A NEW JEWISH HOLIDAY: 15 TAMUZ

A NEW JEWISH HOLIDAY

David A. Holzworth

Dvar Torah, Matot-Massei

July 6, 2013

I predict that a new Jewish Holiday will be celebrated on 15 Tamuz, perhaps within the next 300 years.   This holiday will be a feast day, not a day of fasting like 17 Tamuz, the day Nebuchadnezzar breached the Temple Wall.  It will be a joyful day, not a sad day like Tisha B’Av, the day that five misfortunes befell our people: (1) Moses and his generation was not allowed to enter the Promised Land; (2) &; (3) destruction of the first and second temples; (4) Bethar was captured; and (5) Jerusalem was ploughed up.  No sadness; no regrets; no looking back.  The new holiday will celebrate the day when the Israelite people were first welcomed as strangers in a strange new world that accepted and adopted their gift of the Torah.  It will be a day of renewal and forward-looking commitment to build a continuing future.

When was that?  When will that ever be? And why celebrate on 15^th Tamuz?

To figure it out, let’s play Facebook Jeopardy.  This will test your Torah literacy in terms of American history.  This is not dangerous.  Try it at home. Ten questions in two categories.  Talks like Moses. Walks like Moses, and Final Jeopardy -- Most like Moses.  I will give you a name.  You Like or Don't Like, but you may be asked to tell us why or why not in the form of question.  

1.      William Brewster/William Bradford 

2.      Asser Levy 

3.      Joseph Beuno de Mesquita 

4.      Gershom Mendez Seixas
5.    Moses Seixas

6.      John Witherspoon
7.      Joseph Smith/Brigham Young
8.   Frederick Douglas

9.      Martin Luther King

10.  The Statue of Liberty/ Kal-el

I am referring, of course, to Superman.  His creators, two clever Jewish boys named Siegel and Shuster, turned Nietzsche’s amoral Ubermensch into the ultimate civic minded patriot.  Some religious commentators and pop-culture scholars such as Rabbi Simcha Weinstein and British novelist Howard Jacobson argue persuasively that Superman was inspired by the Moses story.  For example, Superman's Kryptonian name, "Kal-El", resembles the Hebrew word for "voice of God.”  If any further proof were necessary, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels denounced Superman "Superman ist ein Jude!" ("Superman is a Jew!") and summarily banned Siegel and Shuster's popular comic from the newsstands, according to Berlin's Jewish Museum 2010 exhibition  "Heroes, Freaks and Superrabbis - the Jewish Color of Comics."

http://www.dw.de/berlin-exhibition-traces-supermans-cultural-roots/a-5546515-1

Part of the answer is encrypted, perhaps entombed, on the Almighty Dollar: What’s going on with that radiant floating eye over the unfinished pyramid on the back of the one dollar bill?  What’s it got to do with the 13 tribes of Israel?  Is it an embedded chip used by the National Security Agency to track the metadata of your Tzedakah transactions? 

Do not reach for your wallet, or at least wait until sunset.  You will find engraved the Great Seal of the United States.  That floating eye is the Eye of Providence.  The unfinished pyramid has 13 steps.  On the pyramid base, you will see engraved Roman numerals MDCCLXXVI (1776), the year when 56 of our founding fathers, on behalf of 13 states, declared independence from Great Britain.

The Declaration begins with a statement of egalitarian principles largely derived from Genesis, a long list of grievances against the current king, and concludes with a form of oath or vow evocative of Numbers 30:2: “When a man makes a vow to the LORD, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word: he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth”: Compare that to “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”[i]  Much to my puzzlement, the following verses in Numbers 30:3-15 apparently place a lesser obligation on women.  I look to Deborah or Carol to clear this up.

In his book, the American Gospel, Jon Meacham reminds us of another vow by another President, four score and six years later.  On Monday, September 22, 1862, Lincoln met with his cabinet to explain the timing of the Emancipation Proclamation.  According to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, as recorded in his diary for that day, Lincoln said: “When the Rebel Army was at Frederick [Maryland], I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a Proclamation of Emancipation….I said nothing to anyone, but I made a promise to myself, and hesitating a little) to my Maker.  The Rebel Army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise.”

Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles provided a nearly identical account:  “He had, he said, made a vow, a covenant, that if God gave us the victory in the approaching battle (which had just been fought) he would consider it his duty to move forward in the cause of emancipation. ….God had decided this question in favor of the slave.  He was satisfied he was right – was confirmed and strengthened by the vow and its results; his mind was fixed, his decision made.”    

Now back to the Great Seal.  You will see a Latin inscription, "ANNUIT COEPTIS," meaning "He (God) favors our undertaking." At the bottom of the seal you will see a semicircular banner, again in Latin, proclaiming "NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM" meaning "New Order of the Ages."    

The obverse of the seal, on the right side of the bill, you will see an eagle with a radiant cluster of 13 stars arranged in a six pointed star, known then (especially among Masons) as the seal of Solomon. The eagle holds a ribbon in its beak reading, in Latin of course, "E PLURIBUS UNUM", meaning "Out of many, one," a de facto motto of the United States (and the only one until 1956 when officially changed to “In God We Trust”, from the last stanza of the Star Spangled Banner, “And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USGreatSealGrahamLithograph.jpg

In my opinion, all contenders must cede the honorific to that person who appears on the front of the one-dollar bill.  How can that be?  Wasn’t George Washington a slave holder?  Well, truth be told, so was Moses; or, at the very least, Moses wrote laws that provided for the humane treatment of slaves.  As it turns out, George Washington also wrote a set of rules for the same purpose.  But, but, Washington did not have a stutter; no, but he lacked the skills of an orator, he did not have a teleprompter and he did have those famous wooden teeth.  Like Moses, perhaps imitating Moses, he protested (too much I think) that burdens placed upon him exceeded his ability to carry them out.  Hence, only unanimous acclamation sufficed to persuade him to take on the military and political roles critical to the success of the Revolution and, more importantly, to establish by example the principles of character and restraint for the American Israel.

Anticipating David Letterman, John Adams the prolific and witty letter writer, in 1807 penned a “top ten talents” that convinced his country first to make Washington commander in chief of the continental army, then president of the Constitutional Convention and finally first President of the United States. 

1.      “An handsome face;”

2.      “A tall stature, like the Hebrew sovereign chosen because he was taller by the Head than the other Jews;”

3.      “An elegant form;”

4.      “Graceful attitudes and Movements;”

5.      “A large and imposing Fortune consisting of a great landed Estate left him by his Father and Brother, besides a large Jointure with his Lady, the Guardianship of the Heirs of the great Custis Estate, and in addition to all this, immense tracts of Land of his own acquisition.”

6.      “Washington was a Virginian.  This is equivalent to five Talents.  Virginian Geese are all Swans.”

7.      “Washington was preceeded by favorable anecdotes.”

8.      “He possessed the Gift of Silence.  This I esteem one of the most precious talents;”

9.      “He had great Self Command.  It cost him a great deal of exertion sometimes, and a constant Constraint, but to preserve so much equanimity as he did, required a great Capacity;”

10.  “Whenever he lost his temper… [he was able] to conceal his Weakness from the World.”

Adams then remarks on the remarkable lack, among these talents, of “Reading, Thinking or Writing,” claiming to be broad minded in not confining the list, as others have, “to the faculties of the mind.”[ii]   We should note, at this point, that Adams reveals more about his own shortcomings than those of Washington.

Washington absorbed and practiced more religiously than his more outwardly religious contemporaries the central tenets of nation building embedded in the narrative that begins in Genesis and concludes with II Samuel.  Much ink has been spilled over the last 250 years speculating about Washington’s personal religious beliefs.  Was he a deist, a Christian, an atheist, an Anglican, an agnostic, the leader of a Masonic cult?  So far as I know, no one has argued that he was Jewish.  I am not going to be the first.  But Washington did give a very Jewish answer to the question of personal religious belief, which can be summed up as follows.  “My personal beliefs are none of your business; and your personal beliefs are none of my business.  In both cases, we are accountable to each other for our deeds, not our thoughts.”  By way of adding an exclamation point, Washington made arrangements for all of his personal correspondence to be burned by his wife immediately after his death.

