Author: yudelbenyehudapress-com

Jonathan D. Sarna¹

Jews are marking the 250th anniversary of American independence with a renewed focus on Jewish contributions to the Revolution: the 100 or so Jews who fought under George Washington; the Jews like Haym Salomon who marketed the new nation’s bonds and extended credit to its treasury; the Jewish merchants who smuggled in arms from the Dutch island of St. Eustatius; the Jews taken prisoner, like Mordecai Sheftall, who suffered antisemitic abuse from his British captors; the women, like Frances Sheftall, who supported their husbands while they were gone; the courageous Jews who fought for Jewish religious rights, like Jonas Phillips who addressed the Constitutional Convention on that subject, and more.²

Less attention has been paid to the reverse question: What did the American Revolution contribute to American Judaism? Elsewhere I have published broad articles on that subject such as “The Impact of the American Revolution on the American Jew,” and “The Democratization of American Judaism.” Here I want to narrow the focus and look at how the Revolution and its ideology shaped one particular synagogue—B’nai Jeshurun (BJ) in New York City, the city’s first breakaway, first Ashkenazi, and first post-Revolutionary congregation, established in 1825 and for many years associated with the Conservative Movement. I shall argue that BJ’s bold, even rebellious, actions reshaped American Judaism and created precedents that synagogues across the United States continue to uphold.³

Three nineteenth-century precedents proved particularly impactful: one, in 1825, reshaped American Judaism; a second in 1849 transformed the American rabbinate; a third in 1875 promoted the separation of religion and state. Absent those developments, American Judaism today would look entirely different from the Judaism we know.

The breakaway that led to the original establishment of B’nai Jeshurun in 1825 had, like most rebellions, been years in the building. Gershom Seixas, the remarkable ḥazzan (“minister”) of what had until then been New York City’s only synagogue, Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, was a Revolutionary War hero, highly respected by local Christians, and could be claimed by both old Sephardic Jews of Iberian origin and also by the then more numerous Ashkenazi Jews of Germanic origin. Because he possessed family ties to both camps as well as an amazing temperament, he succeeded in keeping most everybody happy.⁴

After he passed away, in 1816, a whole series of communal tensions erupted. They pitted young against old, Sephardi Jews vs. Ashkenazi Jews, newcomers vs. old-timers, innovators vs. traditionalists. Of course, such communal tensions are common. From colonial times, Shearith Israel’s leaders had dealt with similar problems: sometimes they compromised to maintain communal peace; more often they stood firm for what they considered to be critical religious principles.

In the nineteenth century, however, challenges to authority multiplied. To take just one example, several synagogue attendees in the 1820s failed to wear a tallit during worship—one assumes that these rebels were young, single Ashkenazi Jews whose custom was to wait to put on a tallit until married. Sephardim do not follow that custom, so Shearith Israel established a special committee to deal with this deviation, and it reported that “inasmuch as it has always been strictly observed in this Congregation from its first establishment, the committee cannot but view a departure from it as an innovation which if permitted to pass unnoticed may lead to other deviations, and ultimately to the subversion of all the venerable and established usages of this Congregation.” They consequently warned that anyone not wearing a tallit would be barred from all synagogue honors.⁵

Shearith Israel’s leaders, like Western Sephardic Jews in many communities, believed that tradition without any innovations as well as deference to established authority were key to the maintenance of Judaism—what would later be called “Jewish continuity.” They also promoted the synagogue-community model of Jewish life, the idea that one (and only one) overarching synagogue, heir to the organized medieval Jewish kehillah, should govern each community’s Jews. Every North American Jewish community into the early nineteenth century, from Savannah in the South to Newport in the North, followed that well-established synagogue-community model.⁶

The problem was that the generation of Jews raised after the American Revolution found it hard to reconcile those traditional Sephardic values with the modern values of freedom and democracy espoused by America’s Founding Fathers. If all are equal, after all, why should a kohen not be allowed to marry a convert? And why should the descendant of a mamzer (the offspring of a biblically forbidden sexual relationship) be denied synagogue membership?⁷ Moreover, when younger Jews looked around, they saw Protestant churches undergoing significant “deviations” and democratization. The great scholar of early American Christianity, Nathan Hatch, showed in his book, The Democratization of American Christianity, that the “American Revolution and the beliefs flowing from it created a cultural ferment over the meaning of freedom.” Common people, he demonstrated, became significant actors on the American religious scene in the Revolution’s wake, challenging traditional (usually elite) leaders. Turmoil swirled “around the crucial issues of authority, organization and leadership.” The tension between traditional religious values and new American values, Hatch concluded, provoked “a period of religious ferment, chaos, and originality unmatched in American history.”⁸

B’nai Jeshurun emerged out of that very same period of religious ferment, chaos and originality—so did the Reform Society of Israelites in Charleston, the progenitor of American Reform Judaism, which emerged at precisely the same moment. Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia was established earlier: it began as the “Hebrew German Society” in 1795, an independent sick-burial society for immigrant German Jews, and developed into a separate “German Shul” in 1802 when the Sephardic Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia stood in danger of “being totally dissolved.” The name Rodeph Shalom hints at the absence of communal peace in Philadelphia, but the congregation was not a “breakaway” synagogue nor did its founders view themselves as “reformers,” like the Charleston group. Still, it seems fitting that Philadelphia, the city where American freedom first took root, was also the city where the monolithic synagogue community first withered away.⁹

B’nai Jeshurun of New York’s story began in May 1825, when a group of young, mostly non-Sephardic men (women did not at that time play an active role in synagogue or church governance in the United States) petitioned the elders of Shearith Israel for an early worship service “on the Sabbath morning during the summer months” which they would independently manage. They declared themselves zealous in “the worship of our holy religion” and pledged to follow the congregation’s Sephardic minhag, but they clearly had their own ideas about how prayer services should run and who should be eligible for synagogue honors (a committee “to be chosen from among and by those attending the early worship” would make those weighty decisions). In short, they looked to innovate. Their petition was therefore refused, for the usual reason: it violated the “rules and customs of our ancestors.”¹⁰

Rather than acquiescing, the young men did the unthinkable: they formed an independent society with a revealing Hebrew name—Chevra Chinuch Ne’arim (the society for educating young men) “to promote the study of our Holy Law and . . . to extend a knowledge of its divine precepts, ceremonies, and worship among our brethren generally, and the enquiring youth in particular.” According to the new organization’s fascinating constitution, they looked to establish a worship service run much less formally than at Shearith Israel, without a permanent leader, and with no “distinctions made among the members rich and poor.”¹¹ Here we see themes familiar to us from the history of Protestantism in this era (the so-called Second Great Awakening): revivalism, challenge to authority, a new form of organization, anti-elitism, and radical democratization.

Shearith Israel condemned the “enquiring youth.” “We cannot,” they wrote, “recognize any society or association for religious worship distinct from Congregation Shearith Israel.” So in October of 1825 the young men announced their intention “to erect a new Synagogue in this city” that would follow “the German and Polish” rather than the Sephardic rite and be located “in a more convenient situation for those residing uptown.” On November 15th the new congregation applied for incorporation from New York as B’nai Jeshurun, the city’s first Ashkenazi congregation.¹²

Within a year, the energetic founders of B’nai Jeshurun purchased a new synagogue building on Elm Street, formerly the so-called First Coloured Presbyterian Church of the famous African American minister, journalist and abolitionist, Samuel Cornish—what today is known as Shiloh Presbyterian Church. That was, to my knowledge, the first time that American Jews transformed a church into a synagogue—something that would have been unthinkable in most of Europe—and was certainly the first time a Black church in the United States ever became a synagogue. The purchase anticipated an insufficiently appreciated innovation of American religion: in the US it became commonplace for synagogues, churches, and more recently mosques to purchase and transform one another’s sacred spaces for reuse.¹³

B’nai Jeshurun’s founders also penned an amazing synagogue constitution that appealed to new American values to justify their secession from New York’s previously unified synagogue-community. The key clauses read as follows:

WHEREAS the wise and republican laws of this country are based upon universal toleration giving to every citizen and sojourner the right to worship according to the dictate of his conscience;

AND WHEREAS also the mode of worship in the Established Synagogue of our Beloved Brethren Shearith Israel in this city, is not in accordance with the rites and customs of the said German and Polish Jews

THEREFORE we the undersigned bind ourselves under the name of the congregation B’nai Jeshurun….¹⁴

Revealingly, the new congregation justified itself here by appealing to American democratic values, “The wise and republican laws of this country.” The use of the term “established synagogue” is also telling: the “establishment” of religion had been outlawed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Between them, these two arguments undermined the whole basis for the one-synagogue-per-community model that had hitherto held sway.

Fascinatingly, congregations elsewhere in the country soon echoed—practically word for word—the stirring value-laden language that the secessionists at B’nai Jeshurun employed. Breakaway congregations in Cincinnati, Ohio (where the synagogue actually called itself B’nai Jeshurun), in Easton, Pennsylvania and elsewhere justified themselves in precisely the same way. In addition to mutual influence, this demonstrates the power of rhetoric in a democratic age. The emphasis on toleration, on equality, on conscience, and above all on the “wise and republican laws of this country” bespoke the new values that B’nai Jeshurun introduced into American Judaism.¹⁵

All over the United States in the early decades of the nineteenth century, Americans were abandoning the denominations in which they had been raised for churches that seemed to them more democratic, inspiring, and authentic. They abandoned Congregational, Presbyterian and Episcopal Churches and embraced new Methodist, Baptist and Disciples’ churches. Beginning at B’nai Jeshurun, American Jews now followed the same pattern. Henceforward, in larger communities, Jews no longer sought to compromise their principles for the sake of consensus: instead, they felt free to withdraw and start their own synagogues, which they did time and again. In New York City, there were two synagogues in 1825, four in 1835, ten in 1845, and over twenty in 1855. By the Civil War, every major American Jewish community had at least two synagogues, and larger ones like Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Cincinnati had four or more. Members dissatisfied for some reason with their home congregations now knew that they could resign and create new ones more suited to their needs and desires. Some hard-to-please Jews founded several synagogues in succession. That’s what happens under freedom.¹⁶

The result was nothing less than a new American Judaism—a Judaism that was diverse and pluralistic where before it had been designedly monolithic. For the first time, American Jews could now choose from a number of congregations, most of them Ashkenazi in one form or another, reflecting a range of different rites, ideologies, and regions of origin. Inevitably, these synagogues competed with one another for members and for status. As a result, they had a new interest in minimizing dissent and keeping members satisfied. Indeed, more than anybody realized at the time, the synagogue pluralism that began at B’nai Jeshurun changed the balance of power between synagogues and their members. Before, when there was but one synagogue in every community, it could take members for granted and discipline them; they had little option but to obey. Now, American Jews did have an option; in fact, synagogues needed members more than members needed any particular synagogue. This led to the rapid demise of the whole system of disciplining congregants with fines and sanctions. Congregations became much more concerned with attracting members than with keeping them in line.

