America 250: The Rights and Responsibilities of Freedom

America 250: The Rights and Responsibilities of Freedom

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ

Shabbat Shalom and happy 4th of July weekend, and mazal tov on the 250th birthday of America!  This weekend, of course, marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, a remarkable occasion indeed which we will explore tonight. 

So, a personal note about the 4th of July and major commemorations of American celebrations: 50 years ago tomorrow, on America’s bicentennial back in 1976, I was a 15 year old kid living and working on a kfar no’ar, a youth village in the north of Israel called Meir Shefeyah near Zichron Ya’akov.  That day marked the 200th anniversary of the country I loved, the United States of America, celebrated with a tall ship parade and fireworks and concerts and lots more.  The evening of July 4th, as it fell in Israel, I was watching the festivities taking place half a world away in the USA on a small black and white TV with other American Jewish teens when suddenly the whole Kfar No’ar area around us erupted with cheers and shouts and songs.  The Israeli news announced that on that day, July 4, 1976 in the middle of Africa a special squad of 100 Israeli commandoes had just rescued a large group of passengers who had been hijacked by Palestinian terrorists.  The rescue took place in Entebbe, Uganda, and miraculously it had just saved almost all the hostages, 102 of them; two were killed in the crossfire, tragically, one was murdered by a terrorist, and one was later murdered in the hospital by Ugandan soldiers under the orders of Idi Amin.  Just one Israeli soldier died: the mission commander, Yonatan Netanyahu, older brother of the future Prime Minister.  The remaining hostages, and the Israeli commandoes, survived and were coming home.

Every July 4th since that day I have always remembered the unbridled joy that Israelis, and Jews everywhere in the world, expressed on the liberation of their fellow countrymen and women, and what an affirmation of the power of freedom it was on this holiday of American freedom.

Tomorrow, of course, we will mark the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, that crucial document.  So here are just a few facts about the Declaration that you might or might not know.

First, the actual vote to declare independence, dramatic as it was, took place on July 2nd, not July 4th.  That’s the date that John Adams thought we would celebrate in perpetuity, with “pageants and pomp and parade… fireworks… bells ringing out…” But it took two days to create printed copies the Declaration of Independence so everyone in Congress could get a good look at what they had voted for.  And so, another approval happened on July 4th, more formality than drama. 

Second, the actual signing ceremony took place in Philadelphia on August 2nd, 1776, a month after the initial vote on independency.  First, Congress waited until New York’s legislature voted to permit their delegation to sign the Declaration, so they could restore the word “unanimous” the document.  Then, well, it took a little time to get everything organized.  John Trumbull’s famous painting is wonderful and not at all historical.

Third, seven of the guys who signed The Declaration of Independence—they were all men, and white men of property at that—didn’t sign it that day, either.  Because of travel, attendance issues, changes in the states’ delegations and so on the remaining men signed over the course of 1776 and perhaps even into early 1777.

Fourth, signing the declaration was an act of profound rebellion against the British king and government.  Publicly signing such a revolutionary document was treason, and subject to capital punishment by the UK’s military and government.  Signing meant you were voluntarily taking the risk of being hung or shot by the British for treason.  It was an act of courage, and a break with established tradition in a truly profound way, whether or not you signed it in Philadelphia in August of 1777 or later in your own drawing room.

I’d like to reflect for a few moments this morning on just how the Declaration of Independence, and more centrally the later Constitution of the United States, impacted Jews in America, both those who were here at the time of the Revolutionary War 250 years ago, and all of us who have come to this land of opportunity over its history.  In order to understand that, it’s valuable to remember what the relationship of Jews to the then mother country of England had been over its history.

While Jews lived in England and contributed materially to the country in antiquity and into the Middle Ages, a series of antisemitic libels, the medieval version of today’s antisemitic conspiracy theories, led to horrifying massacres.  The first Blood Libel ever originated in Norwich, England in 1144, and terrible massacres of Jews took place in waves in England, notoriously in York in the year 1190.  After taxing all Jews at a ridiculously high rate for the next 100 years, exactly a century after the Massacre of York, King Edward I, the evil Edward Longshanks, expelled all Jews from England permanently.  England was thus the first European country to expel all its Jews, robbing them of all the rest of their property and possessions first, of course.  For 360 years after that Jews were forbidden from living in England or its possessions. 