A very practical man, an astute observer of other men in war, peace and politics, Washington gleaned a great deal from the Bible, which he read daily.  He put into practice a sort of Jewish political science in order to forge one nation out of many.  Approximately two-dozen discernible faiths, including Judaism, had adherents and places of worship prior to 1776.  About a sixth of the inhabitants of the colonies were German-speaking Swiss and Alsatians from the Rhine River region, settling mainly the piedmont of Pennsylvania, Maryland west of Baltimore, the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, North Carolina and parts of Georgia. Another sixth were Scots and Irish, and with no particularly fond memories of life in Great Britain. Most of these immigrants had been landless serfs or peasants. African slaves made up about 15 percent.  The rest of the 2.5  million inhabitants were mostly English descendants, but many indentured servants (white slaves) and ex-convicts among them. 

The entire colonial Jewish population was approximately 2000.  Nevertheless, Haym Solomon served as the Broker to the Office of Finance.  Three Jews reached high level commands within the military.  Sarna concludes that the Jews played no significant role, but readily acknowledges that the Hebrew Bible did.  Roughly half of the population had either participated in an Exodus, or were second generation Americans.  http://www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_detail.aspx?id=40.  The one book they all knew, whether reading it or hearing it preached from the pulpit, was the Hebrew Bible in one of its German or English translations.  That book served as a lens through which all personal and political events were commonly perceived and interpreted. 

Most of these immigrants knew the Geneva Bible, which contained copious anti-monarchical annotations, and was the version most widely read and preached.  The pro-monarchy King James Version found less favor, but probably was the version most familiar to Washington. The front plate of the Geneva Bible, which appeared again in Exodus, depicted a radiant Moses leading his people through the Red Sea.  That engraving, or at least the Moses motif, appears to have had a major impact on, among other things, the portrayal of Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, the Statute of Liberty and, the inscription on the Liberty Bell “Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof.” (Leviticus 25:10). 

Let’s go back again to that other engraving, the Great Seal on the back of the one-dollar bill.  The first Continental Congress appointed a committee of three in July of 1776 to recommend a design for the seal -- Thomas Jefferson (a deist), Benjamin Franklin (an atheist) and John Adams, a rock-ribbed New England Puritan.  Franklin proposed an allegorical scene from Exodus, described in his notes as “Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharoah who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity." Motto, "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." Jefferson suggested a depiction of the Children of Israel in the wilderness, but liked Franklin’s motto so much that he made it part of his family crest. [iii]

 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c5/FirstCommitteeGreatSealReverseLossingDrawing.jpg/1024px-FirstCommitteeGreatSealReverseLossingDrawing.jpg

Adams favored a painting known as the "Judgment of Hercules" where the young Hercules must choose to travel either on the flowery path of self-indulgence or the rugged, more difficult, uphill path of duty to others and honor to himself.  Two of the three ideas did no more than accede to the controlling Moses metaphor, and no one doubted that Washington was Moses, although Washington from time to time seemed to prefer the Joshua role in the unfolding drama.  He might also have been flattered by the Hercules symbol, especially the message of self-discipline. 

In praise of the living Washington, and more so in eulogizing him, press and pulpit in unison proclaimed, “As the deliverer and political savior of our nation, he has been the same to us, as Moses was to the Children of Israel.”[iv]  The theme of this and 34 other major eulogies tied the fate of Washington and Moses to that Providential Eye floating over the unfinished pyramid.  In the Biblically inspired language of Frederick Hotchkiss, echoing the sentiment of the initial proposal for the Great Seal, “Moses led the Israelites through the red sea; has not Washington conducted the Americans thro’ seas of blood?” And the comparisons then turn to personal virtues of self-discipline, humility in the face of great burdens and finally the wisdom of their parting words and acts to assure a sound foundation for the new nation.

In his book, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding, Michael Novak, makes a strong case that “George Washington, in particular grasped the inner dependence of the republican experiment upon the sound habits of its citizenship. … His principle was this [which he stated at the time of the Constitutional convention]: A nation, like a child, forms its character around its earliest transactions. … The people themselves must become an example to the world of reflection and deliberate choice, and the enabling and supportive virtues on which these capacities depend.”  [pp. 88-89 and fn. 37.)

Washington reiterated and implemented this principle throughout his career, from his institution of codes of conduct for officers and men under his command, to the operations of his extensive plantations, to this support for the establishment of schools in the first legislation for the organization of the northwest territories following the founding of the republic, and like Moses, in his farewell address:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

One final comparison has been overlooked by all of his contemporaries and, as far as I can tell, all Washington historians to date (and they are as numerous as the stars in heaven).  What enabled both Moses and Washington to see the promise of the Promised Land?  One answer in today’s Parsha and, in sense, all of the Book of Numbers.  Both Moses and Washington, literally and literarily, were surveyors of land and enumerators of their people; [v]they both saw vistas and the practical detail necessary to mark off the metes and bounds of those vistas; they both understood that achieving freedom depended to a great extent on the ability of the people to be self-disciplined.

So we read in Numbers 33 a metes and bounds survey of the Promised Land, which had been surveyed earlier by spies.  From the age of 15 to 20, Washington worked as a surveyor of the land owned by Fairfax family in the Virginia Piedmont.[vi]The illustrated Geneva and KJV Bibles contain numerous maps of Moses’ wanderings and survey of Israel’s boundaries.

Washington then undertook a commission to scout out, essentially be a diplomatic spy, the French presence at the headwaters of the Ohio and to deliver an ultimatum on behalf of King George II for the French to vacate the region.  Washington’s family had a significant personal stake as shareholders in the Ohio company.  As a major, then colonel in the Virginia militia, he returned to the area and precipitated the first world war (waged on four continents) known as the French and Indian War.  He returned twice more with General Braddock and then General Forbes.  Washington and his men were promised land in the form of war bounties for their services.  George III and the English Parliament attempted to renege on those promises and to award land bounties only to English regimental commanders in the regular army.

But the Promised Land is also a vision, an idea of how things should be, an aspirational utopia; hence the unfinished pyramid.  These ideas go beyond real estate, but are also grounded in real estate and the practical problems of life.

So, Washington is Moses and America is the New Israel.  Is this metaphor good for the Jews?  Are the Jews good for this metaphor? Should we, today, think and act as though divine providence, that floating eye atop the pyramid on the one-dollar bill, looks out for America, looks out for a New Israel?  Can we be a people of two covenants?  Should we gladly embrace, 3000 years later, the idea of laboring to finish a pyramid?

The American Israel has been, for the most part, a good home for the Jews.  Jonas Phillips, a Jew, wrote the only petition to the Constitutional Convention on the topic of religious freedom.  In the petition he said that “the Israelites will think themselves happy to live under a government where all religious societies are on an equal footing.”  After the Convention, Benjamin Rush, a signer, declared that “the hand of God was employed in this work, as that God had divided the Red Sea to give a passage to the children of Israel’ or had delivered “the ten commandments on Mount Sinai!”  Unlike the Declaration of Independence, though, not even Nature’s God or the Creator gets an honorable mention in the Constitution.

On July 4, 1778, to celebrate the ratification of the Constitution, 17 clergy marched in sets, arm in arm, according to Benjamin Rush, including ‘The Rabbi of the Jews [Jacob Raphael Cohen of Mikve Israel].”  Rush concluded that “the union of the states, in its form and adoption, is as much the work of divine providence as any of the miracles recorded in the old and new testaments.”  But is the hard work of nation-building really a miracle?  Is it Superman or is it the ordinary, but disciplined citizens, who account for the success, such as it is, of the American experiment?  Where, when and how do we instill the collective rules and the behavior necessary to make our own Providence, to achieve the promise of the Promised Land? 

The first great Chazzan, Gershom Seixas of Sherith Israel, attended Washington’s inauguration in NYC on Thursday April 30, 1789 along with clergy from 14 churches.  Gershom Seixas went on to become a regent of Columbia, and a medal was struck in his honor at his death. The following year, Washington received a letter from the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island over the signature of Moses Seixas which read in part:  “For all the Blessings of civil and religious liberty which we enjoy under an equal and benign administration, we desire to send up our thanks to the Antient of Days, the great preserver of Men--beseeching him, that the Angel who conducted our forefathers through the wilderness into the promised land, may graciously conduct you through all the difficulties and dangers of this mortal life: and, when like Joshua full of days and full of honour, you are gathered to your Fathers, may you be admitted into the Heavenly Paradise to partake of the water of life, and the tree of immortality.”

