 44a. An apostate is considered as not Jewish “for all matters”: M.T. Divorce 3:15; S.A. Even Ha-Ezer 123:2. So, for example, the Jewish community may not use its resources to redeem an apostate from captivity: M.T. Gifts to the Poor 8:14, S.A. Yoreh De’ah 252:6. However, an apostate’s reentry into the Jewish community can be done with minimal requirements: S.A. Yoreh De’ah 268:12 gloss.

  9. 9 Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the US Constitution (1787).

  10. 10 Elliot N. Dorff, “Justice,” in Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, David L. Lieber, ed. (Rabbinical Assembly and Jewish Publication Society, 2001), 1427–1430.

  11. 11 Dorff, To Do the Right and the Good (at note 5 above), chap. 5 and 6.

  12. 12 Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).

  13. 13 For Jewish norms of speech, see Elliot N. Dorff, The Way Into Tikkun Olam (Repairing the World) (Jewish Lights, 2005), chap. 4, and the following responsa that I wrote for the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards: “Modest Communication,” https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/modest_speech.final.june.pdf and “Harmful Communication,” https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/harmful_speech.final.june.pdf.

  14. 14 This is the translation in JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (Jewish Publication Society, 1999), 1344-1345, which is the translation of the Bible that Conservative Movement publications have used in its prayer books and in Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary (The Rabbinical Assembly and The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 2001).

  15. 15 Michael Frend, “How the Exodus Story Created America,” Jerusalem Post, March 29, 2013, https://www.jpost.com/opinion/columnists/how-the-exodus-story-created-america-308136;

    Stuart Halpern, “Exodus, America’s Ever-Present Inspiration,” Lehrhaus, April 13, 2020, https://thelehrhaus.com/coronavirus/the-exodus-americas-ever-present-inspiration.

  16. 16 Deuteronomy Rabbah 5:15.

  17. 17 j. Peah 1:1. Another part of this, of course, is learning to respect each other and live together amid differing opinions and patterns of action. For the historical, epistemological, and theological grounds for such pluralism, see Dorff, To Do the Right and the Good (at note 10), 37-60.