Here’s how two American Jewish groups are marking 250 years of independence
This July 4, American Jews will find themselves navigating the 250th anniversary of the nation’s independence through a highly politicized cultural and religious landscape. But Jewish organizations across the country still are marking the semiquincentennial and long history of Jewish contributions to American democracy with a variety of events, including cultural programming and civic education rooted in Jewish texts.
Here are two, right across the river in Manhattan.
The Jewish Museum
thejewishmuseum.org
Now through August 9
“Circa 1776,” exploring themes of Jewish colonial and postcolonial life in America, is at the recently renovated Jewish Museum in Manhattan, as are the portraits, artifacts and documents of the museum’s “Identity, Culture, and Community” exhibit. The “Identity” exhibit includes letters from 1790 between President George Washington and Moses Seixas, the president of what is now the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island — the oldest synagogue in the United States.
Seixas congratulated Washington on his new presidency, and wrote of his hope and optimism at the prospect of religious freedom in their new country.
“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 —,” Washington wrote in response, adding a quotation from scripture, “while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
The exchange has become the ur text of American Jewish belonging, surfacing in virtually every instance Jewish Americans have faced challenges about their place in the national fabric.
Entry to the museum is free on Saturdays.
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The Center for Jewish History
and American Jewish Historical Society
www.chj.org and ajhs.org
July 21 – December 31
A new exhibit at Manhattan’s Center for Jewish History and the American Jewish Historical Society will explore the history of Jewish political life in the United States, and how the Jewish community has engaged with civic and political issues like citizenship, immigration, labor rights, voting access, civil rights, and religious freedom.
Through seven thematic sections, “All We Have Standing Between Us” will feature letters and artifacts from former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Nixon, and Barack Obama, as well as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt; Picasso drawings of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the Jewish couple convicted of spying for the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War; and texts and digital media highlighting the work of Sephardic poet Emma Lazarus, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., and feminist writer Betty Friedan.
The exhibit is accompanied by an eight-episode podcast that launched July 1.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency