George Washington’s First – And Lesser Known – Letter To American Jews

Photo Credit: Saul Jay Singer

On August 17, 1790, President Washington visited Newport, Rhode Island, along with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and others to generate support for the proposed Bill of Rights. During his stay, he was welcomed by Moses Seixas, the lay leader of the Newport Jewish community, and he was taken on a tour of The Touro Synagogue, still the oldest standing synagogue in the United States. After the visit, Seixas wrote to Washington (in part):

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. [Emphasis added.]

On August 18, 1790, Washington wrote an historic and well-known response, his Letter to the Jews of Newport, in which he reassured them that Jewish citizens of the nascent nation would be afforded full civil rights and equal protections under law. Ironically, he lifted the most beautiful and celebrated phrase in his response – “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance” – from Seixas’s correspondence:

Gentlemen. While I receive, with much satisfaction, your Address replete with expressions of affection and esteem; I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you, that I shall always retain a grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced in my visit to Newport, from all classes of Citizens.

The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet, from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security. If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and a happy people.

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.

It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my Administration, and fervent wishes for my felicity. 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. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

However, as it turns out, this was not the first letter that Washington wrote to the American Jewish community and, I would argue, not the most significant, meaningful and consequential. The largely forgotten story of President Washington’s first correspondence to American Jews begins with Benjamin Sheftall; his son, Levi; and the Mickve Israel Jewish Congregation in Savannah, Georgia.

The settlement of Savannah began as a strategic buffer to protect English claims in the New World against intrusion from Spain and France when British parliamentarian James Oglethorpe received a Royal Charter for the new colony in 1732 and, a year later, landed with 114 settlers in Georgia and founded Savannah. Only four months later, forty-two Jews arrived there aboard the William and Sarah on July 11, 1733 (one passenger had died en route), among them Benjamin Sheftall (1692-1765).

Funding for outfitting the ship had been provided by congregational leaders at London’s Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue. According to most historians, the synagogue was not acting altruistically in financing the trip of their fellow Jews to the New World but, rather, they were eager to rid themselves of their own dependent citizenry – “out of sight and off the community dole,” according to one critic. However, when trustees learned that the shipload of Jews had been dispatched to the colonies without their express approval, they were furious to the point that they urged Oglethorpe to expel them, but he welcomed them with open arms – he is one of the great, albeit unrecognized, chasidei umot haolom (“righteous among the nations”) – and he defended his decision to admit them. Moreover, by the time the trustees’ dispatch crossed the Atlantic, Dr. Samuel Nunes Ribiero, one of the original Jewish passengers, had rescued the colony from a terrible typhoid fever epidemic and the other Jews had become settled and well-respected.

The Jews of Savannah had brought with them a “sefertoro” (a sefer Torah, a Torah scroll) – which is still in use on commemorative occasions at the Mickve Israel Synagogue – a set of circumcision instruments, and a wooden box to serve as an ark, and their first communal act upon landing in Savannah was to commence a service with a minyan. They soon acquired land for a cemetery from Oglethorpe and, in 1735, they officially became Mickve Israel, “the Hope of Israel,” which, though small, became the third largest Jewish congregation in America (after congregations in New York and Newport). They were soon split by Ashkenazi (mostly descendants of German Jews) and Sephardic (mostly descendants of Spanish – Portuguese Jews) loyalties, but they were able to work together successfully against local Anglican and Lutheran missionaries.

By 1740, however, the forty Jews of the original 42 passengers who were Sephardic had fled Savannah fearing an imminent Spanish invasion of Florida, but Benjamin Sheftall, a Prussian native who had arrived in the colony with his newlywed bride, Perla, remained with the two other Ashkenazi families. Three years after Perla’s death in November 1935, he married Hannah Solomons, who had just arrived at the colony, and their son, Mordecai, was born that year. (In 1748, he sent to England for tefillin and prayer books for Mordecai’s bar mitzvah, the first recorded observance of this rite in America.) Also in 1935, he became a founder of Congregation Mickve Israel, which he served as both shammash and shochet. Their son, Levi, was born four years later in 1739.