One final implication of synagogue pluralism: it brought to an end the intimate coupling of synagogue and community. In every major American Jewish community, the synagogue-community was replaced by a community of synagogues. No one synagogue was able any more to represent the community as a whole. In fact, synagogues came increasingly to represent diversity in American Jewish life—they symbolized and promoted fragmentation. To bind the Jewish community together and carry out functions that the now privatized and functionally delimited synagogues could no longer handle required new community-wide organizations capable of transcending religious differences. Charitable organizations like the Hebrew Benevolent Society and fraternal organizations like B’nai B’rith soon moved in to fill the void. Before long, the structure of the American Jewish community mirrored in organization the federalist pattern of the nation as a whole, balanced precariously between unity and diversity.

So it was that the rebellion at B’nai Jeshurun 200 years ago helped to produce a religious revolution that overthrew the synagogue-community and replaced a monolithic Judaism with one that was much more democratic, free, diverse, and competitive. American Judaism, as we know it, was shaped by this remarkable revolution. That is one reason why B’nai Jeshurun’s founding 200 years ago is so historically important.

More innovations were to come. As the premier Ashkenazi congregation in New York City, B’nai Jeshurun revolutionized American Judaism again in 1849, when it brought over from England a distinguished scholar and rabbi, Dr. Morris J. Raphall (1798-1868), to serve as its “Rabbi and Preacher.” For its first quarter-century or so, the congregation had relied upon unordained ministers and laymen for leadership. If more complex questions of Jewish law arose, the trustees called upon England’s Chief Rabbi, Solomon Hirschell (1762-1842), for answers. As America’s Jewish population grew and began to approach 50,000, Hirschell in his last years advised B’nai Jeshurun to appoint a rabbi “in the light of whose learning and virtue the Kehilloth of America could walk.” Raphall, who had himself been Hirschell’s assistant and then a rabbi in Birmingham, England, was selected and promised a high salary and life tenure. Of course, Raphall was not America’s first rabbi—that was R. Abraham Rice of Baltimore¸ who had arrived nine years earlier. Other rabbis, mostly Reformers, immigrated from Germany. But Raphall, with his impressive British English, was by far the most important Orthodox exemplar of the new rabbinic ideal that, thanks to B’nai Jeshurun, became prevalent in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century: the rabbi-doctor, dressed formally in canonicals, who possessed both an earned university degree (in Raphall’s case a PhD from the University of Erlangen) and formal rabbinic ordination.¹⁷

The best rabbi-doctors—and Raphall was indeed one of the best—excelled in the priestly, prophetic, and pastoral aspects of their positions, just like their Protestant counterparts: people like Rev. Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn. They became local celebrities, “princes of the pulpit.” Their demeanor, their posture, their elocution—all commanded attention. They knew how to dress and how to comport themselves. They delivered elegant English-language sermons, impressing non-Jews as well as Jews, women and men alike. Their resounding voices filled large halls. Newspapers regularly quoted them. Politicians befriended and engaged them. Congregants basked in their reflected glory.¹⁸

Rabbi-Doctor Morris Raphall quickly won the appreciation of Christians for his learning and preaching, and became a celebrity, a glamor rabbi. He delivered well-attended English-language lectures around the country. He also became the first Jew ever invited to deliver a prayer before the United States Congress—which elicited controversy—and he courageously delivered his prayer (in 1860) in full rabbinic garb, piously bedecked in a white tallit and a large velvet yarmulke. His prayer even included words of Hebrew, including the traditional priestly blessing.

Just under a year later, on the very eve of the Civil War, Rabbi Raphall undercut his reputation with what became his best-remembered address: “The Bible View of Slavery.” Speaking at the request of the American Society for Promoting National Unity, on the Fast Day called by President James Buchanan to prevent Civil War, he described slaveholding as “no sin,” and declared that slave property was “expressly placed under the protection of the Ten Commandments.” He was a Bible literalist. Several Jewish leaders publicly disagreed with him, and history has judged Raphall unkindly. It should be remembered, however, that when war came, Raphall publicly supported Lincoln and the Union. His son and son-in-law both fought in the Union army, and his son tragically lost an arm in the Battle of Gettysburg. By the time the Civil War ended, Raphall was an old man. His health had gravely declined and his wife had died, so he retired. He died, in 1868, and was greatly honored.¹⁹

He was not forgotten. Henceforward when the leading Jewish congregations across the United States had vacancies, they sought rabbi-doctors (like Raphall) with both ordination and university degrees. That was part of the allure of Rabbi-Doctor Gustav Gottheil, elected to the pulpit of Temple Emanu-El in New York in 1873. Major congregations also assumed that their own rabbis, not a rabbi living abroad, would interpret Jewish law for them. And they expected their rabbi to also be an English-language orator who could impress Jews and Gentiles alike. In this way, B’nai Jeshurun had once again reshaped American Judaism. It created a new model of rabbinic leadership in the United States.

The third precedent set at B’nai Jeshurun came at a moment when the congregation was not enjoying model rabbinic leadership. Following Rabbi Raphall’s passing, members divided over a whole series of proposed changes: some aesthetic, some liturgical, some related to the place of women (could they sing in the choir, could they sit next to their husbands?), and some designed simply to make services shorter. The early 1870s, like the early twenty-first century, witnessed a decline in religion across the United States, and this proved especially evident in synagogues. Often, native-born members clashed with those raised abroad; younger members disagreed with veteran ones.

Rabbi Israel Goldstein, who served as B’nai Jeshurun’s longtime rabbi from 1918-1960 and wrote a history of the congregation, researched this turbulent period from primary sources available to him. He stressed the uncertainty of the congregation, the inner struggle between competing values that pulled members simultaneously in two directions—toward tradition and toward change. “The Congregation’s decisions were made and unmade. . . ,” he recounted. “Many of the members threatened to resign if the changes were not introduced. Others threatened to resign if the changes were introduced. Questions were repeatedly resubmitted and reconsidered, and the sentiment shifted as each faction in turn gained ascendancy.”²⁰

The most contentious issue of all involved synagogue seating: should the congregation introduce mixed family pews characteristic of Reform temples, or should women and men be separated in prayer as heretofore? Synagogues of all kinds in the United States debated this issue for more than a century; it was a central flashpoint in American Jewish religious life.²¹

At B’nai Jeshurun, after a long process, members on May 16, 1875 voted 55-30 in favor of mixed pews; it became one of the first traditional synagogues to do so. But that did not end the matter. Instead, two days later, a highly distinguished second-generation member and former president of the congregation named Israel J. Salomon²² went to court and secured a legal injunction against what he called “promiscuous seating,” declaring it not only immodest, but also an infringement of his rights as a pew owner, as well as a violation of the synagogue’s mandate to worship “according to the rites, customs and usages of the German and Polish Jews.” The subsequent trial before Judge Richard Larremore attracted a great deal of attention even in the secular press, and drew affidavits from America’s most distinguished rabbis concerning whether mixed seating violated Jewish law. Unsurprisingly, they disagreed. What makes the case so important in retrospect are the legal precedents set by the case, several of which govern religious institutions in New York State and beyond to this day.

First, Judge Larremore ruled that the purchase of a church or synagogue pew is what lawyers call an easement, subject to rules and regulations that can be changed; it is not the same as buying private property (like a chair) that an individual completely controls. Second, he absolutely refused to decide the question of whether mixed seating violated the “rites, customs and usages of the German and Polish Jews.” That, he said, “properly belongs to the judicature of the church,” not of the state. Secular courts, he ruled, should not adjudicate complex matters of religious law. Finally, he declared that, under New York State law, trustees did indeed have the power to change synagogue practice, especially when the majority of members approved that change. Trustees govern independent synagogues and churches, he ruled, not Jewish or canon law.²³

Larremore’s well-publicized but not universally applauded decision freed B’nai Jeshurun (and by extension all independent synagogues and churches in the United States) to pursue their own destinies. It guaranteed them, as Rev. Dr. Gustav Gottheil of Temple Emanu-El noted at the time, “congregational autonomy.” Henceforward, neither dissenting pew-holders nor outsiders with different ideas could stand in the way of a binding vote by members and trustees.²⁴

The 1875 decision also demonstrated that fifty years after the founding of B’nai Jeshurun, and on the eve of the centennial of American independence, Judaism in America had become distinctive—different in character from Judaism in Europe and beyond. The free market in Judaism that emerged when the synagogue-community in New York gave way to a community of competing synagogues; the new style of rabbi, armed with both ordination and a secular university degree that B’nai Jeshurun pioneered and others soon emulated; and the independence from courts, governments, and debates over Jewish law that B’nai Jeshurun won from Judge Larremore—all this made it possible for American synagogues to experiment and innovate. The spirit of freedom that characterized post-Revolutionary America came to characterize American Judaism as well.

Jonathan D. Sarna, PhD is University Professor and Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History Emeritus at Brandeis University. He is also Chief Historian of the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, PA; Chair of the Academic Advisory & Editorial Board of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH; and Past President of the Association for Jewish Studies.

---

1. ¹ Based on a lecture delivered at the 200th anniversary of Cong. B’nai Jeshurun, New York, New York, February 6, 2025.

2. ² Adam Jortner, A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2024); Jacob Rader Marcus, United States Jewry 1776–1985 (Wayne State University Press, 1989) I:46–77; Samuel Rezneck, Unrecognized Patriots: The Jews in the American Revolution (Greenwood, 1975); for the recently discovered Mordecai Sheftall story, see https://www.raabcollection.com/blog/sheftall–archive.

3. ³ Jonathan D. Sarna, "The Impact of the American Revolution on the American Jew," Modern Judaism 1 (1981): 149–160; Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Democratization of American Judaism,” Coming to Terms with America: Essays on Jewish History, Religion, and Culture (Jewish Publication Society, 2021), 28–40; Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History, 2nd ed. (Yale University Press, 2019), 31–61.

4. ⁴ Jacob R. Marcus, The Handsome Young Priest in the Black Gown: The Personal World of Gershom Seixas (American Jewish Archives, 1970); Thomas Kessner, “Gershom Mendes Seixas: His Religious ‘Calling’, Outlook and Competence,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 58, no. 4 (1969): 445–471; David de Sola Pool, Portraits Etched in Stone (Columbia University Press, 1952), 345–375.

5. ⁵ “On Wearing of the Tallith, 1825” in Joseph L. Blau and Salo W. Baron, The Jews of the United States 1790–1840: A Documentary History (Columbia University Press, 1963), II: 533–534.

6. ⁶ Sarna, American Judaism, 12–20.

7. ⁷ Sarna, Coming to Terms with America, 29–32; Edwin Wolf 2nd and Maxwell Whiteman, The History of the Jews of Philadelphia from Colonial Times to the Age of Jackson (Jewish Publication Society, 1956), 237.

8. ⁸ Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (Yale University Press, 1989), 6, 64.

9. ⁹ Sarna, American Judaism, 52–53; Edward Davis, The History of Rodeph Shalom Congregation, Philadelphia, 1802–1926 (Edward Stern, 1926), 11–14; Jacob R. Marcus, United States Jewry 1776–1985, 4 vols. (Wayne State University Press, 1989–1993), I: 222–223, 238.

10. ¹⁰ “Division in the New York Community, 1825,” in Blau & Baron, Documentary History, 549–545; Hyman B. Grinstein, The Rise of the Jewish Community of New York (Jewish Publication Society, 1945), 40–49. The standard history of B’nai Jeshurun is Israel Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York: B’nai Jeshurun, 1825–1925 (Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, 1930); see also Moshe Davis, “The Synagogue in American Judaism: A Study of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, New York City,” Two Generations in Perspective: Notable Events and Trends, 1896–1956, ed. Harry Schneiderman (Monde Publishers, 1957), 210–235.

11. ^{11 “}Constitution of Chevra Chinuck Nearim, 1825" (partial excerpt), Joseph L. Blau and Salo W. Baron, Jews of the United States 1790-1840: A Documentary History, vol. 2 (Columbia University Press, 1963), 542–544.

12. ¹² Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York, 51–55; David and Tamar De Sola Pool, An Old Faith in the New World: Portrait of Shearith Israel 1654–1954 (Columbia University Press, 1955), 436–438.

13. ¹³ Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York, 56; https://bj.org/aug–26–1826–the–synagogues–first–building–was–a–church/.

14. ¹⁴ Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York, 55–56.

15. ¹⁵ Sarna, American Judaism, 57.

16. ¹⁶ Sarna, American Judaism, 59–60.

17. ¹⁷ Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York, 96, 110–153; Zev Eleff, Who Rules the Synagogue? Religious Authority and the Formation of American Judaism (Oxford University Press, 2016), 90–102; Sarna, American Judaism, 95–96; Bertram W. Korn, Eventful Years and Experiences: Studies in Nineteenth Century American Jewish History (American Jewish Archives, 1954), 40–42, 99–108.

18. ¹⁸ On this theme, see Jonathan D. Sarna, “The American Rabbinate on the Cusp of Change: Gustav Gottheil’s Seventieth Birthday Dinner in 1897,” Yearning to Breathe Free: Jews in Gilded Age America, eds. Adam Mendelsohn and Jonathan D. Sarna (Princeton University Library, 2022), 444–446.

19. ¹⁹ Morris J. Raphall, Bible View of Slavery. A Discourse….(Rudd & Carleton, 1861), online at https://www.loc.gov/item/11011703/; Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell, Lincoln and the Jews: A History (NYU Press, 2025), 55–59, 74–75.

20. ²⁰ Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York, 153–158 (quote from p. 157).

21. ²¹ Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Debate Over Mixed Seating in the American Synagogue,” in The American Synagogue, ed. Jack Wertheimer, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), 363–394.

22. ²² Salomon had been involved in an earlier 1844 lawsuit involving voting rights within the congregation; see Leo Hershkowitz, “‘Those Ignorant Immigrants’ and the B’nai Jeshurun Schism,” American Jewish History 70 (December 1980): 168–179.

23. ²³ Solomon v. Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, New York Court of Common Pleas, 1875; 48 Howard’s Practice 263 (1875); New York Times (July 10, 1875), 2; Jewish Messenger (July 16, 1875), 4–5. Zev Eleff found documents on the case in the New York County Clerk Archives; see his Who Rules the Synagogue, 274n78.

24. ²⁴ The Jewish World (London), August 6, 1875, 5; Gustav Gottheil in Jewish Messenger (August 6, 1875), 4.

Lance J. Sussman and Lynda Barness

The 250th anniversary of the signing of America’s Declaration of Independence is being widely celebrated in the United States. In the American Jewish community this holds particular significance. As with previous celebrations of the Centenary of the Declaration in 1876, the Tercentenary of the founding of the Jewish community in 1954, and the Bicentennial festivities in 1976, special emphasis has been placed on Jewish “at-homeness” in America.

At this pivotal time in American history, it is important to understand the basis of Jewish “at-homeness” in the United States and why it is emphasized both in Jewish community and in the literature of American Jewish history. It represents the yearning of a tiny ethno-religious group to be accepted as part of the fabric of the larger society in which it lives. Jews have been marginalized by domestic antisemitism in America; newly arrived Jewish immigrants have long experienced deep anxiety about their socio-cultural status in the United States. The goal of the Jewish community was to be “at home in America.”

Jewish “at-homeness” in the United States is also a function of an American aspiration to create and sustain a society comprised of many different racial, immigrant, and religious groups. At different times, different models of American identity have dominated the idea of national conformity to a single region such as New England, to the melting pot idea in which different groups are metamorphosed into a new American identity, to the “salad bowl” concept in which many different groups dwell together while retaining their own distinctiveness. For Jews, the goal in each scenario was to become part of the larger society and at the same time preserve their uniqueness as a community.

In the long history of the Jewish people, the tension between assimilation and acculturation has been a central part of the Diaspora experience. The difference between assimilation and acculturation is critical. Assimilation means loss of identity; acculturation involves selectively appropriating elements of a host society’s culture while preserving elements of one’s previous identity. For the American Jewish community (but not for all Jews), the goal was acculturation, to become American, to become “at home” in America, and in various degrees to remain Jewish.

The first dispersion of Jewish ancestors, the Israelites, already occurred in the eighth century BCE with the destruction of the northern Kingdom of Israel. Already at this point, prophets had developed the doctrine of Shivat Tzion, “the return to Zion,” with the hope that the dispersed or “lost tribes of Israel” would be restored to their homeland and not assimilated in the lands of their dispersion. A second dispersion or “Exile” began with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 BCE by the Babylonians. From this point forward, both a permanent Jewish Diaspora and a Jewish community in the land of Israel coexisted. During this period, the prophet Jeremiah is credited with developing an ideological basis for Jews living in diaspora while at the same time anticipating a return to Israel. In Jeremiah 29:7, the prophet exhorts the people to “seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to the Eternal in its behalf; for in its prosperity you shall prosper.” For Jeremiah and for the rest of Jewish history until the rise of modern Zionism, both exile, Galut, and diaspora, Golah, are divinely ordained.

A third dispersion of the Jews takes place in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, resulting in Jewish statelessness for 1,878 years until the founding of the modern State of Israel in 1948. During this period, the rabbis deepened the concept of Galut as divine punishment for the sins of the people of Israel and the belief that God would, in time, restore the Jewish people to its land. Jews would primarily exist as resident aliens in the lands of their dispersion until called home by a Higher Power.

With the establishment of the United States in 1776 and the enfranchisement of Jews as citizens equal to their non-Jewish neighbors, a question arose of whether the United States was a continuation of the Galut or whether Jews were now “at home” outside the land of Israel. For American Jews, their civic status in the United States was unprecedented. At the same time, other modern states, particularly France, began to rethink the status of Jews in their countries. However, America was different, as it had no history of Jews living as a “state within a state” and the question of Jewish political enfranchisement was limited to the holding of public office. In the American environment, other expressions of excluding Jews from civic and economic activity disintegrated despite the persistence of grassroot and institutional antisemitism.

Although the United States is the first country to experiment with the disestablishment of religion, with no national church, it also guarantees the free exercise of religion. In this instance, in the early national period, not only is there a guarantee of free exercise, the government is actually encouraging it under the umbrella of disestablishment: government now invites houses of worship to participate in national prayer efforts. George Washington and other Deists might not have been pietistic themselves, but they clearly felt that religion was crucial to the moral order, and the United States is very different than a place like France or any countries that have an established church, where the government adopts a policy of Laïcité, an aggressive secularism.¹

Already in the British colonies many Christians held to various millennial views that America itself was the new Israel and America was a harbinger of the restoration of Jews to their land as part of the ultimate redemption of humanity. American Jews felt comfortable to follow Jeremiah’s admonition to “seek the welfare” of their new place of domicile at the edge of European civilization and to imagine the end of the Galut of the Jewish people because of the new American polity and because of an important sector of its religious culture.

