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The Jews of the American Revolution
(Wall Street Journal) Meir Y. Soloveichik - In an annual ritual ahead of Memorial Day, members of the New York synagogue Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in North America, visited their historic cemetery at Chatham Square to honor 20 members of their congregation who had fought in the Revolutionary War. It is striking that so many of its congregants sided with George Washington against England at a time when New York was known as a Tory stronghold. Shearith Israel's spiritual leader at the time, Gershom Mendes Seixas, a member of the Continental Congress, was known for his vocal support for the Colonists' cause. When independence was declared, Shearith Israel's members decided "that it were better that the congregation should die in the cause of liberty than to live and submit to the impositions of an arrogant [English] government." The synagogue was abandoned, the Torah scrolls spirited out of the city by Seixas, and the congregation fled to Philadelphia for the duration of the war. Many congregants enlisted in the Colonial Army. The writer is the rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in Manhattan and director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought of Yeshiva University.