Nonetheless, a few individual Jews sometimes ended up living in England in medieval and Renaissance times, and became famous: Queen Elizabeth had a Sephardic Jewish physician named Roderigo Lopez who served her faithfully, only to be betrayed and executed for trumped up treason charges; Joachim Gaunse, an Ashkenazic metallurgist and innovator, taught the English how to make the metal cannonballs that defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588; another Portuguese Jew, Dr. Hector Nunez, fled the Inquisition and lived in London and was a crucial spy for England against Spain.  But, generally speaking, no Jews were officially allowed to live in England until the reign of the dictator Oliver Cromwell in 1656.

That means that when the first English colonists landed in what later became the United States, at Jamestown and thereafter on Cape Cod, Jews were not officially even permitted to live in England, or technically its overseas empire.  In truth, the rule against Jews wasn’t enforced strictly in the colonies, and usually Jews immigrating to the New World settled in Dutch colonies, where they were generally welcomed.  Again, before 1656, officially Jews weren’t technically even allowed to be in the English colonies in America, and bias against Jews in England remained deeply ingrained—even with no Jews present to hate in person.

In spite of that, there were a few Jewish settlers in the colonies even before permission was granted by Cromwell.  After Cromwell, Jews settled in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, Boston, Savannah, and elsewhere in the colonies from the mid-17th century on. 

For Jews, what was extraordinary about the newly declared independent American nation 250 years ago, what made America different, unique, was the Enlightenment dedication to the separation of church and state, what was called freedom of conscience and what today we call freedom of religion or belief.  The idea that no one should be denied citizenship in the new republic on the basis of religion was earth-changing at the time, and remains central to everything American.  The Founding Fathers could certainly have proclaimed America to be a Christian nation—they were, in their own different ways, all Christians, to one degree or another, even if some of them were more Deists than they were practicing Christians.  But clearly, they deliberately chose not to make America another Christian nation chained to one religious tradition, with the limitations that would impose on freedom of thought, belief, practice and citizenship.  There was no Christian Nationalism among our Founding Fathers.  There was religious tolerance and acceptance of freedom of belief as core values. 

It’s worthwhile saying that again: with the founding of the American republic, for the first time in human history, a nation that wasn’t Israel or Judah, that wasn’t a Jewish country led by Jews, granted full civil rights to Jews as citizens.  That wasn’t because of any special relationship that Jews were being given, or through special influence.  It was because the mostly Deistic founders of what eventually became the United States of America believed everyone had the same rights to become a citizen, regardless of religion—as long as they were male, of course, and white.  That right was eventually extended to blacks and other non-whites, and finally even to women. 

It is impossible to stress how crucial this difference was, and remains.  If you are born in America, at the age of majority you become a citizen.  And in the early days of America, when everyone here was born in another nation—remember, even if you were born in Virginia or New York or Georgia or Massachusetts, it was part of another country at the time, England—that meant that all immigrants were also citizens, and also shared the protections guaranteed to all citizens, including, especially, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion. 

For Jews this meant that no longer would we be mistreated, at least officially, by the national government.  We couldn’t be robbed and tortured by the US government because we were, or are, Jews.  We couldn’t be expelled.  And when you look at the insane record of persistent persecution of Jews throughout the world over our long, often painful history, you have to be amazed by this revolutionary change.  The only time that this was challenged, during the American Civil War 85 years later, the resulting reversal reinforced the protection of religious freedom, to Jews and all Americans.

That American invention, freedom of religion, spread, albeit slowly.  It took 13 years, but under the influence of the American Revolution, in a document written by the Marquis de Lafayette with the Declaration of Independence’s author Thomas Jefferson’s significant input, France adopted even more specific protections for all citizens in 1789, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. 

The great American choice to keep government out of religion, and religion out of the government, and allow all its people freedom of belief and practice is perhaps the core American value.  It has benefitted Jews, and all Americans, since 1776.  Long may it continue to protect us all from the tyranny of governments that sponsor one religion…

250 years on, what else can we take from the Declaration of Independence?

The Declaration, in Jefferson’s paraphrasing of philosopher John Locke, proudly proclaims “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

A famous reading of this says that Americans indeed have rights; Jews, instead, have responsibilities.  That is, we Jews are obligated to fulfill mitzvot.  Citizens of the United States of America, by contrast, simply affirm their God-given protections from control or domination.

Perhaps the best version of both traditions is what we all should strive for on this 250th Birthday of America: to protect our rights, and those of all Americans, while we fulfill our moral responsibilities to our people and our nation.

That will create not just a country worthy of celebrating at its 250th birthday, but forever.