Shortly after Levi’s bar mitzvah, the young man began to independently support himself in a solo enterprise involving the purchase of deer skins, dressing them in the manner of the Indians, and selling them at a small profit. In his diary, only a small part of which exists today, he describes the difficulties of life in the colony, which he characterizes as nothing but logs and dirt streets, and describes trying to live and earn sustenance among attacks by wild beasts and Indians. He found the work difficult and disagreeable, but it sustained him for a few years until the ambitious businessman expanded into his ultimate profession as a butcher, followed by an investment loss in a failed tavern (which all but bankrupted him), followed by a series of successful real estate investments.

Three years after Benjamin’s death in 1765, Levi married 14-year-old Sarah Delamotte on the island of St. Croix, purchased a plantation, and continued his successful real estate investing, having accumulated some 750 acres in America by 1769 and running successful butcher and tanyard businesses. His success continued until 1775, when he managed to earn the enmity of both the patriots (the American revolutionaries) and the British loyalists (the Tories), with each faction accusing him of being a traitor loyal to the enemy.

When the Revolutionary War broke out, most of Savannah’s Jews supported the patriotic cause and the task of local government in Savannah fell to the Parochial Committees of Safety, with Mordecai Sheftall (Levi’s aforementioned brother) appointed to head the Committee and Levi serving on the Committee as well. In fact, Levi was not only a supporter of the revolutionary cause, but he even served as an advisor to Count Jean-Baptiste-Charles-Henri d’Estaing regarding the French attack against British troops in Savannah, but when the attack proved to be a disaster for both the American and French forces, he was unjustly branded a Tory by the American patriots. The Tories, in turn, accused him of being an American revolutionary because he carried on trade with American patriots in British-occupied Savannah.

When the British captured Savannah in December 1778, Levi lost almost everything, and after the Americans won their War of Independence and the Patriots regained control of the Georgia government in 1782, they banished him (he relocated to Charleston) and confiscated all his property.

Mordecai – who had served as the highest-ranking Jew in the Continental Army – led the effort to “rehabilitate” Levi and, on January 1, 1783, the Georgia legislature voted to remove Levi from the “Act of Confiscation.” He was declared a citizen in 1785 – although he was still prohibited from voting or holding public office until 1799 – but in 1787, the legislature reversed course and restored all rights of citizenship to Levi, and he returned once again to Savannah, where he lived the rest of his life.

Also in 1785, when a Georgia court determined that Mordecai Sheftall had the basic right to file a suit in a court of law despite being Jewish, an anonymous writer calling himself “Citizen” circulated a loathsome hate-filled pamphlet decrying the pro-Jewish decision and cautioning “What are we to expect but to have Christianity enacted into a capital heresy, the synagogue become the established church, and the mildness of the New Testament compelled to give place to the rigor and severity of the Old.” (At the time less than 0.1% of Georgia’s population was Jewish.) Under the pen name “A Real Citizen,” Levi called out the anonymous pamphleteer and, writing in the January 13, 1785 Georgia Gazette – not to be confused with the Gazette of the United States – he mocked the “Citizen” for seizing the “opportunity to show his hatred:”

A Pamphlet having lately with much industry circulated about this town [Savannah], under cover of the Night, entitled Cursory Remarks on Men and Measures in Georgia, shows that the author has been at a great deal of trouble to collect and put together the sufferings and persecutions of the Jews in those days of ignorance and superstition; this has given him an opportunity to show his hatred to those people in nine pages of this masterly piece of learning and wit. The little countenance it has met with from the public in general must long ere this have convinced him that he might have employed his time to some better purposes.

