This Thanksgiving, three generations of my household will drink a champagne toast, eat the hors d’oeuvres that my mom used to make and my grandchildren now assist produce, sort out the turkey that may succumb to my inexpert slicing, after which transfer on to the pecan and pumpkin pies.

However first, as we’ve for many years now, we are going to learn George Washington’s 1790 letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. The letter consists of his declaration that the U.S. authorities affords “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no help.” It’s typically quoted, most lately by Deborah Lipstadt, the federal government’s particular envoy to watch and counter anti-Semitism, on the giant pro-Israel rally in Washington, D.C., on November 14.

We additionally learn the preliminary letter of greeting to Washington from Moses Seixas, the warden of Newport’s Touro Synagogue (which we attended after I taught on the Naval Warfare School). The event was the primary president’s stately tour of the brand new nation in the summertime of 1790, when native dignitaries like Seixas would prolong salutations and he would graciously reply.

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Every time we learn the letters, a number of qualities of this change stand out.

For one factor, it was Seixas who first used the well-known phrase. It bears repeating in full:

“To bigotry no sanction, to persecution no help,” in different phrases, mirrored the Jews of Newport’s enjoyment of a brand new actuality, not an announcement of a brand new or authentic coverage by the president. They acknowledged that the bedrock of the brand new nation lay in a elementary equality of citizenship underneath liberty.

Washington appreciated the phrase a lot, nonetheless, that he repeated it again in his response:

That’s the level: not spiritual toleration, however pure proper. Eight years earlier, the enlightened Emperor Joseph II of Austria had issued his deservedly applauded Toleranzpatent, later expanded by a Toleranzedikt, that gave Jews all types of rights that they had heretofore lacked. However the phrase was tolerance, and it was a present from the federal government.

If one needs to grasp the fierce patriotism that has so typically animated American Jews, look thus far of origin. On this nation, we didn’t must earn our rights, or meekly obtain them; they’re, and all the time have been, ours by proper. Jews have recognized, as Washington mentioned, that rights indicate obligations as residents, which maybe helps clarify their pervasive and long-standing engagement in public affairs.

So long as the USA stays the USA, so it will likely be. It’s in contrast to our historical past in another state. Look carefully and one can find within the Jewish historical past of different nations phrases like toleration and emancipation, permission and encouragement, not inherent pure rights. It’s the huge factor for which my household, a minimum of, is profoundly grateful throughout this season.

However Washington’s heat response to Seixas accommodates one other sentiment that can be extra troubling this 12 months.

That quote, from the prophet Micah 4:4, rings hole this 12 months. The FBI director lately declared that totally 60 % of religiously motivated hate crimes are directed at Jews, who quantity barely 2 % of the inhabitants. On college campuses, Jewish college students have been harassed, humiliated, and assaulted. And in response, too many college leaders have simpered and mumbled, or taken refuge in denouncing the anti-Semitism of a century passed by moderately than settle for accountability for assaults that have been carried out on their watch immediately.

These occasions have typically occurred underneath the excusing banner of anti-Zionism. In some circumstances, the masks slips, and the deeper hatred exhibits itself. However even those that sincerely insist that they’re merely “anti-Zionist” should observe that the Zionist venture was the creation of a Jewish state. To be anti-Zionist is presumably to consider that the venture ought to be undone. In that case, it is best to understand how such a dissolution would occur and what it will entail. Take a look at the movies and footage from the pogrom of October 7, and observe that the epithet that was shouted exultantly by the murderers was not “Israeli,” however “Jew.” And that is additionally why immediately, American Jews know concern.

Worse than the truth that my synagogue has to have an armed police officer on guard throughout providers, worse even than the hate spewed on the extremes of proper and left—together with by swaggering billionaires and outstanding politicians—is the silence from these of whom many Jews anticipated higher. It’s the silence of feminists concerning the rape of girls; it’s the silence of civil-rights activists concerning the homicide of infants; it’s the silence of human-rights advocates about torture and burning individuals alive.

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And so, that hope—not a promise, to make sure—provided by George Washington appears removed from actuality. That’s what we must work via this Thanksgiving.

The best way to take action begins with the phrases of a up to date of Seixas and Washington, from a world away. Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav was a Hasidic grasp, a mystic, a troubled and tormented soul, who died of tuberculosis whereas but a younger man in Uman, Ukraine, the place tens of 1000’s of Hasidic Jews nonetheless make a pilgrimage to his grave yearly. Considered one of his sayings, abbreviated and edited into a well-liked spiritual music, is related: “Know that Man has to cross a really, very slender bridge, and that the tenet and the important factor is to not make oneself afraid.”

It’s a refined level: Concern is pure and can come, however that doesn’t imply we’ve to yield to it. Jewish historical past and Jewish thriving are about crossing that slender bridge, typically to the amazement of buddies in addition to foes. Certainly, typically to our personal astonishment.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited Newport in 1852 and brooded concerning the Jewish cemetery there. He noticed a synagogue that was closed and, admiring although he was of Jewish civilization, noticed in these graves a finality about their which means:

However one such nation did rise once more. It survived way more horrible issues than the poet may ever have imagined. Moses Seixas’s Touro Synagogue—the oldest in the USA, predating the American founding by greater than a century—continues to conduct providers to today. Once we named our youngest daughter there, the sanctuary was full. For the resilience and braveness that historical past and that data provides on this Thanksgiving, we ought to be, and we can be, deeply grateful.