Rabbi’s Message

July-August 2026

This year’s July 4th, Independence Day celebration will definitely feel a little strange and not only because it falls on Shabbat. Independence Day has always been of major significance to the Jewish community reflecting a unique level of societal inclusion.

Rabbi Lance Sussman, a Jewish historian who taught at Princeton University, said the holiday is “literally a revolution in Jewish history.” Beginning with the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, the United States of America became the first country in modern history to give Jewish men full citizenship. ⁽¹⁾

Wherever the Jewish people went following the destruction of the Second Temple and the Roman conquest of Jerusalem in 70 CE Jews were second-class citizens. With limited legal rights and limited economic rights, we were subjected to expulsions and persecutions.

During the Revolutionary War, while the British Army allowed the Jews to fight as mercenaries, the Continental Army allowed them to become officers, with as many as 20 Jews doing so. Mordecai Sheftall, a Jewish merchant from Georgia, rose to the rank of colonel during the war. Others distinguished themselves as ranking officers in Washington’s army, and that helped lay the groundwork for political rights to be granted to Jews in the nascent nation.

The Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, and the framing of the Constitution benefited the Jewish community and Jews of the period were actively involved in forming the American nation. Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University and chief historian for the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, explained that the Articles of Confederation, the precursor to the Constitution, and later the Constitution were debated and written in Philadelphia.

At the time the city was also home to the largest Jewish community (about 2,000 people) in America at the time. Congregation Mikveh Israel, one of the first congregations founded on these shores, still stands today on North Fourth Street in Philadelphia. One member, a merchant named Jonas Phillips, wrote a letter to the Constitutional Convention regarding religious liberty asking that they ban religious tests for federal officeholders. Phillips was one of many Jews of the day who corresponded with the Founding Fathers. Article VI of the Constitution states that, “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

Jews were part of this grand coalition that was shaping the new nation wherein you didn’t have to conform to some religious group or standard to be accepted. Twelve years later – on July 4, 1788, Philadelphia, with its 40,000 residents, making it the nation’s most populous city, hosted the Grand Federal Procession. The parade stretched for over one and a half miles, the largest such street event to that point in American history, drawing some 5,000 marchers grouped in 88 military, political, and trade categories and was observed by 17,000 onlookers.

The parade marked the first national celebration where Jewish clergy were treated on an equal level with their Christian counterparts. In the July 9th edition of the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, in addition to its page one account of the Grand Federal Procession, highlighted the interfaith amity in connection with the celebration of the Constitution’s ratification victory – “the clergy of the different Christian denominations, with the rabbi of the Jews, walked arm in arm.” During the parade, Jacob Raphael Cohen’s arm was linked with that of one of the most eminent ministers in America, Reverend William White of Philadelphia’s Christ Church, chaplain of the Continental Congress, and the first Episcopal Bishop of Philadelphia.

Observing the fellowship of the marching clergy, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence wrote:

“The clergy formed a very agreeable part of the procession. They manifested the connection between religion and good government. Pains were taken to connect ministers of the most dissimilar religious principles together, thereby to show the influence of a free government in promoting charity. There could not have been a more happy emblem contrived of that section of the new Constitution Article VI, prohibiting religious qualifications for holding office, which opens all its power and offices alike not only to every sect of Christians but to worthy men of every religion.” As a final sign of the fraternity of the parade’s sponsors, tables were set with kosher food, including soused salmon, bread, crackers, almonds, and raisins.

Jewish history in America has not been perfect. There have been discriminatory practices — like restrictive covenants in real estate, limitations on holding state and local office, as well as exclusions from private clubs and institutions — that treated Jews like second-class citizens. Nonetheless, the overall trajectory of inclusion continued. The challenge as we celebrate the nation’s Semiquincentennial, America 250, is the concern that the inclusivity that embraced and welcomed all minority groups is being eroded. The animus expressed towards those deemed other seems to be escalating exponentially.

Our Semiquincentennial is not only a celebration of a past historic moment but a demand that we use this once in a generation opportunity to strengthen our resilience in the face of these challenges, reinforce our common values, our shared national identity and continue the aspirations of the Founding fathers to create a more perfect union, one which continues to expand its embrace of all, seeing the divinity in each person created in God’s image.

In the weeks leading up to and following Independence Day let us explore together how our celebration can be both a tribute to the liberties and opportunities that America has afforded us as Jews through the generations and a springboard into a future which welcomes all people as equals.

B’vracha –

Rabbi David M. Eligberg

1 (Women were left out at that time as they were in the country at large.)