The first American Jew to grapple publicly with these ancient eschatological issues was Gershom Mendes Seixas (1745-1816). Seixas was the first native-born Jew to serve as a leader of the American Jewish community. Largely an autodidact, he served as a functionary of two Jewish synagogue-communities, New York’s Shearith Israel and Philadelphia’s Mikveh Israel. In both places, his principal responsibility was to lead the congregation in prayer as its ḥazzan. At the time, there was no precedent for a ḥazzan to preach or give public addresses. But because of his intellectual ability and natural leadership skills, Seixas emerged as the first American Jewish spokesperson. In that capacity, he articulated a traditional view of Galut, took a strong stand as a patriot and supporter of the American Revolution, and maintained that Jews, through their observance of the Commandments, could hasten the ultimate redemption of the Jewish people despite widespread religious laxity in the communities he served. Seixas created an American definition of Galut that foreshadowed the rise of the Zionist movement later in the nineteenth century.

1745-1766: Family and Childhood

It is helpful to examine Seixas’s personal history and to discover how his family life and upbringing brought him to a place of understanding Galut in its many manifestations. His paternal grandfather, Abraham Mendes Seixas, fled the Portuguese Inquisition “from Lisbon to London in the early 1720s, where he gave rise to a ‘numerous’ and influential family with branches spread across Europe, the Caribbean and North America.”² He and his wife Abigail Mendes Seixas were apparently well accepted in their new community, but there were family financial issues with their son Isaac. Isaac Mendes Seixas, the father of Gershom Mendes Seixas, was born of Sephardic descent in Lisbon, and departed from London to America via Barbados.³

Gershom’s maternal grandfather, Moses Levy, was born in Spain in 1665. He went to London, arrived in New York City in 1705, and gravitated almost immediately to the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation Shearith Israel in that city. Levy was serving the synagogue as parnas (president) when he died on June 14, 1728. He brought the legacy of the Inquisition and the conversos, which framed Gershom Seixas’s view of exile when he was a young child: “Exile expresses in Jewish consciousness not only stateless existence, deportation, displacement and banishment, but also a profound sense of estrangement, powerlessness, alienation, fear, and inferiority as well as lack of sovereignty, a threat to continuity, and the abandonment of a communal-religious identity.”⁴

Rachel, daughter of Moses Levy and Grace Mears Levy, married Isaac Mendes Seixas circa 1740.⁵ Their son Gershom Mendes Seixas was born on January 14, 1745.⁶ This was a “mixed marriage:” his father, Isaac, was born in Lisbon and became a merchant in New York and Newport; his mother, Rachel Levy, was of Ashkenazi background.⁷ Due to family contacts, they joined important social and economic circles in New York and also became an integral part of Congregation Shearith Israel. Their children all became prominent in the New World.

At a very early age, Gershom evinced a disposition to follow the Holy Service of the Synagogue; when he was but five years old, he read a portion of the prayers in the Synagogue of the Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City.⁸ Gershom Seixas grew up at Shearith Israel. He attended school there, where he learned both religious and secular subjects. “He had obtained his Jewish education and training presumably from the learned Joseph Jessurun Pinto, and probably also from the learned layman, Abraham I. Abrahams.”⁹ Gershom probably learned how to write and read English, perform mathematical computations, and likely learned Hebrew there. And he probably became a bar mitzvah; it has been suggested that he was apprenticed to learn mechanical trades.¹⁰ He basically taught himself to learn Hebrew beyond that of the curriculum and was a voracious reader as well.

The Seixas family was at the edge of the Diaspora, on the frontier of Jewish life. On one side, life is in a developed state; on the other, wilderness. But the family brought Jewish life with them and rooted themselves in Shearith Israel.

1766-1776: The Young Ḥazzan

In the late 1760s,¹¹ in his early twenties, Gershom applied for the position of ḥazzan at congregation Shearith Israel, which included the tasks of cantor and religious officiant. It emerged as a congregation by 1702 and built a small building in 1720. The Jews worked for economic and political franchisement and acceptance in New York. They were involved in a wide range of businesses, but there was no Jewish ghetto and little overt anti-Jewish feeling, with most of the population living below Wall Street. As there were apparently no other applicants, young Gershom was given the job. Gershom Seixas was hardly an ordained rabbi. He had neither the required learning nor the traditional semicha. Yet with him emerged a new kind of religious leadership that answered the needs of sparse settlements in a new world.¹² And his jobs at first were minimal and primarily functional—officiating at marriages and funerals and performing prayer services. Typically the ḥazzan of a congregation is a teacher. Seixas often had other jobs, and thus other sources of income, as a shochet (ritual slaughterer) and a mohel (circumciser). It was reported that in 1768 the synagogue paid “his initial compensation of 140 British pounds annually, plus three cords of firewood, and five pounds of Matzo for Passover.¹³

Seixas had secured employment, and then he wanted to marry. He went to Newport, Rhode Island, in 1774 to court a daughter of well-known Aaron Lopez, but his advances were rejected. On September 6, 1775, he married Elkalah Cohen, whose father was an Ashkenazi immigrant. This union represented another “mixed” marriage—like that of his parents before him—not uncommon at Shearith Israel. Together they had three children.¹⁴ At this point, with the Revolution at hand, New York was still largely a Dutch city, a busy, growing, diverse seaport with a frontier mentality that literally presented as an invigorated exile. New York embraced a medley of nationalities and religions. Because of its diversity, there was not tremendous pressure for conformity and it was sufficiently diverse so that a Jew like Seixas could rise to prominence and would be easily accepted. Elsewhere Seixas might have been an outsider and forced to convert; here he could be a Jew. What acculturation would mean in New York was simple: learn English. And Seixas was the first American Jewish religious leader to preach in English.¹⁵ New York was a colorful and important city—actually, just a town—on the frontier that reinforced the Sephardic idea of an invigorating diaspora without rejecting Galut. Jews continued to gain rights in New York, as the Jewish population was cosmopolitan and hailed from a variety of places. “In the five colonies containing most of the Jewish population up to the War of Independence, the Jews had already not only acquired complete freedom of worship, but even economic equality, notably the right to own stores and engage in crafts.”¹⁶ Seixas was still working at the synagogue in May, 1776, but he was “only a hired hand completely without the right even to address the congregation unless he was specifically authorized by the parnas.”¹⁷

1776-1780: Revolution

Ḥazzans were not hired to preach. The sermons during the early national period in America were often “suggested” and encouraged by the civil authorities, Congress, and/or the president. For example, there was “a day of humiliation, fasting and prayer” that was recommended by Congress in 1776 that was requested as a prayer for peace in that pivotal year. Modeled on the sermons of Protestant ministers, Seixas gave A Jewish Prayer for Peace between England and the Colonies on a public day of fasting and prayer, May 17, 1776. In this sermon, which may have been his first, Seixas was not yet calling for war. Six weeks later, war was declared.

As time went on, Seixas assumed more duties, and in August 1776, he gave a sermon in English as the Revolution was in full gear and the British were intent on occupying New York. The British cut the colonies in half, with New York under British control and numerous battles in and around the city. The pro-independence population fled, with the city becoming a haven for Loyalists, including a few wealthier Jews in the city; New York became known as Torytown. Seixas took a strong leadership role at this point, directing his congregation to disband instead of submitting to British subjugation. “…on the fourth of July came the parting of the ways. When it looked as if the city must fall into the hands of the British, Gershom Seixas took the lead in urging that the synagogue be closed and its members find freedom elsewhere. Early in August a final service was held and Hazan Seixas gave a solemn farewell address. Scrolls of the Torah were packed up, and five days before Washington evacuated the city on August 27th after losing the battle of Long Island, Gershom Seixas and his family left New York.”¹⁸ Many of the congregants heeded his call; the Patriots left, while the Loyalists tried to continue to attend a synagogue in the Shearith Israel building, with Alexander Zuntz, a Hessian soldier, as its president.¹⁹ But Seixas was determined to lead his flock to safety, and he carried the sacred items, including a Torah, out of the building to Stratford, Connecticut, where he and his family stayed with his relatives for the duration of the turmoil.²⁰ Stratford was an active seaport and a Patriot stronghold, and Seixas must have felt a sense of comfort in this exile since he was with his family.

In his Prayer for Peace During the American Revolution,²¹ Seixas said, “And may a permanent Peace subsist between them, and the Kings & Potentates, in alliance with them, and Establish to them a Covenant of Peace, until time shall be no more, so that Nation shall not lift up their sword against nation, neither shall they combat or make war any more, Amen.” This is derived from Isaiah 2:4, part of a consistent ideology that views history as linear and moving toward a goal; at the end of the day, that goal is peace. Seixas closes with this: “We Beseech thee, O Most gracious and Merciful king, to whom peace Pertaineth, that thou wilt cause us to enjoy a firm Peace & Tranquility, & Spread over us the Tabernacle of peace everlastingly, & speedily permit, that among us may be heard, the Voice of him who bringeth glad tidings, announcing that, ‘The Redeemer Cometh to Zion,’ Amen. So may it be.” This was the first known reference by Seixas to the Restoration of the Jews to their Land.

1780-1784: Philadelphia

Gershom Seixas and his family were in this exile for about four years when he received the call in June 1780 to serve as ḥazzan at congregation Mikveh Israel, in Philadelphia, a major community that was developing rapidly during this time. Seixas’s role grew in Philadelphia, and he became a spokesperson in the larger community.

Seixas, along with a group of laymen, realized that their small rented space would not be adequate going forward, and they planned on the creation of a new synagogue building nearby, on Cherry Street, that seemed to take on the national character of the current synagogue membership. This new structure became a brick building “thirty feet from East to West and Thirty Six feet from South to North,”²² some thirty-five feet from the street, placed in the rear of the lot—leaving space for a future school house, a residence for the ḥazzan, and a mikveh. The consecration of the new building was held on September 13, 1782, with a seating capacity of about two hundred.²³ The original prayer Seixas offered on this occasion included asking God’s blessing on the new nation’s leaders and armed services, which tied Judaism and America together in a new and special way.

And Seixas, who must have felt emboldened after almost a decade, found himself involved in “representing the Philadelphia Jewish community officially as the rabbi in a bold, vigorous demand for political equality… to protest the political disabilities under which they labored in the state.”²⁴ A provision of the 1776 Pennsylvania constitution discriminated against the Jews in their voting rights, and a committee of five, including Seixas, fought to change this; the restrictive oath was abolished some seven years later.

But difficulties ensued. Many Jews were drawn to the city during the Revolution, but as the fighting had concluded and the British departed, the Jews who felt they had to leave their homes during the war were able to return, thus decimating the population of the synagogue or at least drawing leadership away. And Ḥazzan Seixas was part of this; while it was not a shock that he would return to New York, it was still a surprise when it happened.²⁵

Despite the disruptions of war, Seixas was eager to return to his childhood synagogue, and he accepted this offer after the British left Manhattan, returning to the city and his beloved congregation on March 23, 1784. New York was multi-ethnic, religiously diverse, and still had a profound Dutch presence. There was some negotiation with New York—Seixas reminding them that he spoke neither Spanish nor Portuguese, he realized that the congregation may not be united, and he demanded a salary commensurate with the one he had in Philadelphia. All of Seixas’s conditions were satisfied.²⁶ The synagogue had continued to function with the Loyalists who remained, so there was a complex job at hand in reuniting the congregation when he returned. There were Loyalists and Patriots, Sephardim and Ashkenazim. Their skilled and sensitive ḥazzan would unite his congregation.

At this point, he was a married man with three children, and he was ready to assume a new kind of leadership in New York. It was coincidental and fortuitous that at this very time the state enhanced the position of the clergy in general: “New York passed acts permitting and encouraging the incorporation of every religious group and accorded a certain official character to the chief religious functionary. Having no choice, the Jewish community denominated its ḥazzan as minister and learned to respect him and give him status if only because Christians respected their spiritual leaders.”²⁷

1784-1800: New York

In 1784 Seixas and his family returned to New York. It was also at this time that Seixas was appointed to be a regent of Columbia College (and later elected a trustee). This honor and recognition enhanced his reputation and standing. It is evident that Gershom Seixas was changing over time, becoming bolder, more vocal about connecting Galut and restoration, and, in a word, maturing. By this time he demonstrated real leadership in the new America. English became a unifying force, and he continued to use a few Hebrew phrases in his preaching, which became a standard. Gershom Mendes Seixas became the outstanding American Jewish preacher of his day:

However, the paucity of preaching in American Judaism at this time meant that the total number of sermons he delivered in his entire life was probably less than an active Christian minister might have delivered in one year…Gershom Seixas helped to lay the groundwork for the development of the American Jewish preaching tradition. He is best remembered not as the most skilled or outstanding practitioner of that tradition, but rather as a pioneer.²⁸

A year after his wife Elkalah’s passing in 1785, Gershom Seixas married Hannah Manuel, age twenty, on November 1, 1786. Together they had eleven children,²⁹ and she survived her husband by some forty years. Seixas now had expanded responsibilities at the synagogue. Although it was not typical for the ḥazzan to give regular discourses, Seixas had truly grown into his role and was now giving sermons as the true spiritual leader of this important synagogue in New York City. By this point Seixas had already emerged as the religious leader of the Jewish community. Although he was paid little and kept the discussion ongoing, over time he developed the confidence and self-training to remain in the spotlight. Synagogue governance was by a junta,³⁰ with no ordained rabbis in the country, and here is where Seixas again asserts himself. His view of Galut, a vibrant diaspora in the context of a religious Galut, is how he matures and internalizes it all. The punishment of Galut is that it is not in the Land of Israel.

In 1789, Gershom Seixas demonstrated in a Thanksgiving sermon³¹ that Jews were a part of the American landscape, encouraging American Jews to participate in the political life of the new nation. Seixas took this opportunity to pray for the leadership of the country, state, and city. “Coming nine months after the first presidential election, seven months after the creation of the Department of State, and two months after the creation of the Treasury Department and the office of attorney general, the new nation had much for which to be thankful. It had successfully challenged the British Empire and won. It was in the process of successfully creating a new government.”³²

Gershom Seixas was particularly poignant as he displayed gratitude in his address, entitled

Thus A Religious Discourse Delivered in the Synagogue in this City, on Thursday the 26th of November, 1789. Agreeable to the Proclamation of the President [Washington] of the United States of America, to be Observed as a Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer.

…The wonderful display of his divine providence, ‘in the course and conclusion of the late war;’ the happy consequences derived therefrom, by an establishment of public liberty; the recent mercies conferred on these states, by the general approbation and adoption of the new constitution, are (ALL) blessings that demand our most grateful acknowledgments to the Supreme Ruler of the universe; more especially, as we are made equal partakers of every benefit that results from this good government…³³

Seixas returns to what is a familiar refrain:

From the circumstances we are led to believe, that though we, by our sins and transgressions, as well as by the sins of our fathers, are involved in this captivity, yet we may, by an acknowledgment of our evil actions, find grace in the sight of our Creator, and again be restored to our own land…³⁴

Here Seixas makes a connection between the country’s new independence and peace, combining obedience to God and thankfulness. But he continues by connecting this situation with the continuing hope of returning to Zion. In other words, these Jews, scattered in the new America, are fortunate and in a good situation, but ultimately they will depart from this Galut and return “home” to Zion. The concept of Galut becomes more pronounced: “The Jews of America, separated from the Jewish population centres of Europe by vast expanses of ocean, thought of themselves as the captives, ‘the exiled ones of Israel,’ who, according to the predictions of the prophets, would be gathered in from the four corners of the earth.”³⁵

“For Seixas, more than any other American Jewish leader of his day, embodied and gave voice to the Zionist ideal, the belief in Jewish nationhood, the imminence of the Messiah, the ingathering of the exiles… and the rebuilding of Palestine as a Jewish homeland, under a Jewish government. Moreover, Seixas ‘emphasized the idea that equality of civil rights, for all its great importance, did not signify the end of the Exile, or, as he termed it, the Captivity.’”³⁶

Seixas’ role grew, and he continued as a spokesperson in the community. Also, the role of ḥazzan expanded to include pastoral duties, and Seixas embraced this as he led his congregation during times of difficulties. In 1793, Seixas gave a discourse on yellow fever and charity. The epidemic had recently hit Philadelphia, and then later came to New York with less virulence. Seixas had much to say:

Were it for no other reason that we join in celebrating this day with the other inhabitants of this city, it would be of itself sufficient, but as we are particularly situated in our captivity, that I conceive we are more specially called upon to return thanks to benign Goodness in placing us in such a country, where we are free to act, according to the dictates of conscience, and where no exception is taken from following the principles of our religion…³⁷

Most importantly, he then invoked the Bible with this: “…he will gather us again from all corners of the earth, wherein we shall be scattered and reinstate us in our former [cannot read] of religions, in our own land and under our own government, where every man shall sit under his own Vine and under his own fig-tree, and none shall make him afraid.”³⁸

The final part of the sermon magnifies the beliefs of Seixas. He is bold, he is clear, and he is a believer:

…we have no reason to doubt the completion of the prophesies, in respect to our restoration, which God in his own good time will establish, and altho’ we are so happily situated in this country, so much preferable to our brethren, dispersed in other parts of the world, yet we can not perform the rites & ceremonies of our temple service, which was only given to be observed in the holy Land, and until we are again embodied, and settled as a Nation, we can not comply with that part of our holy law and seeing that God hath given us a law to be kept for ever, we may necessarily extract that He will [yet] enable us to return, when we shall be purified from our sins, and the sins of our fathers, by a sincere repentance and amendment. Hasten them to set about whilst yet we have time, that we may not be cut off, from seeing and enjoying this glorious advent, when the Redeemer shall come to Zion, & turn the transgressors of Jacob saith the Lord! Much very much depends on this circumstance, to bring forward the restoration of Israel, and know ye of a truth that without repentance & amendment, we can not expect to reap the promised blessing…³⁹

May 9, 1798, had been named a Day of National Fasting by US President John Adams, and Gershom Seixas delivered a discourse “advocating peace and unity—in contrast with most of the speakers that day, who used their pulpits to agitate for war against France.”⁴⁰ There was an international incident, called the XYZ Affair, which, in short, had the French attacking American shipping and attempts at bribery. Seixas’s remarks did not directly discuss the incident, and neither did he comment on a naval war or the French.

Yet again, Seixas noted:

It hath pleased God to have established us in this country where we possess every advantage that other citizens of these states enjoy, and which is as much as we could in reason expect in this captivity, for which let us humbly return thanks for his manifold mercies… so as to procure peace and safety to the citizens, both in their persons and their properties: that every man may sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, when ye shall have beaten your swords into plough shares and your spears into pruning hooks.⁴¹

Seixas underscores that Jews are in a very privileged position in this country, but he also reminds his congregation that they, as good Americans, can and should still expect to return to Zion. “The two most famous early American Jewish displays of patriotism occurred outside of the synagogue. They were the 1788 celebrations connected with the Grand Federal Procession in honor of the newly ratified Constitution, and the 1790 congregational letters to George Washington. The former, held in Philadelphia, symbolized in remarkable fashion the tension between the Jewish desire to belong and the Jewish need to be separate.”⁴²

1800-1816: A New Century

“In the sermons he preached between 1799 and 1807 his appeal to his fellow-Jews to return to acts of piety was based on the argument that they would thereby fulfill a condition for redemption, the happy omens of which could already be seen in the events of the day.”⁴³ Seixas was becoming even more self-confident and definitive in his sermons, and he was an important figure in Jewish history because he was a leader in a new place and had a vision of an authentic Judaism in a new land.

