Jewish Patriots in the American Revolution

Kelly Therese Pollock  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode, and please tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too. In 1630, the Dutch West India Company invaded a portion of the coast of Portuguese controlled Brazil and took control of land in what is now the Brazilian state of Pernambuco. The Dutch were more tolerant of Judaism than the Portuguese were at the time. So with the land under Dutch control, some of the Jewish settlers, conversos, who had converted to Catholicism under the threat of death, once again, became practicing Jews. Toleration was not true religious freedom, but the Jewish settlers were permitted to build a synagogue in the capital of Recife. The situation was short lived, though, and when the Portuguese retook the land in 1654, the Portuguese commander gave the Protestants and Jews in the area three months to leave. Most of the Jews headed to Amsterdam, but 23 of them boarded a ship that eventually went to New Amsterdam, what is now New York. The Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant wanted to ship them back, but the directors of the Dutch West India Company, still grateful that the Jewish population in Dutch Brazil had remained loyal fighters on the side of the Dutch, ordered that they be allowed to stay in New Amsterdam. Those 23 were not the first Jewish people to arrive in New Amsterdam, as at least three other Jewish merchants were already there when they arrived. By the start of the American Revolution, there were an estimated 1000 to 2500 Jewish people living in the North American colonies, mostly in five cities: Charleston, New York, Philadelphia, Newport and Savannah. And these Jewish colonists participated in the American Revolution. One of the best known of these is Chaim Salomon, who was born in Poland and arrived in North America in 1772. He was captured by the British as a spy. Because of his language skills, the British employed him as a go between with Hessian troops, but he used that access to encourage Hessians to resign, and he helped French and American prisoners escape. A few years after he himself escaped New York, he was working as a broker for the French army in America and loaning money to members of Congress. Working with Robert Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the superintendent of finance for Congress, Salomon helped find funding for the Continental Army and the American government. Later depictions of Salomon's contributions were exaggerated, in part by his son, but his contribution was important, and he was a committed Jew who did not work on Shabbat and was the biggest donor to the building fund of Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia in 1782. At least 15 Jews attained the rank of officer in the Revolutionary Army, in the same proportion as their percentage of the American population. At the time, Jews in European armies could not be promoted to officer status. So this was a meaningful difference. One company of soldiers in Charleston, South Carolina was known as Jew Company because 28 of its 40 members were Jewish. The Jewish soldiers themselves didn't use that term. Rather, they called themselves the free citizens. They fought the British under the command of General William Moultrie on Beaufort Island and in Savannah. Jewish soldiers gave their lives for the American cause. Francis Salvador was the earliest known Jewish casualty of the war. Salvador, who left London for South Carolina in 1773, was quickly elected to the South Carolina Provincial Congress, even though the colony had a law barring non Christians from holding office. He was vocal in calling for independence, and he became known as the southern Paul Revere when he rode nearly 30 miles on horseback to warn of a Cherokee attack. He died in August, 1776, at age 29, when his militia was ambushed at the Keowee River. When Rhode Island joined the Union in 1790, President George Washington traveled to Newport and Providence. Among the many letters from well wishers that Washington received in Newport, one was from the Hebrew congregation in Newport, written by the congregation's warden, Moses Seixas. In the letter, he hoped that the United States government would provide religious liberty in a way that the Rhode Island government had not, writing, "Deprived as we heretofore have been, of the invaluable rights of free citizens, we now, with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty Disposer of all events, behold a government erected by the majesty of the people, a government which to bigotry, gives no sanction, to persecution, no assistance, but generously affording to all, liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship." Washington responded. He wrote, "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were 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. 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, while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid." And indeed, while the US Constitution that went into effect on March 9, 1789, said nothing about religion or God, many of the states had ratified only with the condition that a bill of rights must be added. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, introduced a list of amendments on June 8, 1789, and then, "hounded his colleagues relentlessly," to ensure it passed. After the House passed a resolution with 17 amendments, the Senate reduced that to 12. On December 15, 1791, three fourths of the states had ratified 10 of the amendments, the first of which began, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The actual practice of religious liberty in the early United States was, of course, inconsistent, but Jewish citizens throughout the country insisted on being able to exercise their full citizenship. I'm joined now by Dr. Adam Jortner, the Goodwin Philpott Eminent Professor of Religion in the Department of History at Auburn University, and author of, "A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom." 

Kelly Therese Pollock  10:46  
Hi Adam, thanks so much for joining me today.

