PITTSFIELD, Massachusetts — On August 18, 1790, Moses Seixas, the warden of Congregation Kahal Kadosh Yeshuat Israel, the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, read a message to George Washington, welcoming the newly elected first president of the United States on his post-election visit to that city. He was accompanied by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York. Rhode Island was the last of the thirteen original states to ratify the Constitution, and Washington was visiting to celebrate the completion of the Union.
Newport had historically been a good home to its Jewish residents since its founding by Roger Williams in 1636. The Newport Christian community’s acceptance of Jewish worship, participation in commerce, and social inclusion in such organizations as the Masons was exemplary, even though at the time individual Jews did not possess full voting and office holding rights as citizens of Rhode Island. The Jews of Newport looked to the new national government, and particularly to the enlightened president of the United States, to remove the last of the barriers to religious liberty and civil equality confronting American Jewry.
Seixas got to deliver his message on behalf of the small Newport Jewish congregation – he described them as “the children of the Stock of Abraham” – at a small meeting of clergymen and civic officials at the rooming house Washington was staying in, just before he left that morning for Providence, RI. Seixas conveyed the congregation’s pleasure that the God of Israel, who had protected King David, had also protected General Washington, and that the same spirit which resided in the bosom of Daniel and allowed him to govern over the “Babylonish Empire” now rested upon Washington. While the rest of world Jewry lived under the rule of monarchs, potentates and despots, as American citizens the members of the congregation were part of a great experiment: a government “erected by the Majesty of the People” to which Newport Jewry could look to ensure their “invaluable rights as free citizens.” Seixas defined the new United States government under the Constitution as one that “to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance—but generously affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of citizenship: ‑ deeming every one, of whatever nation, tongue or language equal parts of the great Governmental Machine.”
Seixas closed by asking God to send to Washington the “Angel who conducted our forefathers through the wilderness into the promised land.” He prayed for Washington “when like Joshua full of days, and full of honour, you are gathered to your Fathers, may you be admitted into the Heavenly Paradise to partake of the water of life, and the tree of immortality.”
Not surprisingly, it is Washington’s response, rather than Seixas’s epistle, that is best remembered. Writing after his return to New York three or four days later, Washington began by thanking the congregation for its good wishes and rejoicing that the days of hardship caused by the war were replaced by days of prosperity. Washington then borrowed ideas – and some of the words –directly from Seixas’s letter:
The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.
Washington’s concluding thoughts perfectly expressed the ideal relationship among the government, its individual citizens, and religious groups.
May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. … May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.
The letter is signed, simply, “G. Washington.”
Today, the Hebrew Congregation is better known as Touro Synagogue. Each year, the Touro Synagogue Foundation holds a well-attended public reading of Seixas’s and Washington’s letters at Touro Synagogue. Their words deserve repetition.
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Michael Feldberg, Ph.D, is executive director of the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom (www.gwirf.org)