Religious Liberty in a Post 9/11 World:
Reflections on George Washington's 1790 Letter
to Touro Synagogue

by Eli N. Evans

Eli N. Evans was the keynote speaker on August 18, 2002 at the annual reading of George Washington's 1790 letter to Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. This article is adapted from the speech.

In just a few weeks, on the anniversary of the September 11th disaster, America will reflect on the meaning of the attack and its lessons for history. In New York City, sensitive to the victims and their families, the Mayor has announced that there will be no speeches by political leaders that day, only readings from the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address-two of America's sanctified documents. There is another sanctified document that I would nominate for that celebration as well: President George Washington's 1790 letter to Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. Though less well known, this message from the Father of our Country summons up the underlying spirit of the times in which our young nation was born, and by which we still live today.

Washington's message resonates powerfully in our post 9/11 world:

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given 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, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

George Washington recognized that the American Revolution was launching a worldwide revolution and the idea of the "natural rights of man" would circle the globe to inspire the hearts and souls of men and women everywhere. He saw toleration not as the "indulgence of one class of people" for others, but owed as an obligation to all.

Washington described a tolerance virtually unique in the world at that time, a tolerance expressed in deeds as well as words. He was inaugurated as the first President of the United States just a few months earlier, on April 30, 1790, at the Federal Hall in New York City, a building even now standing in Lower Manhattan, only a few minutes walk from the plot of land that would eventually become the World Trade Center. And among the invitees was Gershom Mendes Seixas, spiritual leader of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York, generally considered the first American rabbi and one of three clergy invited to participate in the inauguration. Joint participation in such an imposing public setting could not have been imagined in any European city at the time.

One of Washington's first trips as president was his visit to Newport; he traveled there with Thomas Jefferson, as part of the campaign for passage of the Bill of Rights. When he arrived, Washington was handed a letter from Moses Seixas, a member of the New York Seixas family and the warden of Touro Synagogue, which by inference complained about the denial of the vote and the inability to hold office for Jews and Catholics in Rhode Island.

As the proposed Bill of Rights contained the clause "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof," Washington was able to illustrate that, in America, faith, any faith, was to be a private matter, beyond state interference. In so doing, he fulfilled a political need of the moment, but he also articulated principles that, with a sense of awe and even gratitude, we continue to commemorate today.

Americans in the late eighteenth century, like Americans now, were a people with strong religious beliefs. But as Arthur Hertzberg, distinguished author of The Jews of America, has stated, "the separation of church and state in America asks something very new and quite remarkable, of all religions in America. . . . self-limitation," the kind of voluntary restraint that must be adopted by all majority faiths.

This principle had particular relevance for the Jews who had come to America seeking religious freedom. Here in America, President Washington made clear, Jews were not a religious sect, a minority group merely tolerated by the government and the ruling establishment. Rather, he said emphatically, in America, all people were free to worship as they chose. Indeed, the bedrock value that God is universal and we are all God's children--that no one faith is more true than another-has been, I believe, America's gift to the world. Only through the embrace of religious freedom, religious tolerance, and religious liberty will the peoples of our diverse world find their way to an era of religious coexistence.

Although the September 11 attackers left no written statements explaining their motives, subsequent events have revealed an intent to attack the very idea of America itself--its religious freedoms, its principles, its central purpose. The World Trade Center, like the Pentagon, was a symbolic target, and the New York attack occurred in the shadow of another revered symbol, the Statue of Liberty.

On September 11th, people will come together to listen to our founding documents, and to ponder their meaning for the age we live in and the future we face. The words of those documents - and Washington's words to the Touro Synagogue -- take on new meaning in light of the destruction of dreams and lives in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon a year ago. In the long shadow cast by those events, the Washington letter shines like a beacon and can show us the way.

What a timely message for all Americans to hear: to remember that pluralism, diversity and respect for differences is, in the end, the only way for humanity to survive.