The College Archive · Opinions
Straus Center Showcases Jewish Contributions to Nation’s Founding in America 250 Road Trip
“I will insist,” John Adams wrote in 1809, “that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing nations.”
The founding father’s words, recently cited by Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, are only a sample of the Jewish people’s impact on the United States. From June 7–12, YU’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought led a road trip across the East Coast entitled “Restoring the American Story: A Road Trip Across America in Celebration of the United States’ 250th Birthday.” The trip brought roughly thirty current, prospective and recently graduated honors students, along with Straus Center faculty members, to historic sites in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Washington and more, marking the semiquincentennial of the United States and exploring Jewish contributions to the country’s founding. Such contributions are described in the Straus Center’s book, “Jewish Roots of American Liberty: The Impact of Hebraic Ideas on the American Story.”
The journey began on the Wilf Campus for lunch on June 7, from which students headed to Congregation Mishkon Tfiloh in Providence, R.I., where Straus Center Deputy Director Rabbi Stuart Halpern gave a lecture entitled “No Kings or Yes Kings? How David Ha-Melech Inspires America.” Straus Center Senior Scholar and presidential historian Tevi Troy also spoke about four U.S. presidents who were involved in America’s 1976 bicentennial celebrations.
The next day, students visited the Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I., the oldest shul building still in use in America, built in 1763. There, students heard talks from Straus Center Director Rabbi Soloveichik, Troy, Halpern, religious liberty scholar Joseph Loconte and Honors Program Director Shaina Trapedo. The Newport Jewish community received a letter from George Washington in 1790 reaffirming religious toleration for Jews in America, and at the community’s historic nearby cemetery, Rabbi Soloveichik read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem about the very gravesite. In the evocative poem, Longfellow opened, “How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves, Close by the street of this fair seaport town, Silent beside the never-silent waves, At rest in all this moving up and down!” It was Longfellow’s closing lines, however, that Rabbi Soloveichik highlighted for their irony: “But ah! what once has been shall be no more!,” Longfellow wrote. “The groaning earth in travail and in pain Brings forth its races, but does not restore, And the dead nations never rise again.” In fact, the Jewish people would continue.
Moving on to Boston, participants toured the Bunker Hill Monument, which actually stands on Breed’s Hill, where British forces attacked colonial militia in 1775. That evening, Rabbi Soloveichik spoke in Congregation Beth El Atereth Israel in Newton, Mass., delving into two famous Revolutionary War paintings, John Trumbull’s “The Declaration of Independence” and Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware.”
On Tuesday, June 16, Rabbi Soloveichik led a tour of Trumbull’s paintings in the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Conn. The group then traveled to New York to visit Rabbi Soloveichik’s own Congregation Shearith Israel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the first Jewish congregation in America. Founded by Spanish-Portuguese Jews from Amsterdam in 1654, the congregation follows Sephardic tradition; its current building was built in 1897. During the Revolutionary War, the congregation and its leader, Gershom Mendes Seixas, fled from the British to Philadelphia, where Seixas took charge of Congregation Mikveh Israel in 1780.
Wednesday, June 17 began with a tour of Philadelphia. Students prayed in Mikveh Israel, founded in 1740, before visiting the Museum of the American Revolution, where Rabbi Soloveichik read a 1776 Yiddish letter of Jewish-American Jonas Phillips that accompanied a copy of the Declaration of Independence, in an attempt to inform a cousin in Amsterdam of the existence of “a declaration of that whole country [America],” or “gantze medina.” Afterward, students visited Carpenter’s Hall, the site of the Continental Congress’s first meeting, Independence Hall, where the Declaration and U.S. Constitution were signed, and the Liberty Bell.
That afternoon, participants traveled to the nation’s capital, where Rabbi Soloveichik spoke in the National Portrait Gallery about Gilbert Stuart’s 1796 painting of George Washington and W.F.K. Travers’s 1865 depiction of Abraham Lincoln. The trip continued at the Museum of the Bible, where Leo Terrell, chair of the DOJ’s Antisemitism Task Force, spoke about his fight against Jew-hatred, and Halpern gave a lecture about the influence of the Song at the Sea, Shirat Ha-yam, on America. Additionally, students participated in an immersive ride showcasing the presence of Biblical verses throughout Washington.
The final leg of the trip came on Thursday, when participants headed to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home in Virginia. There, students explored the third president’s collection of objects, books and diningware, as well as the bedroom in which he passed away on July 4, 1826, the same day that Adams died. Afterward, Rabbi Soloveichik led kaddish and a siyum at the grave of Rachel Phillips Levy, daughter of Phillips and mother of a later owner of the Monticello estate. Describing the mincha services at her wedding, Benjamin Rush humorously wrote in 1787, quoted by Rabbi Soloveichik on the trip, “As I did not understand a word…my attention was directed to the haste with which they covered their heads with their hats as soon as the prayers began, and to the freedom with which some of them conversed with each other during the whole time of this part of their worship.” The trip then returned to Washington for a discussion at the George Washington University Hillel with Troy and journalist Matthew Continetti. Finally, though cut short by inclement weather, students were led on a tour of D.C. by Troy. At the World War II Memorial, with a grand view of the Washington Monument and two large American flags, it was only natural to feel appreciation for the United States and its fight for freedom.
“Having the chance to explore the American story is a privilege in itself,” Straus scholar Elisha Price (YC ‘28) told The Commentator. “To do so with the Straus Center, and particularly with its superb faculty as guides, was a truly special experience. The trip helped give substance to our patriotism, both through the memorials and museums we visited and through the living examples of our mentors.”
“If I were an atheist of the other sect,” John Adams had added in 1809, “who believe, or pretend to believe, that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty Sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.”
Photo Caption: Participants in front of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Home
Photo Credit: Talia Feldman