Washington’s reply: “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.”  Micah 4.  I should also point out that he wrote similar letters to at least 24 other religious groups, including Jewish societies in Savannah, Charleston and Richmond. His other correspondence contains another 54 references to the passage in Micah, part of which appears in our Siddur at 403. 

http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/hebrew/facsimile_r2.html

We can safely say that, although the road has not always been smooth, Jews have done pretty well in all aspects of American life.  Take as a bellwether indicator the number of Jews in the current US Congress, 12 senators (12%), 22 representatives (4.8%) compared to Jewish population in the U.S. (2.1%). 

In the words of Jonathan Sarna in his History of American Judaism, “Picking up where George Washington left off in his letter to the Jews of Newport and echoing Protestant depictions of the country as “God’s New Israel,” [Myer Moses, a leader of Beth Elohim in Charleston] prayed for “Great Jehovah” to “collect together thy long scattered people of Israel, and let their gathering place be in this land of milk and honey.”  The idea of “Zion in America” implied that Judaism and Americanism, God and country, the synagogue-community and the larger community all were thoroughly compatible.”  71

All of this makes me think we have something to celebrate.  But let’s not rush into it.  Give it another 300 years just to make sure something bad doesn’t happen.  Oh, I almost forgot.  What exactly are we celebrating and why on the 15^th of Tamuz?  According to my on-line Hebrew calendar converter, known as HebCal, the 15^th of Tamuz 5536 fell on July 2, 1776, the date that the Declaration of Independence was ratified, signed and sent to the printer.  It was published two days later.  Let’s all get back to work on the pyramid.

SELECTED SOURCES

Jacob Milgrom, The JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers, Excursus 66, “Oaths, Vows and Dedications,” at pp. 488-490 (1990/5750 Jewish Publication Society, New York)

Robert P. Hay, “Providence and the American Past”, Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 65. No.2 (June 1969), pp. 79-101.  Trustees of Indiana University  http://www.jstor.org/stable/27789575

Robert P. Hay, “George Washington: American Moses”, American Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Winter, 1969), pp. 780-791. The Johns Hopkins University Press.  http://www.jstor.or/stable/2711609 

Bruce Feiler, Moses: Biblical Prophet, American Icon, Washington Post, Sunday, October 18, 2009, Op. Ed.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/15/AR2009101503474.html

Rev. Richard C. Stazesky, George Washington, Genius in Leadership, A Presentation at a meeting on February 22, 200 of the George Washington Club, Ltd., Wilmington, Delaware.  http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/articles/stazesky.html

Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life, (2010, Penguin Press, New York) ISBN 978-1-59420-266-7.

Jon Meacham, American Gospel; God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation (2006, Random House).  ISBN 1-4000-6555-0

Michael Novak, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding, (2002 Encounter Books) ISBN 1-893554-68-6

Jonathon D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (2004 Yale University)  ISBN 0-300-10976-8

 

ENDNOTES

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[i]Most of the colonies required oaths of loyalty and abjuration along the lines of the Pennsylvania oaths:

"We subscribers, natives and late inhabitants of the Palatine upon the Rhine and places adjacent, having transported ourselves and families into the Province of Pennsylvania, a colony subject to the crown of Great Britain, in hopes and expectation of finding a retreat and a peacable settlement therein, do solemnly promise and engage that we will be faithful and bear true allegiance to his present majesty, King George the Second and his successors, kings of Great Britain, and will be faithful to the proprietor of this province; and that we will demean ourselves peacably to all his said majesty's subjects, and strictly observe and conform to the laws of England and this province, to the utmost of our power and best of our understanding."

Beginning in 1729, the immigrants were required to sign two additional oaths, one of which declared in flowery prose ("…from my heart abhor, detest and renounce as impious and heretical …") apparently that the immigrant was not a Roman Catholic, the other that he was acknowledging George II as the lawful king and denouncing such pretenders to the throne as James III of Scotland, Queen Anne, James VIII, etc.

After the start of the Revolution, an entirely different oath of allegiance was required in which the immigrants had to renounce their allegiance to the king and pledge their allegiance to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania:

We, the subscribers, do swear of affirm that we renounce and refuse all allegiance to George the Third, King of Great Britain, his heirs and successors, and that we will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as a free and independent state, and that we will not, at any time, do, or cause to be done, any matter of thing that will be prejudicial or injurious to the freedom and independence thereof, as declared by Congress, and also, that we will discover and make known, to some justice of the peace of the said State, all treasons and traitorous conspiracies which we now know, and hereafter shall know, to be formed against this or any of the United States of America."

Signers of the Oaths of Allegiance. In 1776 the Continental Congress requested each state to take an oath of allegiance from each of its male citizens over 21 years of age in order to determine the strength of the patriot movement and to identify the loyalists. Those who took such an oath, or signed local declarations of independence from England, were guilty of treason under English law and subject to death by hanging.

http://www.dar.org/natsociety/service_right.cfm?TP=Show&ID=97

[ii] http://books.google.com/books?id=84oTAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA170&dq=%22ten+talents%22+George+washington&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GnHRUfDxOsr40gH03oDIBg&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22ten%20talents%22%20George%20washington&f=false

Old Family Letters (Press of J. B. Lippincott Company, 1892) contains letters of John Adams, all but the first two addressed to Dr. Benjamin Rush; one letter from Samuel Adams, one from John Quincy Adams, and several from Thomas Jefferson addressed to Dr. Rush; "Letter of credence to the king" and "Letter of credence to the queen" by George Washington as president. Series B contains letters of Dr. Benjamin Rush to his wife written during the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, in 1793.

[iii] All three agreed that, regardless of religious belief or disbelief, religion

had a practical function in fostering civic virtue.

[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

(Source: John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. 1854), Vol. IX, p. 229, October 11, 1798.)

Benjamin Franklin

Signer of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence

[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

(Source: Benjamin Franklin, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, Jared Sparks, editor (Boston: Tappan, Whittemore and Mason, 1840), Vol. X, p. 297, April 17, 1787. )

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that "except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.

I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service.

(Source: James Madison, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, Max Farrand, editor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911), Vol. I, pp. 450-452, June 28, 1787.)

[iv] These were the words of the Reverend Thaddeus Fiske of Cambridge, MA on December 29, 1799.

[v] The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the population of the 13 colonies in 1776 was a little more than 2.5 million people, very nearly the same estimate offered by Jacob Milgrom in Excurses 2, “The Census and Its Totals” in Numbers 1:1-46 in the JPS Numbers Commentary at pp. 336-339. http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb11-ff13.html

[vi] Part of his survey work was incorporated into an early map of Maryland by his co-surveyor Joshua Frye which can be seen in Mapping Maryland: The Willard Hackerman Collection at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore.

[vii] Facebook Jeopardy answers: 1. Brikat ha gomel http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/5415/features/the-tish-and-the-thanksgiving-table/  Page 415 Siddur; 2. 1655 first Kosher Butcher in New Amsterdam, insisted on serving guard duty instead of paying fine in order to become a burgher (citizen); 3. 1682  first purchase of burial ground in North America, probably more like Abraham than Moses; 4. First notable Chazzan of Shearith Israel in NYC; first Jewish regent of Columbia; 5. Moses chazzan at Touro Newport RI synagogue; 6.  First President of Princeton, Teacher of Hebrew to James Madison, signer of the Declaration of Independence and teacher of law and politics to at least 70 founding fathers;  7. Smith found tablets and the history of the lost tribes in NY, then walked to Missouri; Young led the trek to Deseret in Utah and is the subject of a biography, Brigham Young: American Moses; 8. timed his first escape to coincide with Passover; 9. he had a dream and marched on Washington and other places; 10. radiant visage, torch and tablets; launched by his parents in a space basket with a mission to repair the world.