Posted on 05/24/2025 12:30:09 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Although Jews comprised a small part of the population of colonial America, the country’s Founding Fathers realized the importance of freedom of worship for even this small minority. George Washington’s 1790 letter to the Touro Synagogue in Rhode Island affirms the American commitment that bigotry would have no place in the US and that Jews would not be a tolerated minority but would “possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.”
That commitment has withstood the test of time.
While American Jews have always admired the nation’s Founding Fathers for their genius and vision, they tend to ignore that these great men had little respect for Judaism as a faith.
America’s second president called the Jews “the most glorious nation that ever inhabited the earth.
Adams, challenging the anti-Semitism of French Enlightenment luminaries like Voltaire, argued that Jews “have influenced the affairs of mankind more and happily than any other nation, ancient or modern.”
God, Adams exclaimed in a letter of 1809, had “ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing nations.”
Adams, in the reality of his life and as a leader of the Federalist Party, knew few Jews and had no Jewish friends. Jews, indeed, supported Adam’s political nemesis Thomas Jefferson.
What was Adams’ point of reference for understanding the Jewish contribution to civilization? The answer to this question comes in another letter that Adams wrote to an American-Jewish admirer in 1819. In the letter, Adams endorses the return of the Jews to their homeland in Israel. This proto-Zionist impulse sounds wonderful on the surface – but then Adams explains the reason for it:
“Once Jews return to the Land of Israel, they will “wear away some of the asperities and peculiarities of their character and possibly in time become liberal Unitarian Christians.”
(Excerpt) Read more at m.jpost.com ...
In Esther, Mordechai identifies himself as of the Tribe of Benjamin and a Jewish man - ish Yehudi, presumably to clarify his allegiance to the Kingdom of Judah as opposed to being of earlier Exiles from the Northern Kingdom.
Jer. 34:9 KJV seems true to the Hebrew original:
“That every man should let his manservant, and every man his maidservant, being an Hebrew or an Hebrewess [Ivri and Ivriyah] go free; that none should serve himself of them, to wit, of a Jew [Yehudi] his brother.”
St. Paul also claimed to be of the tribe of Benjamin, but also referred to himself as a Jew and as a Hebrew.
I knew that "ish" meant "man" because of the name of Saul's son Ishbaal. I once met an Israeli whose surname was Ish-Shalom.
Small in number, but not in influence. Especially in the South, there were several wealthy and powerful Jewish families.
Judah Philip Benjamin served as the Attorney General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State for the Confederacy. The first Jewish-American to serve on an executive cabinet in American history, he has received the title “brains of the Confederacy” by scholars for his apparent position as Jefferson Davis’ right hand.
Visited Newport RI in the 1970s, remember riding by big old cemeteries for different sects and faiths, on the way to tour The Breakers. While in town, also saw the Round Tower. :^)
Anyway:
https://tourosynagogue.org/history/
There is never any question about the influence, wealth, and power.
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