He subscribes himself a Citizen, this leads me to inquire what the Jew particularly alluded to in that masterly piece has done that he should not also be entitled to the rights of citizenship. Did he get his property removed from the reach of the enemy, and then cause it to be brought back within the enemy’s lines?… Or was he even, during the war, ordered by American officers to be put into irons, and sent to headquarters for treasonable practices against the States? Or did he not, as became a faithful citizen, discharge the several trusts reposed in him? If he did, why so much spleen, and so much pains taken to put him, and the rest of his profession in this State, on the same footing of an African that deserts his Master’s services? But, should there be any such characters as described above in Georgia, I leave to the Whigs to judge what they merit from their injured country.

Despite what some might describe as an inauspicious early history, Levi went on to become a man of great accomplishment who established himself as a patriotic American and generous humanitarian. He served as agent in charge of Savannah’s fortifications and he was also a proud, active, and dedicated Jew who served as the recorder of the Jewish community’s vital records. He was a leader of Congregation Mickve Israel in Savannah, for whom he helped to secure a formal state charter for the synagogue in 1790, when the congregation had about 15 Jewish families. It was in his capacity as president of Mickve Israel that Levi wrote his famous letter to Washington in 1790.

The first Jewish congregation in Georgia, Mickve Israel, was established in Savannah in about 1735 but discontinued services around 1740. The congregation was reorganized in 1774, only to have regular services interrupted by the Revolutionary War. The congregation was reformed again in 1786, largely through the leadership of the brothers Mordecai and Levi Sheftall. The congregation’s letter to Washington may have been related to their efforts to obtain a charter of incorporation; in December 1789, the Georgia legislature had passed an act authorizing the governor to grant charters to religious societies, enabling them to hold property and assume other corporate privileges. (The leaders of Mickve Israel applied for incorporation under this act in August 1790, and were granted a charter by Georgia Gov. Edward Telfair on November 30, 1790.)

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Exhibited here is the historic June 19, 1790 edition of the Gazette of the United States which includes the full texts of the famous letter written to George Washington by Levi Sheftall on behalf of the Mickve Israel Congregation of Savannah, and Washington’s stirring reply. Levi’s letter is believed to have been written around May 1790 and delivered to Washington the following June 14^th by Georgia Congressman James Jackson:

Sir,

We have long been anxious of congratulating you on your appointment by unanimous approbation, to the Presidential dignity of this country, and of testifying our unbounded Confidence in your integrity and unblemished virtue. Yet, however exalted the station you now fill, it is still not equal to the merit of your heroic services through an arduous and dangerous conflict which has embosomed you in the hearts of our citizens.

Our eccentric situation added to a diffidence founded on the most profound respect has thus long prevented our address, yet the delay has realized anticipation, giving us an opportunity of presenting our grateful acknowledgments for the benediction of Heaven, through the magnanimity of Federal influence and the equity of your administration.

Your unexampled liberality and extensive philanthropy have dispelled that cloud of bigotry and superstition which has long as a veil shaded religion, unriveted fetters of enthusiasm, enfranchised us with all the privileges and immunities of free citizens, and initiated us into the grand mass of legislative mechanism.

By example, you have taught us to endure the ravages of war with manly fortitude, and to enjoy the blessings of peace with reverence to the Deity and benignity and love to our fellow creatures.

May the Great Author of the world grant you all happiness – an uninterrupted series of health – addition of years to the number of your days, and a continuance of guardianship to that freedom which under the auspices of heaven your magnanimity and wisdom have given these states.

LEVI SHEFTALL, President.

In behalf of the Hebrew Congregation

Washington promptly wrote his answer to Sheftall, making it into this June 19^th issue. Because Washington composed his reply in New York and dispatched it from the executive mansion on Cherry Street in New York City, it is logical that a New York newspaper would be the first to print it. Washington’s gracious response was printed beneath Sheftall’s original letter on page 2 of The Gazette, which was the semi-official newspaper of the day:

Gentlemen, I thank you with great sincerity for your congratulations on my appointment to the office, which I have the honor to hold by the unanimous choice of my fellow-citizens: and especially for the expressions which you are pleased to use in testifying the confidence that is reposed in me by your congregation.