Seixas’s 1802 sermon was different than the others that have been explored here because it was delivered to the Polonies Talmud Torah, and thus it was internal to the Jewish community and not an order from any civil authority. There are a number of themes in this sermon:

1. Chosenness. “…were ye to consider how much depends on good-works, joined to faith & hope in God, you have had more reason to reap the promised assurances of Salvation in the future state of retribution, and serve as a means to accomplish the glorious restoration of Israel, as set forth by our faithfull Prophets & which now seems to be nearly approaching, by the many existing commotions throughout the world. Were we seriously to reflect on the series of events, which have attended the House of Israel, from the time we became [cannot read word] as a Nation, peculiarly chosen by God, above all others…”⁴⁴
2. Divine promise. The Jews will be returned to their own land. “…the time will come according to the divine promise, that we shall [again] be happily restored to our own land, where “every man shall dwell in safety under his own vine and under his own fig tree & none shall make him afraid. It is on such like assurances that we give our hopes & by a [cannot read word] belief in the God of our Fathers, and depending on His holy word, we should not entertain the least doubt of the accomplishment of His divine will & in its due season we will hasten the redemption of Israel, that he will gather us from the four corners of the earth, whither we shall be scattered, saying to the North ‘Give up and to the South hold not back…’ ”⁴⁵
3. Restoration. “Let us now resolve in our minds the benefits of complying with the law of Moses, who, with the Prophets that succeeded him, have uniformly taught us, that obedience to the law, avoiding sinfull actions, turning down from evil-doings, sincere repentance, ardent prayer and bestowing alms, will be the happy means of procuring the redemption of Israel from this long & tedious captivity, and restoring us again to the holy land which was given unto our Fathers…”⁴⁶
4. Redemption. “You will likewise have observed the promises given in holy writ for the redemption of the House of Israel from this long captivity & for the restoration to our own territory, to be again embodied as a Nation, to have the Temple rebuilt, the Priests & the Levites reinstated in their respective offices, the sacrifices to be offered, according to order, and the service of divine Majesty to be performed as in the days of old.”⁴⁷
5. Teaching Torah. “...promoting the study of our holy Law, with all the consequent blessings…”⁴⁸ Torah was absolutely central and sacred to Seixas, although he was not a scholar.
6. Salvation. “It is by practicing such like Virtues, that we may rationally hope, through faith, in the Author of all good, to arrive at that period of redemption … and only place our trust in the fountain of all Perfection, that we may ascribe power & glory to the end of Salvation.”⁴⁹

In 1804, Gershom Seixas gave another Thanksgiving sermon. It is clearly political. In Jewish theology, restoration means the restoration to the land of Israel. Seixas is a traditional restorationist, and in this sermon he declared that the Lord “will gather us again from all corners of the world wherein we shall be scattered and reinstate us in our former possessions, in our own Land and under our own Government.”⁵⁰

The following discourse was delivered on Thursday, December 20, 1805, which occurred during Chanukkah. This was to be another day of Thanksgiving and prayer; this discourse reflects on Jews taking control of their land and reestablishing a monarchy, reestablishing themselves in their own land. This is another sermon talking about good deeds as the way to a restored Israel. Deliverance and redemption are the theological debate of the moment. Here is what Seixas said in

A Religious Discourse on Faith and Hope; proceeding from the fear, and love of God which are the leading principles to Benevolence, Charity, and all Good-works…who are this day assembled to offer up with all humiliation, their thanksgivings for the benefits they have received during the course of the last year, that those didst spare us from the ravages of epidemic disease…. Restore us, oh Lord, unto the Land which thou didst swear to give unto our fathers Abraham, Isaac & Jacob, for an inheritance to them and to their posterity… that we may be grateful for thy tender mercies & may the Redeemer come to Zion, according to the sacred prophesy, to whom shall be the gathering of the Nations, in his day Judah shall be delivered, and Israel shall dwell in safety.⁵¹

A sermon in 1807 was typical for Gershom Seixas, as it developed one of his favorite themes: charity. He often encouraged his flock to support the charitable organizations that he founded. Seixas founded Kalfe Sedaka Mattan Besether (Fund for Charity and Anonymous Gifts) to help the local poor as well as the needy in Eretz Yisroel (the Land of Israel). In an appeal in 1807 for the Kalfe Sedaka, he stated, “There is not a prophet from Moses to Malachi…but what takes notice of the remarkable events that have attended us, from the commencement of our general captivity, even unto the present day. Twice have we been redeemed according to the sacred history and we have every reason to expect, the third time is rapidly approaching when we shall be established forever.”⁵²

Gershom Seixas gave another Fast-Day Sermon on February 2, 1814, set by the New York City Common Council. The topic was the War of 1812, but Seixas does not focus on details of the conflict.⁵³ Instead, the unabashed patriotism of Seixas underscores his support for President Madison’s actions: “It is sufficient for us to know that our rulers are chosen to be the judges on all affairs concerning the welfare of their constituents. They (the ruling powers) have declared war, and it is our bounden duty to act as true and faithful citizens to support and preserve the honor, the dignity, and the independence of the United States of America! That they may bear equal rank among the nations of the earth.”⁵⁴

After this, Seixas became ill. He served his congregation and his community until the end. “At the age of seventy, verging on blindness and suffering life in a tired body racked by sickness and old age, he still fasted and prayed before his congregation on Yom Kippur.”⁵⁵ It is noted that

In his earlier years… hope for Messianic delivery was strong, but by the last year of his life he was no longer certain of the imminence of the delivery and wrote that he disagreed with those who thought that the world was close to the last days. His loss of faith was not in the precepts of his religion but rather in the virtue of the Jewish community in 1814; for there was a need for “reinstating Jews in the sight of their Creator, to obtain His Divine Grace and following this will come restoration and peace.”⁵⁶

Gershom Mendes Seixas died on July 2, 1816 and was buried in his congregation’s first cemetery in New York City.

Legacy

Gershom Mendes Seixas has become known as the “Patriot Rabbi.” That seems to be only partly true. First, as we know, he was not officially a rabbi. He did not have formal training past his teen years, and he of course did not graduate from a rabbinic school nor become ordained. But in practice, he absolutely grew into the role.

When he attained the job as ḥazzan, he was a functionary, doing a number of important and necessary tasks. He cared deeply about Judaism and contemplated his faith every day as he expanded his role in the synagogue. He was a believer, and he was the first Jewish leader in America who led a congregation with such thought, knowledge, and absolute devotion.

The growth and development of Gershom Seixas can be seen clearly in the pages here. Perhaps one of the major personal turning points in his life occurred when he made the decision to close Shearith Israel in the face of the British incursion in New York. He was a young man in his mid-twenties, and he stepped up for his congregation and his community. He literally grabbed the Torah, candlesticks, and other religious objects that he could find and led his congregants out of the building and closed the doors. Of course the irony is that some of his congregants stayed, and when he returned from his sojourn to Stratford and Philadelphia, he had to face the task of reuniting the factions. But he was not a stranger to the accommodation of his flock, and he dealt with the Ashkenazi and Sephardi members, and his own converso background, to create a cohesive community within the synagogue and the kehillah, combining both secular and religious aspects of Jewish life and community in New York. His time in Philadelphia cannot be overlooked, as it was a time of further growth and leadership development, always with a view toward future needs. The new building for Mikveh Israel housed the congregation for some forty years, and he was pivotal at its inception.

Seixas was well-regarded in his community and had friendships with non-Jewish clergy. Patriotism and charity were two of his guiding stars, and one or both were mentioned in every sermon or discourse he gave. His belief in God was clearly unshakable, and the themes of exile, redemption, Restoration, the Messiah, and diaspora were never far behind.

Gershom Mendes Seixas was a man who sought a vine and a fig tree. He found it for himself, led others to find theirs, and believed in the Restoration of the Jewish people in their own Land.

Rabbi Lance J. Sussman, PhD, is Senior Rabbi Emeritus, Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel, Elkins Park, PA, and the former chair of Judaic Studies, Binghamton University, State University of New York. Lynda Barness is CEO, LB Literary Projects, with varying roles of author, editor, researcher, and project manager. Sussman and Barness have been writing partners since 2022.

---

1. ¹ The United States government is encouraging religion, and in our own time it manifests itself in the 501(c)(3), which provides tax-exempt status for religious institutions, among others.

2. ² Carla Vieira, “Abraham Before Abraham: Pursuing the Portuguese Roots of the Seixas Family,” in American Jewish History 99, no. 1 (April 2015): 145. Abraham apparently also had a Christian name, Miguel Pacheco de Silva. Also see Laura Arnold Liebman, Messianism, Secrecy, & Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life (Valentine Mitchell, 2013).

3. ³ David de Sola Pool, Portraits Etched in Stone: Early Jewish Settlers 1682-1831, (Columbia, 1953), 346.

4. ⁴ Rachel Elior, “Exile and Redemption in Jewish Mystical Thought,” Reprinted from Studies in Spirituality 14 (2004): 11.

5. ⁵ The years 1740 and 1741 have been reported.

6. ⁶ The year of his birth is debatable, appearing in secondary literature as 1745 and 1746.

7. ⁷ Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching in Times of War, 1800-2001 (Liverpool University Press, 2008), 109.

8. ⁸ N. Taylor Phillips, “Rev. Gershom Mendez Seixas, ‘The Patriot Minister of the American Revolution,’” American Jewish Year Book, Vol. 6 (1904-5), 41.

9. ⁹ David and Tamar De Sola Pool, An Old Faith in the New World: Portrait of Shearith Israel 1654-1954 (Columbia University Press, 1955), 168. Pinto was the religious leader of the congregation during Seixas’s teenage years. Abrahams, a Loyalist during the Revolution, remained as a leader of the congregation after Seixas departed from the temple and the city during the occupation of the British.

10. ¹⁰ Robert V. Friedenberg, “Hear O Israel”: The History of American Jewish Preaching, 1654-1970 (University of Alabama Press, 1989), 8.

11. ¹¹ Once again, research indicated dates that were close but not identical.

12. ¹² Harry Simonhoff, “1789: Gershom Mendes Seixas,” Jewish Notables In America, 1776-1865: Links of an Endless Chain (Greenberg, 1956), 53, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89062329461&seq=71.

13. ¹³ “The First American Jew: A Tribute to Gershom Mendes Seixas, ‘Patriot Rabbi of the Revolution,’ ” American Council for Judaism 5, https://acjna/org/articles/the-first-american-jew-a-tribute-to-gershom-mendes-sexias-patriot-rabbi-of-the-revolution.

14. ¹⁴ It has been reported that they had three and also five. Perhaps the tally represented the children who lived past infanthood.

15. ¹⁵ Joseph L. Blau and Salo W. Baron, The Jews of the United States 1790-1840 (Columbia University Press, 1963), 566.