Dr. Adam Jortner  10:49  
Hi Kelly, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  10:52  
Yes, I always love learning the hidden parts of history that you know, I know about the American Revolution, of course, did not understand or realize the impact that patriotic Jews had, and it's so I'm thrilled to be having this conversation. 

Dr. Adam Jortner  11:08  
Thanks. It was, it was a real journey for me to uncover this story and really get to know the ins and outs of Judaism and religion in the revolution. So I'm thrilled to be here.

Kelly Therese Pollock  11:19  
Yeah. So what inspired you to write this book? You've written several other books. How did you decide that this was the story you wanted to tell now?

Dr. Adam Jortner  11:26  
I think the question that I really wanted to ask was, "How did the Founding Fathers, for lack of a better term, how did the Founding Fathers really think about different religions? How did they, did they ever come across and sort of confront the fact that, boy here are some non Protestants?" And originally I thought it was going to be a book about deism and Catholics. But what I discovered is that repeatedly, throughout the revolution, Founding Fathers, the Revolutionary generation, not only you know, sort of meets the the question of of Jews in America, they they are the Jews are part of the the conversation, because they're part of the revolution, that there is this uh, upwelling of support for the revolution among American Jews who and then the they themselves begin to talk about citizenship and embrace citizenship, and sort of make themselves into a kind of American religion. And so it became this fascinating story about freedom and citizenship and religion. And I think it really gets at some of the difficult threads that we sometimes face when we think about faith in the US even up till today. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  12:45  
We'll talk in a minute about how most of the Jews during the revolution all ended up in Philadelphia, but let's start back further with how they got to the Americas at all. So can you talk some about the sort of different places people were migrating from, and the ways that we end up with a not huge, but significant Jewish population at the time of the revolution?

Dr. Adam Jortner  13:08  
So Jews are in the new world almost as soon as Europeans encounter the Americas. There are Jews coming from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s. Those are the countries that have begun to expand through the Atlantic. They have also banned Jews. They've also made Judaism illegal. So Jews are finding their way across the Atlantic to places like Brazil and Mexico and Cuba, and over the course of centuries, when the English finally get into the colonial game and try to grab some land in North America, Jews end up there, as well as sort of part of a exodus from Europe. Some of them are coming from England, but some of them all still coming from Spain. Some of them come up from Brazil and from other Caribbean colonies, and they end up in, really five major cities. They're in Newport, Rhode Island, New York City, Philadelphia, Charleston, and in Savannah, but it's important to recognize that they didn't go to British North America first. There are synagogues built across the Caribbean and South America before there ever is a synagogue in in British North America. There's a there's a synagogue in Jamaica before there's one in New York City.

Kelly Therese Pollock  14:39  
So when the revolution comes, when revolution doesn't just come, of course, the colonists decide to to declare their own country and revolt, it's a difficult decision for anyone living there, right? Like, do I also take up arms? Do I revolt? Do I want to be part of this new experiment, or do I side with the people who have more money and more guns and might win? And so how are Jewish people in the American colonies thinking about that at the time of revolution? How are they deciding? And of course, it's not a monolith. They don't all decide the same thing, but what, how are they approaching this?

Dr. Adam Jortner  15:19  
Throughout the 18th century, Jews have been making efforts to get legal recognition in the British colonies. Jews are considered to be foreign residents. They're they're allowed to stay there, but of course, they're not truly subjects of the British crown. They're not full members of the of the city because they can't hold public office. They can't vote, because there are state churches  in all of these places. You have to have a relationship to the existing order. And when the revolution comes, many American Jews are attracted of the idea of the idea that power doesn't come from the king and it doesn't come from a government and a church somewhere else. It comes from the people, and they see themselves as part of the people, that a community can actually get together and rule itself. And this opens up really interesting avenues that have never really happened for European Jews before. So for example, in Savannah, there's a guy named Mordecai Sheftall, who's running the revolutionary government in Savannah in 1776. He could not have done it 10 years before because he's Jewish, and Jews by definition, when you define the power comes from the monarch who gets his power from God, then you got to be a Christian to have any kind of political office. When you say the power comes from the people themselves, then that opens the door for Jews to come in, and I think they see this opportunity, and they see this as, you know, this is a chance. The idea of liberty based on personhood is something that is worth fighting for. It is a chance to become full members of the body politic, and we ought to take that chance. More Jews end up joining with the patriots than than don't.

Kelly Therese Pollock  17:26  
Not just joining with, but literally fighting with.

Dr. Adam Jortner  17:29  
Right, and so same thing happens in one of the most remarkable things is that this is happens in a very broad context, in the army. Again, Jews can't be officers in Britain or France or Russia, because all those places have an army that is part of a monarchy, which is part of a church. You can't have a Jew in charge of Christian soldiers. Washington's army is not connected to a church, and Washington and his staff just promote Jews to officer status. Can you do the job? Great.  And again, they don't make a big deal about it. They don't sit down and have a puzzle it over. They just say, oh, okay, yeah, you're promoted. And the fact that they didn't have to argue about that is significant, right? It was just "Okay, we're remaking what the people are. We're remaking where power comes from." And Washington, you know, he needed, the men. And he said, "We're not going to worry about this." And that was a significant decision.

Kelly Therese Pollock  18:28  
So then during the revolution, as the British are occupying different places, are driving patriots out, there ends up being this, in some ways fortuitous for the Jewish population, they all end up in Philadelphia, or a whole lot of them end up in Philadelphia, and that really helps sort of shape how the Jewish experience is going to be after the revolution, because of the decisions they make in Philadelphia. So could you talk some about that? It's so interesting. 

Dr. Adam Jortner  18:57  
Yeah, this is the so this is really where, things get get serious, because it's not just a, the revolution was not just a chance for for Jews to show their preferences, but just about every city with a synagogue in it at one point or another in the war is is controlled by the British. In 1782, Philadelphia is the city that's got a synagogue and is not under British control. So patriot Jews from around the country who were had been living in areas now controlled by Britain, if they had the means, and if they were patriots, go to Philadelphia, because that's where you can live a Jewish life, not under British control. That's where you can you can be a patriot Jew in Philadelphia. So a vast number of Jews arrive in Philly and they remake the synagogue. The synagogue Mikveh Israel is is then and now, it's Philadelphia's oldest synagogue. It had been a local congregation. And when everybody arrives, they revise it, they remake it, they refound it as a patriot congregation with Jews from all across the new nation as part of the board and part of all the different committees. And there's a guy from New York is the Hazzan, a guy from South Carolina is the president of the congregation. It's a national Jewish organization. In 1782, one of the very first national religions in the independent US are the Jews. And they advertise it, and they they invite people in it. This is, this is a well known thing. Ben Ben Franklin talks about it. Benjamin Rush, a bunch of founding fathers talk about how the Jews in all the states are patriots. And this is significant, because it's not just that the Jews were, like, also there, but they're a very prominent part. They take advantage of it, and they're they're upfront about their patriot credentials and about being an American group, and it's accepted, and indeed, in some ways, it's it's celebrated. When, when they have a parade for the Constitution in Philadelphia, when the parade is over, everybody breaks to eat and there's a kosher table. They make a kosher table in 1787 so that the Jewish patriots can participate with everybody else. And that's pretty remarkable. We don't normally think about, hey, the one thing that was true about the Constitution is that they made space for kosher law, but they did. So that was that, I think, really captures this idea of what is the position of Jews in the the revolutionary moment, but also, what kind of a country was it? What kind of religiously speaking, what's the country we're talking about in 1787, and it's, it's not just uh, Protestants sitting carefully in pews. It's diverse, and the Jews really capture that idea.

Kelly Therese Pollock  22:05  
And so when the founders are writing the Constitution, they are thinking actually about Jewish people, in addition to thinking about all of the many sects of Christianity. And of course, there were other religious traditions within the new United States as well. Can you talk some about that? You just mentioned some of the founders, sort of knowing about Jewish people. Some of them interacted with Jewish people. Could you talk some about that, the influence on the Constitution itself?

Dr. Adam Jortner  22:35  
The federal constitution, of course, the genius behind it is James Madison. And you know, Madison is very close with a guy named Jacob Cohen, and they sort of correspond during the revolution. Again, Cohen is this absolutely fascinating guy. He, he gets, he's, he's a passionate patriot, and he, he will go on to help found the Richmond synagogue, but Madison was well aware that there are Jews in the United States, even if there aren't that many of them. The work of disestablishment in the First Amendment is in some ways, a a response to the idea of disestablishment elsewhere, which is to say that you know when, when James Madison ends the state church in Virginia, 1786, he's thinking about religions other than Christianity. How do we know? Well, he's corresponding with with Cohen, but also because the Virginia Legislature tries to replace the word God in that bill with the word Jesus Christ, and the legislature defeats that. That's an amendment that's defeated. Then in 1789, when Madison is drafting of a Bill of Rights, you know, again, the same idea comes up again. They're very careful to write about when they say, "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or the free exercise thereof," they didn't say the free exercise of Christianity. They say religion. This does seem to be intentionally to make it as broad as possible. And you know, of course, the First Amendment finally becomes part of the Constitution in 1791, and this is just around the same time that other states with synagogues are getting rid of their state churches entirely. Georgia, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, all of them are getting rid of their state churches right around that period. So the thing we need to look at is right at the very beginning, when the patriots fight the Revolution, when the Constitution is passed, what's one of the very first things they do? They establish religious freedom. They get rid of state churches. They make. Point to say your citizenship is not based on your confession. That is to say you don't need to join a church to be part of the people. And that is a big, significant change, and again, it's one that the Jews push for. They're not alone. Catholics push for it. The Baptists in Virginia make a huge push for it. But my point is, lots of people in many different types of religion are pushing for an end to religious citizenship, and the founding fathers, by and large, agree. When we ask the question today, you know, "What would the Founding Fathers have thought about church and state? What would they have said should be the basis of of people voting or people being citizens?" We don't have to guess. They actually got asked that question, and they said it should be for anyone who's a good citizens. That's that's George Washington in the letter to the Newport synagogue. All it requires is that someone demeans himself as a good citizen.

Kelly Therese Pollock  26:12  
So let's talk about Alexander Hamilton, because he's, of course, very well known now in ways he wasn't 10 years ago.

Dr. Adam Jortner  26:20  
Thank Lin-Manuel Miranda for writing a rap about the assumption of state debts, which is something I think high school teachers have been trying to do for years, and he finally cracked it. So, among many things, I thank him for that. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  26:33  
Yeah, so there's some interesting pieces in Alexander Hamilton's biography that are make you think a little bit about what his relationship to Judaism was, but then he also has this, now largely forgotten, but really important at the time, defense as a lawyer. So can you just talk some about Hamilton and the ways that thinking about this particular question complicates and it makes interesting the story of Hamilton?

Dr. Adam Jortner  27:03  
It's sometimes assumed that the Founding Fathers are all religious Protestants, just because, you know, quote, that's what everybody was back then. I mean, we do have this tendency, you know, everybody just sort of like, well, it was old timey times. So probably, I guess, everybody was religious. That's, you know, an assumption that we make. Alexander Hamilton for sure, not only understood about Jews. He lived among Jews. He he grows up, of course, in the Caribbean. He grows up in a Jewish neighborhood, and for the first few years of his life, he is taught at a Jewish school. And you know, he knew some Hebrew. So he at least, you know, when he gets to the mainland colonies and then becomes a patriot, he certainly understands, uh, the kinds of when, when he knows that there are Jews here in the colonies. He understands this is part of who the people are. And then in 1800, there is a case brought to the courts of the state of New York saying, essentially that Jews cannot be trusted under oath, to say, essentially, a court cannot accept the testimony of a Jewish person, because citizens are only Christian and don't we all understand that. Again, the it's important to understand the court case. The court was saying, "Well, we've all assumed that we're all Christians here, even though the state constitution of New York doesn't say that, even though the US Constitution doesn't say that, don't we all understand this?" And Hamilton is the defense saying, no, no. Everybody can give, who's a citizen, can give testimony under oath. We do not have a religious test in this country, and the courts back Hamilton up. So again, a bit of a bit of a forgotten story here, but one of the important ways in which, again, the question of, "Can non Christians be citizens? Can they participate in the same way that Protestants do?" The answer is yes. And and Hamilton, among others, said it.

Kelly Therese Pollock  29:10  
When we're talking about the question of religious freedom, we're not talking just about one of tolerance, but in fact, full participation in at least the federal government, not always the state governments. And there's this tantalizing snippet where you talk about Thomas Jefferson, perhaps considering a Jewish man to be in the cabinet, which is just great. But even in the cases where you know it's not quite all the way to the cabinet, there are Jewish people, Jewish patriots, being appointed to federal positions. So love to hear a little bit about that, and that, I think, is not something that anyone would imagine was part of the early republic.