As the delay which has naturally intervened between my election and your address has afforded an opportunity for appreciating the merits of the federal-government, and for communicating your sentiments of its administration – I have rather to express my satisfaction than regret at a circumstance, which demonstrates (upon experiment) your attachment to the former as well as approbation of the latter.

I rejoice that a spirit of liberality and philanthropy is much more prevalent than it formerly was among the enlightened nations of the earth; and that your brethren will benefit thereby in proportion as it shall become still more extensive. Happily the people of the United States of America have, in many instances, exhibited examples worthy of imitation – The salutary influence of which will doubtless extend much farther, if gratefully enjoying those blessings of peace which (under favor of Heaven) have been obtained by fortitude in war, they shall conduct themselves with reverence to the Deity, and charity towards their fellow-creatures.

May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian Oppressors planted them in the promised land – whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation – still continue to water them with the dews of Heaven and to make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people whose God is [specific name of G-d omitted].

The Gazette of the United States was arguably the most significant political newspaper of the late eighteenth century. Public printings of early Acts of Congress, Presidential Proclamations, and official correspondence often appeared first in the Gazette. This issue also contains news of Rhode Island’s ratification of the Constitution (not exhibited here).

Washington was sworn in as president in New York in April 1789 and, immediately thereafter, leaders from various American minority faith communities in America – including Baptists, Catholics, and Quakers – sent a letter of congratulations to the new president. By contrast, American Jews, then numbering no more than a thousand, not only procrastinated until almost a year after the inauguration, but also sent separate letters to the president from different Jewish communities. According to commentator Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, this delay and lack of unity underscored the fractious character of the American Jewish community that lacked a chief rabbi or other leader authorized to speak on behalf of all American Jews. Nonetheless, the new president showed elegance and style by responding separately to each of the letters he received from various Jewish communities.

In his response to Sheftall’s correspondence, Washington did not merely acknowledge receipt of the letter but, rather, he clearly undertook to make American Jews feel welcome in the new constitutional republic, attributing the American victory in the War of Independence to the same deity who freed the Jewish people form Egypt during the Exodus. As such – and this is critical – Jews were to be welcomed as American citizens not only because of the ideals of equality, but also because the history of the Jewish people was inspirational to America and to all its people.

The Savannah and Newport letters, along with other responses written by Washington to several Jewish congregations during this period in American history, were essential to shaping the Jewish-American consciousness; when the framers of our Constitution wrote of their lofty goal of religious liberty, it was initially unclear to Jews and other religious minorities whether those constitutional rights extended to anyone other than the Christian majority. [In fact, in many cases, they did not extend to Jews and other non-Christians; see, e.g., The Maryland Jew Bill, a subject far too broad to discuss here.]

However, when Washington’s response to the Newport and Savannah communities are considered together, the greater import of the less-known Savannah letter becomes apparent. While the new president’s message to Newport’s Jews beautifully expresses the idea of American equality, his letter to Savannah’s Jews emphasizes how the Founders venerated Jewish history and faith, relied upon the religious themes of Judaism for support, and viewed “toleration” as much more than an elite graciously extending rights to a lower and less worthy class.

While Washington’s original Letter to the Jews of Newport has been saved and may be seen today, his original letter to Sheftall and the Jews of Savannah has been lost to history. The earliest existing record of the Savannah letter is the June 19, 1790 Gazette of the United States exhibited herein. There is considerable evidence that the Mickve Israel synagogue did not take adequate precautions to preserve many of the important documents in its history; for example, a copy of the synagogue’s 1790 charter of incorporation was found in a tuxedo box in a synagogue closet and a 15^th-century sefer Torah, thought to be one of the oldest in the United States, had been stored in a bookcase. Also seemingly lost to posterity are the Sheftall Diaries, begun by Benjamin Sheftall and continued by Levi, which provided a detailed record of the community’s early years between 1733 and 1808, including births, deaths, marriages, gossip and minor scandals, and also provided a complete list of the 43 Jewish men, women and children who set sail for America.