16. ¹⁶ Raphael Mahler, A History of Modern Jewry 1780-1815 (Schocken Books, 1971), 3.

17. ¹⁷ Jacob Rader Marcus, “The Handsome Young Priest in the Black Gown: The Personal World of Gershom Seixas,” Hebrew Union College Annual 40/41 (1969-1970): 421, https://www.jstor.orgstab;235032269.

18. ¹⁸ De Sola Pool, Portraits Etched in Stone, 350-351.

19. ¹⁹ Morris U. Schappes, A Documentary History of the Jews in the United States 1854-1875 3rd ed. (Schocken Books, 1971), 37. Also De Sola Pool, Portraits Etched in Stone, 399.

20. ²⁰ Myer Myers, a noted silversmith, had moved to Norwalk, which was destroyed in 1779. Then he moved to Stratford, along the shoreline, in his own sort of exile.

21. ²¹ Henry Samuel Morais, The Jews of Philadelphia (1894), 126-127.

22. ²² Edwin Wolf II and Maxwell Whiteman, The History of the Jews of Philadelphia from Colonial Times to the Age of Jackson (Jewish Publication Society, 1956), 118, quoting a Mikveh Israel Minute Book.

23. ²³ Morais, The History of the Jews of Philadelphia, 14. Again, the numbers tend to be reported differently. It was said to be one-story and two-story!

24. ²⁴ Marcus, “The Handsome Young Priest in the Black Gown,” 418, 422.

25. ²⁵ Wolf and Whiteman, History of the Jews, 122.

26. ²⁶ Wolf and Whiteman, History of the Jews, 123.

27. ²⁷ Marcus, “The Handsome Young Priest in the Black Gown,” 427.

28. ²⁸ Friedenberg, “Hear O Israel,” 18.

29. ²⁹ We know that Gershom Seixas had either 14 or 16 children. The youngest and the oldest, according to MikvehIsraelHistory.com, were twenty-nine years apart.

30. ³⁰ De Sola Pool, An Old Faith in the New World, 267-8. “After 1784 the junta or governing board made up of the parnas—president, the vice-president, and five assistants, continued to be elected annually to care for the spiritualities of the congregation. But under the act of incorporation of 1784 there were also elected annually six trustees charged with responsibility for the temporalities of the congregation.”

31. ³¹ Gershom Mendes Seixas, A Religious Discourse: Thanksgiving Day Sermon, November 26, 1789, edited with an introduction by Isidore S. Meyer (Jewish Historical Society of New York, 1977), https://www.religioninamerica.org/rahp_objects/giving-thanks-for-the-constitution-at-new-yorks-congregation-shearith-israel/.

32. ³² Friedenberg, “Hear O Israel,” 10.

33. ³³ Seixas, Thanksgiving Day sermon.

34. ³⁴ Seixas, Thanksgiving Day sermon.

35. ³⁵ Mahler, A History of Modern Jewry, 12.

36. ³⁶ Mahler, A History of Modern Jewry, 14.

37. ³⁷ Sermons, discourses, and epistolary opinions on religious matters by Gershom Seixas, undated, Box: 1, Folder: 61. Jacques Judah Lyons papers, P-15. American Jewish Historical Society, 7, https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/archival_objects/325115.

38. ³⁸ Sermons, etc. by Gershom Seixas, undated, Jacques Judah Lyons papers, P-15. American Jewish Historical Society, 7, https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/archival_objects/325115.

39. ³⁹ Sermons, etc. by Gershom Seixas, Jacques Judah Lyons papers, P-15. American Jewish Historical Society, 13-14, https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/archival_objects/325115.

40. ⁴⁰ Mahler, A History of Modern Jewry, 6.

41. ⁴¹ Schappes, A Documentary History, 91-92.

42. ⁴² Jonathan D. Sarna, “The Impact of the American Revolution on American Jews,” Modern Judaism 1, no. 2 (September 1981):154, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1396058.

43. ⁴³ Mahler, A History of Modern Jewry, 14.

44. ⁴⁴ Sermons, etc. by Gershom Seixas, Jacques Judah Lyons papers, P-15. American Jewish Historical Society, 10, https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/archival_objects/325115.

45. ⁴⁵ Sermons, etc. by Gershom Seixas, Jacques Judah Lyons papers, P-15. American Jewish Historical Society, 18-19, https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/archival_objects/325115.

46. ⁴⁶ Sermons, etc. by Gershom Seixas, Jacques Judah Lyons papers, P-15. American Jewish Historical Society, 26, https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/archival_objects/325115.

47. ⁴⁷ Sermons, etc. by Gershom Seixas, Jacques Judah Lyons papers, P-15. American Jewish Historical Society, 31-32, https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/archival_objects/325115.

48. ⁴⁸ Sermons, etc. by Gershom Seixas, Jacques Judah Lyons papers, P-15. American Jewish Historical Society, 32, https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/archival_objects/325115.

49. ⁴⁹ Sermons, etc. by Gershom Seixas, Jacques Judah Lyons papers, P-15. American Jewish Historical Society, 38, https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/archival_objects/325115.

50. ⁵⁰ 1804 sermon per Mahler, A History of Modern Jewry, 14.

51. ⁵¹ Sermons, etc. by Gershom Seixas, Jacques Judah Lyons papers, P-15. American Jewish Historical Society, 32-24, https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/3/archival_objects/325340.

52. ⁵² Shmuel Singer, “1776: A Homegrown Torah Pioneer, Gershom Mendes Seixas,” The Jewish Observer 12, no. 2 (January 1977):10. https://agudah.org/the-jewish-observer-vol-12-no-2-january-1977shevat-5737.

53. ⁵³ Saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 116: “Yet this sermon, as the only known extant Jewish preaching text responding to any American war before 1861, delivered before the flagship Jewish congregation of the nation, expressing the ideals of loyal support for the government, despite its failures and empathetic commitment to fellow citizens in their time of need, it is a text of considerable historical significance.”

54. ⁵⁴ Saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 117.

55. ⁵⁵ Thomas Kessner, “Gershom Mendes Seixas: His Religious ‘Calling,’ Outlook and Competence,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 58, no. 4 (June 1969): 465. https://www.jstor/org/stable23876025.

56. ⁵⁶ Kessner, “GMS: His Religious ‘Calling,’” 247-248, Footnote MS Letter to Sarah Kursheedt, January 23, 1814.

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Anniversaries can simply mark time, or they can commemorate a transformational occasion. The 250th anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence represents more than one country’s milestone. It celebrates an experiment in freedom and self-governance.

In 1789, in his first inaugural address, George Washington averred that the “sacred fire¹ of liberty” and the American model of government depend on “the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”² The Founding Fathers readily acknowledged the tenuous nature of the nascent republic they had declared in 1776. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when asked if the gathering had created a monarchy or a republic, Benjamin Franklin famously responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”³

If the ideal that “all men are created equal…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” embodied a radical innovation for America’s patrician founders, it constituted an unprecedented turning point for America’s minute but active Jewish community and, ultimately, for all the generations of Jews that followed.

In 1776, Jews had not known citizenship since antiquity; the concept of unalienable rights outside of the Holy Land was unique. When the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE, Jews had not been free. The Jewish kings who had governed them were clients of Rome. Except for a brief period of independence under the Hasmonean dynasty (ca. 140-63 BCE), Roman, Seleucid, Ptolemaic, Macedonian, Persian, and Babylonian rulers had controlled them for six and a half centuries (586 BCE to 70 CE). During the Middle Ages, Jews in Europe lived at the sufferance of kings and nobles. After 1100, expulsion became the norm. Jews were banished from England (1290), France (1306, 1322, 1394), German towns and city-states (Black Plague Expulsions, 1348-1351), Spain (1492), Sicily, Sardinia, and the Kingdom of Naples (under Spanish rule, 1492-1493), and Portugal (1496), to name a few.

Not surprisingly then, when the first group of Jews came to New Amsterdam in 1654, they were fleeing an expulsion. The Portuguese had reconquered Recife, Brazil from the Dutch, thereby precipitating the expulsion of as many as 1,500 Jews⁴ who had established a community under Dutch protection. The Protestant Dutch had freed themselves from Spanish control beginning in 1581 and had adopted a policy of religious toleration. That toleration had made the Dutch Republic a refuge for religious minorities, including Jews fleeing the Inquisition.

Dutch toleration, however, was not synonymous with religious freedom. The 23 Jews who arrived in 1654 immediately faced the threat of a new expulsion under Peter Stuyvesant, the director-general of New Netherland. Stuyvesant was restrained by his superiors at the Dutch West India Company who, clearly influenced by Jewish shareholders in the company, allowed the Jews to remain on the condition that they not become a charge of the company.⁵ Despite such toleration, most of the original group eventually departed, but the first Jewish community in what would become the United States had taken root. The first Jewish congregation, Shearith Israel, traces its founding to receipt of a Torah scroll in 1655 and the purchase of a cemetery in 1656.

By 1776, the Jews in all 13 colonies numbered between 1,000 and 2,500, 0.04% to 0.10% of the general population.⁶ Their religious and civil rights varied from colony to colony, but in Philadelphia where the Founders would compose the Declaration of Independence and, later, the Constitution and its accompanying Bill of Rights, Jews enjoyed relative religious freedom in the colony founded by Quakers under William Penn. When the Revolution came, at least 15 Jews became officers, a number equivalent to their percentage in the general population.⁷ The total number of Jewish Revolutionary soldiers is thought to be of equivalent proportion. Jewish participation in the Revolutionary War was not limited to military action. Religious leaders like Gershom Mendes Seixas (1745–1816), the hazzan (religious leader) of Congregation Shearith Israel—still New York’s only Jewish congregation at the time—preached the Patriot cause from the pulpit.

American independence and the First Amendment to the Constitution did not immediately produce equality of citizenship, much less of religion. Like other minorities, Jews would have to wait to secure those goals. However, the foretaste those documents provided caused American Jews to confront what one pair of authors in this issue (Sussman and Barness)⁸ diagnose as the challenge of acculturation versus assimilation.

******

The foregoing demonstrates the unique, revolutionary impact that the American experiment has had upon Jews. It also validates the need for an academic volume that honors America’s 250th anniversary through rigorous, groundbreaking contributions by eminent scholars. Masorti: The New Journal of Conservative Judaism has accepted this challenge.

A double-blind, peer-reviewed academic journal, Masorti is the direct continuation of the Conservative Movement’s academic journal, Conservative Judaism (published from 1945 to 2014). Masorti is jointly sponsored by the Rabbinical Assembly and all five seminaries ordaining Conservative rabbis and cantors: the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York City; the American Jewish University in Los Angeles; Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem; Seminario Rabinico in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and the Frankel College in Potsdam, Germany.

Despite its name and sponsors, Masorti covers far more than topics related to one religious movement. It also serves as a scholarly forum for the serious, critical examination of Jewish texts and traditions, history and law, analyzing the changing Jewish community and its spiritual, social, and moral challenges. Masorti embraces a global perspective that transcends denominational boundaries.

This special issue honoring America’s sestercentennial emerged from a systematic plan. Almost all of the articles grew out of formal invitations to leading scholars of American Jewish history and religion. Invitations, however, did not guarantee publication. Each manuscript required evaluation through Masorti’s double-blind peer-review process.

The plan also called for contributors whose areas of research span the full spectrum of American history from the colonial period to issues of the present day. To avoid the facile route of inviting contributors who are part of Masorti’s sponsoring denomination, invitations were distributed without regard to religious affiliation. Efforts were also made to encourage papers that did not fit the traditional academic categories. Thus, several articles use autobiographical experiences to examine historical and religious phenomena in American Jewish society. Finally, leading specialists whose innovative research has shaped our understanding of the challenges and trends confronting American Jewry were asked to submit manuscripts.

The response to this plan produced unanticipated but positive results. A senior law professor (Baker) wrote about his gradual, profound religious metamorphosis that led to his conversion to Orthodox Judaism and eventually to the presidency of a leading Orthodox congregation. Scholars who had written complementary and definitive books on American Jewish religion (Sarna and Ferziger) and the history of social and political developments on American Jews (Lederhendler) turned their attention to the nineteenth-century emergence of communities with multiple, competing synagogues and the peculiarly American development of Jewish religious movements. Historians who had helped define the academic study of Orthodox Judaism (Gurock and Eleff) investigated the role of sports and changing values in the postwar era. A scholar (S. R. Schwartz) whose innovative work had chronicled the role and power of rabbis’ wives documented her own role at a pinnacle of Jewish academic and religious leadership. Long-time pressing issues like antisemitism, Zionism, mental health, and Jewish education receive fresh analysis (Sherman, Cooperman, Guzik, and E. Schwartz, respectively; see also Benporat for a pertinent review essay), and a distinguished historian applies the analytical tool of vernacular religion to American Jewish life (Moore). Penetrating studies of Jewish liturgical music, America in Jewish liturgy and thought, and a Hebrew text (Austerklein, Dorff, and Rank) round out the broad range of Jewish culture and history.

Two seemingly unrelated articles supply important data regarding the challenge of Jewish generational continuity. One examines a colonial religious leader who played a quasi-rabbinic role in the period of the American Revolution (Sussman and Barness) while the other documents his great-grandson, who became a trailblazing explorer in the American West (Hoberman).

For generations, peer-reviewed academic journals published articles in more than one language and doctoral students were required to master a reading knowledge of at least two languages beyond their own. With the increasing, postwar domination of English as the international lingua franca of commerce, research, and communication generally, the academic tradition of multilingual publication has all but disappeared. In establishing Masorti and thereby reviving the academic journal, Conservative Judaism, the editors set the goal of publishing at least one article in Hebrew and one in Spanish in each issue. Doing so recognizes the international range of Jewish communities in Israel and Latin America.

In this special issue, two such articles revive academic linguistic variety and simultaneously commemorate America’s 250th anniversary by symbolizing the country’s diversity. The Hebrew article incisively analyzes scholarly theories and reaches new conclusions concerning Conservative Judaism (Lederhendler), while the Spanish article (Mejia) sheds light on a twenty-first-century phenomenon of emerging Jewish communities, primarily in the Global South, in which most of the founding members are converts. In addition to amplifying awareness of a growing segment of the Jewish population, the Spanish contribution links to the other, aforementioned article on conversion (Baker) and thus accentuates the easily overlooked but crucial fact that Jews are an amalgam of 1) descendants of exiles from ancient Israel and Judea and 2) converts who have joined and often led Jewry over more than two millennia.

Masorti epitomizes a multiplicity of religious outlooks in both contributors and readers. Indeed, this special issue’s authors include Conservative, Orthodox, and Reform rabbis⁹ as well as the secular and non-observant. The journal serves as an open forum where different ideas from contrasting perspectives receive hearings. It is an arena where data, logic, scholarly rigor, and originality test hypotheses to advance knowledge. It thus harkens back to the values of the Enlightenment, the intellectual watershed that provided the foundation for the ideals of individual liberty, religious tolerance, and constitutional government, which America’s founders sought to actualize. Yet, Masorti’s commitment to open inquiry also finds commonality with two Jewish modes of discovery: the give and take of the classic Ḥavruta method and the scientific applications of Wissenschaft des Judentums.

Beyond its commitment to the customary standards of academic journals, Masorti incorporates a willing acceptance of autobiographical evidence and analysis—a less conventional but nevertheless productive investigative approach. The three articles that feature autobiography (Ferziger, S. R. Schwartz, and Baker) are not unprecedented in this journal,¹⁰ and autobiography increasingly appears in the social sciences and beyond.¹¹

Shortly after this special issue had entered its final stage of preparation, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) named its ninth chancellor, Rabbi Mike Uram. Since JTS, in partnership with the Rabbinical Assembly, had founded Masorti’s direct predecessor, the journal Conservative Judaism (1945-2014), the editors thought it fitting to invite the new chancellor to offer greetings. He responded with an eloquent, substantive endorsement of the methods and goals of meticulous, critical scholarship.

******

As they struggled over the content of the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago, the Founders understood that their efforts were aspirational. Even if they achieved victory in the oncoming War of Independence and preserved their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, they knew that their defining document was incomplete. Jefferson, the slaveholder, had inserted a crucial paragraph against the slave trade¹² only to have it expunged—at the behest of Southern enslavers and Northern merchants and shipowners—to gain the unanimous endorsement of the Continental Congress. The recognition that all human beings are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights existed in writing but not in reality.

For Jews whose perpetual statelessness over millennia had characterized their lot, the Founders’ unique declaration and later constitutional guarantees promised not only survival but the opportunity to help build the society that, as Washington would later write, “gives to bigotry no sanction” where “all possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.”¹³ However, like the Founders, the infinitesimal colonial Jewish community and its successors also understood the difference between ambition and fruition. Despite the First Amendment, there were states where Jews could not vote or hold office or organize a congregation until well into the nineteenth century. Periodic waves of antisemitism continue to rise and fall in contemporary America. Thus, when the Preamble to the Constitution spoke of achieving a “more perfect union,” it frankly acknowledged America’s unfinished tasks.

The articles in this special issue attest to America’s achievements and to its continuing challenges. In their dedication to truth, they comprise an anniversary tribute to the country that set the standard for liberty and unalienable human rights and still strives to attain that ideal.

Jonathan Rosenbaum, PhD is President Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies, Gratz College; Associate, University of Pennsylvania, 2025-2026; and Associate Editor, Masorti: The New Journal of Conservative Judaism.

---

1. ¹ Though most of the Founders were Deists, they knew biblical texts. Washington’s reference to “sacred fire” demonstrates this fact by alluding to fire in the Pentateuch (e.g., Leviticus 9:24; Exodus 3:2; Exodus 13:21). For more illustrations of prayer among America’s leaders from George Washington onward, see “Prayers for the Sestercentennial” (Prouser) in this issue.

2. ² George Washington, “First Inaugural Address” (April 30, 1789), Record Group 46, Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

3. ³ James McHenry, Diary Entry, September 18, 1787, James McHenry Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Elizabeth Willing Powel (1743-1830) was the person who asked Franklin the question. Powel was a social and political power in Philadelphia society and clearly felt quite comfortable in questioning Franklin despite the fact that women would not have the vote throughout the United States for another 133 years.

4. ⁴ Arnold Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil (Columbia University Press, 1960), 130; Arnold Wiznitzer, “The Number of Jews in Dutch Brazil (1630–1654),” Jewish Social Studies 16, no. 2 (1954): 107-114.

5. ⁵ Samuel Oppenheim, “The Early History of the Jews in New York, 1654-1664: Some New Matter on the Subject,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 18 (1909): 1-91, esp. 12; Jacob Rader Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, 315-1791 (Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1938), 69-71.

6. ⁶ Jacob R. Marcus, To Count a People: American Jewish Population Data, 1585–1984 (University Press of America, 1990), 12–25; Cecil Roth, “America,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, eds. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., (Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 2:42.

7. ⁷ Adam Jortner, A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2024), 72-76.

8. ⁸ Further information about contributors appears in the Contributors section of this issue.

9. ⁹ Several rabbis who are also academicians have chosen not to include their rabbinic credentials in their brief biographies. This practice is not uncommon; faculty members in secular institutions routinely omit clerical credentials in standard academic bios.

10. ¹⁰ See, e.g., Ismar Schorsch, “A Rabbi For All Seasons: In Two Registers,” Masorti: The New Journal of Conservative Judaism 68, no. 1 (Spring 2024): 8-38.

11. ¹¹ The method, also known under the term autoethnography, evaluates autobiography to understand broader cultural, political, or social occurrences. See, for example, Tony E. Adams, Robin M. Boylorn, and Lisa M. Tillmann, eds., Advances in Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry: Reflections on the Legacy of Carolyn Ellis and Arthur Bochner (Routledge, 2021).

12. ¹² Thomas Jefferson, “original Rough draught” of the Declaration of Independence, June 11–July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

13. ¹³ George Washington, “Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island” (August 18, 1790), in The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, ed. Dorothy Twohig (University Press of Virginia, 1996), 6:284–285.