Jews in the American Revolution and the founding of the United States

The Jewish community of the North American colonies, still modest in the eighteenth century, took part in the founding of the United States and benefited from the new framework it established. During the War of Independence, the financier Haym Salomon, a broker of Polish origin settled in Philadelphia, played a notable role in financing the revolutionary cause and supporting the credit of the young Congress. The Constitution of 1787, by prohibiting any religious criterion for access to federal office, and then the First Amendment (1791) guaranteeing religious freedom and the non-establishment of a state religion, offered Jews a legal status of equality far earlier than the one they enjoyed in Europe. This principle was symbolically sealed by the letter addressed in 1790 by George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, affirming that the new government gave "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." This founding document of American religious freedom inaugurated an original model of Jewish integration.

Sources & resources

• Jewish Virtual Library ↗
• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan