The founding fathers’ wisdom

Dear Lowcountry friends,

Having just experienced our nation’s 249th Independence Day, replete with red, white, and blue bunting, patriotic parades and speeches, celebrations of hot dogs and (maybe) beer; I thought it was important to remember the very meaningful and historically important values of that hot Philadelphia day.

Of course, it represented freedom from colonialism and monarchic hegemony of the British empire, with a king and government that had no desire to represent the citizens of our country, if it didn’t represent the interests of their government.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed religious freedom, and freedom for every person. The document didn’t include equality for women or people of color, did not reject slavery, and many other essential issues of modern times, but the founders of our country did include one very contemporary concept, the separation of church and state.

That might seem a peculiar issue for a clergy person to mention, but representing the Jewish community is exactly why this is so important, because the delegates to the Continental congress were mostly religious people, and the primary majority were Anglican, or Episcopalian, in modern parlance. But not all. Some were Baptist or Congregationalists or other Protestant denominations, Deists or non-practicing, but none practiced faiths other than some form of Christianity.

That is what makes the letter from our first President, George Washington, all the more remarkable.

This Anglican born Virginian, land owner and patrician, wrote several letters to synagogues around the new country of the United States, declaring the respect in which he held the children of Israel, the Jewish community of America.

While the first letter was written to the “Israelites” of Newport, RI, a second letter is much closer to our Lowcountry. It is found in the archives of the Reform congregation of Mikveh Israel in Savannah, one of the original Jewish congregations in America.

At this season of commemoration of the creation of our country, dedicated to the values of our founding leaders, it is important to remember the significant role our SC community has played in the history of our country.

My hope is that we will remember much more than parades and fireworks, but the profoundly important reasons for which our country was created. When the great American and Jewish songwriter Irving Berlin wrote “God Bless America” while a soldier in World War I, he knew of what he wrote.

A Russian immigrant who escaped the intolerance, antisemitism, poverty of his people, America welcomed him and his family, and millions of us, to a land of the free and the home of the brave. Let’s remember that.

Rabbi Ken Kanter currently serves the local Jewish congregation at the Temple Oseh Shalom in Bluffton, SC.