Dr. Adam Jortner  29:52  
So it turns out that, you know, in during his presidency, Jefferson briefly considers a guy named Moses Levy to be attorney general and and Levy is, is, is Jewish, and this is sort of a wow factor. You know, Jefferson considers this Jewish guy. Now to be clear, Levy had converted to Christianity at the time, and Jefferson didn't really consider him for very long, but not because of his again, if we believe what Jefferson wrote in his correspondence, not because the guy was Jewish. He just didn't think Levy was going to take the job. It was, being Attorney General of the US, much less glamorous back then. But there are cases where Jewish Americans actually run for office and win and and some cases where they run for office and lose. A guy named Moses Michael Hays runs in Massachusetts, and he gets one vote. Guess who cast that one? We don't know but, but in places like Georgia, they are being elected. And places like Richmond, Virginia and Norfolk, Virginia have Jewish members of city councils. And what's really remarkable about that is, again, this is impossible in 18th century Europe. Jews simply cannot have full personhood. And so this is not just the story of America being a place where everyone can practice their religion, but a place where people of different religions can be leaders, where the people can choose to put someone who is a non Christian or a Catholic into office if they think they're the best person. And I think that really goes to sort of the nature of democracy. At one point, Jefferson sort of explains what this is really about. And what it's about is if you say a Jew or a Catholic or a Muslim or an atheist can't serve an office, you're actually it's not necessarily that person's right you're violating. You're violating the rights of everybody, because the electorate, the citizens, have the right to choose the person they think will do the best job. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong, but what we can't do is say, "No, this person is off limits because they have these beliefs that before we even start, make them not part of us." So this is really a revolution for for Jews, but it's also kind of a revolution in in very quiet revolution in government to actually say, "Well, we are not going to set religious standards that have to be met for people who hold public office." There's a really fascinating case in South Carolina where South Carolina actually is debating whether to keep its state church. And they actually try. They actually consider saying, "Well, can we make the state church just a Christian church?" And they're arguing about how they could possibly define a Christian church, and in the end, they say, "Forget it. We're just not going to have a state church. We're not going to have a test oath to get into government. It's religious freedom." And again, that's a really important example. It's not just religious freedom for Christians. They consider that. They think about, can we just have religious freedom for Christians or Protestant sects? And that will be it. They think about that. They say, No. And this opens up, this, this, this fascinating world where, you know, you have a city like Richmond, almost no Jews living there, but, you know, there's a guy on the Jewish guy on the city council.

Kelly Therese Pollock  33:45  
So we've been talking a lot about how the presence and the civic participation of Jewish people changes the United States, or affects the formation of the United States. But I'd like to sort of flip that and talk a little bit about how the United States and the Constitution actually affect Judaism and the way that Judaism is performed in the United States. So could you talk some about that? Because there's this real we this happens in several Christian sects as well, this real sort of democratization, Americanization of the religion. So what that means with the Jewish faith.

Dr. Adam Jortner  34:23  
So once you get freedom of religion, of course, I think it is one of the most fascinating, one of the most transformative things that that that has has happened, you know, in American history and human history. That's why I study it. But once you get freedom of religion, again, the sort of controls are off, and people can start forming whatever church they want, and they can start revising their churches, and you get what's called the democratization of American Christianity, which is to say people tend to join churches that are looser, that have a lot more control by the people in the pews, by the laity, rather than controlled by the clergy. You get almost the same thing in American Judaism, which is one of the first things at Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia. One of the first things they do is they start taking powers away from the board, away from the pastor and the president and putting those powers back into the hands of the congregation, and all of the synagogues in America revive, ultimately revise or refound themselves, and they will all have much more powerful, uh, laity, which is to say the the congregation can overrule the Hazzan or the board. There no, there's no rabbis in America for a long time, because to be a rabbi, you gotta, you gotta train at a yeshiva, and there's no yeshivas in the western hemisphere. So but again, that sort of decreases the power of of the rabbis, and it means that the power of tradition in American Judaism will be much less. Jews will begin to make lots of innovations and make lots of changes, and they will start voting on things, rather than saying, "Well, what is the rabbinical opinion here?" And you know, a great example, is the case or the problem of intermarriage. Is intermarriage allowed under what circumstances? And Jacob Cohen, friend of James Madison, is going to marry, wants to marry a woman who had had converted. She had converted. And some people in Philadelphia objected. They say "No, someone who's a Cohen Kahane developed a descendant from priests, can't marry a convert under any circumstances." And Mikveh Israel has an argument about it, and they actually have to prevent the Hazzan from performing the ceremony. And then they say, and we're they, they put a board together, they make a decision, and and they the the board says, "No, you can't do it." Jacob Cohen and some other guys do it anyway. And then Cohen says, "Hey, guess what? I'm going to move to Virginia, and I'm going to set up my own synagogue," which he does. And you know, no one can stop him from founding a new a new synagogue. And of course, the other interesting thing is that, for the first time in many years, in centuries, with freedom of the press, freedom of religion, Jews can begin to respond to Christian missionaries. There are many, many American missionaries are trying to convert the Jews. Actually one of the, one of the, one of the reasons to argue for separation of church and state among religious Christians, Protestants, is to say, if you have, there can be no compulsion in religion. The Baptists were really into this, this idea of if, if you have to have a religion to gain state honors, we can't be sure they really believe in Jesus Christ. We don't know if you believe it in your heart, or you did it because you want to be, you know, warden, or the principle, blah, blah, blah. And so there are lots of these Christian groups who sort of formed to try and convert Jews to Christianity. And for the first time in a really long time, Jews are able to sort of respond. And you get books and and sermons and talks by Jews about how, here is why we don't believe in Christianity. And it's sort of the first time these kind of defenses of Judaism really get published and and and get going. And it sort of creates this fascinating dynamic in in American Judaism, where Jews, because they're not facing the same kind of legal prohibitions, are able to articulate and or sort of have to articulate. Here's why we believe in Judaism. It's not just because, again, the same basic idea, they're no longer forced to be Jews. So they begin to articulate, here's why we should continue as Jews. One of these defenses of Judaism that gets written is is by a guy named Jacob Mordecai. And he he, you know, he gets into the New Testament. He reads the whole thing, and he writes this handwritten analysis of it, sort of going point by point. And I think it's a fascinating document, because he's not really raising objections to Christianity as much as he's trying to explain here's why we don't accept this. He says, "If I accept the Hebrew Bible, if I accept the Torah, it contradicts the New Testament." And something that's fascinating about that is, of course, that this is one of the basic misunderstandings, I think, between Jews and Christians, is that, as someone who's lived in both religions, something that's not  well understood is that, you know, Christians often assume that the Jews are always going to be accepting their argument, and the Jews have never read the New Testament, have no idea what the Christians are talking about. And here, for the first time that I've seen in American history, is somebody trying to articulate the differences. And of course, he does it in a really fun and hilarious way. And he says the question that many, many Jews ask this question is, as you know, "If the if the prophets are talking about Jesus, why do they keep calling him Emmanuel?" And this is something that I think Christians rarely notice, and has has mystified Jewish Jewish children talking to their Christian friends for for many decades. But it is really interesting that it's under the conditions of religious freedom, this stuff can get hashed out. And I, I find that very I find that very moving, because it's the idea that we can talk through some of these things, and, and, and, and think through them, and that's really I see that as something that sort of builds civic capacity and sort of builds connections between people, even though it's based on having a disagreement.

Kelly Therese Pollock  41:13  
All right, I have like a million more questions I could ask, but at this point, I just want to encourage listeners to go read your book, because it is fascinating. So can you tell listeners how they can get a copy?

Dr. Adam Jortner  41:23  
Sure the book is called, "The Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom." It's available wherever fine books are sold, and of course, from your Amazons and your bookstore dot coms, anywhere fine books are sold.

Kelly Therese Pollock  41:42  
Excellent. Is there anything else you wanted to make sure we talk about so

Dr. Adam Jortner  41:46  
There are lots of amazing stories about what democratization means for the synagogues. One thing that happens is that Jewish women begin to form their own organizations, and they begin to set up structures, informal structures, and in American synagogues, which of course, did not happen under control of European rabbis, and suddenly you have vastly more, the participation of Jewish women is much clearer. It's much easier for historians to see. And you also have some really unbelievable stories. There's a case in Savannah where a Jewish member of the synagogue, his father dies, and he wants to bury his father in one part of the synagogue, and the board and the Hazzan of the synagogue says, "No, you got to bury him somewhere else." So the Jewish man says, "Well, I guess I'll just do it myself." He builds a coffin. He gets his friends together. They build a coffin. They bury his father, they dig the grave in one night, and then it's done. And then he leaves the synagogue. And that is a case of democratization. Again, you can't stop someone sort of from doing their own thing religiously. His interpretation of the Jewish law was, what what counted, and that's a real dynamic of American Judaism.

Kelly Therese Pollock  43:12  
Well, Adam, thank you so much. I loved your book, and I really enjoyed speaking with you today.

Dr. Adam Jortner  43:17  
Well, thanks very much, Kelly, It's, it's, it's my pleasure. 

Teddy  43:48  
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