For years, I have been troubled by two prayers in the Conservative Jewish liturgy – the Prayer for our Country and the Prayer for the State of Israel.  Now my disquiet about the Prayer for the State of Israel goes well beyond the current difficulties in Palestine.  I am uncomfortable with the very idea of paying for the wellbeing of another nation as while I am very secure in my Jewish identity, it has nothing to do with the secular nation of Israel and my country is the United States of America.  That said, I have also had issue with praying for our country, especially when its leaders behave in in appropriate and, frankly, un-American ways.  This isn’t a party thing.  Sure, when D Trump was President, I found the practice much more repugnant but even today, it violates my personal definition of the separation of government and religion.  I recently, however, learned the history of this particularly American Jewish tradition which softens the frustration a bit.

Let’s talk about the history of one of the American Revolution’s most significant religious Jews.  In the past, I have written about secular Jews who, despite antisemitism of the time, took up arms, raised capital, spied, and engaged in all manner of support for the American Revolution.  Isaac Franks fought in the south, Mordecai Sheftall took the Sons of Liberty’s non-importation pledges to Georgia, Francis Salvador helped create a South Carolina Legislature independent from the Crown, David Franks was Benedict Arnold’s Aide de Camp and helped capture Montreal, and, of course, there were pirates.  For these men, however, their Jewish identity was just part of who they were, not what made their actions great. Today, I want to talk about someone whose religion was what made them a great American.  Gershom Seixas as a professional Hazzan or Cantor.  His life was entirely focused on the Jewish community, and he is the author of the Prayer for our Country.  He was also one of our nation’s great patriots.

New York City in the 1760s had fewer than 300 Jews, and one synagogue — Shearith Israel.  Prior to the middle of the 19^th Century, it was very rare for a synagogue to have its services lead by a rabbi.  Rabbis are teachers and scholars of Jewish law.  Traditionally the religious services of a synagogue are led by a hazzan who leads the the congregation through the prayers.  Gershom Seixas was Shearith Israel’s hazzan.  Seixas, handled all spiritual and religious law issues for the Jewish community in New York.  He was the mohel (performed circumcision) and the vaad (supervisor of kashrut).  He performed of marriages and funerals.  He taught religious school and did all the varied duties we now associate with rabbis.

Shearith Israel was founded in 1654, New Amsterdam, by 23 Jews of Spanish and Portuguese descent.  As a Sephardic synagogue with a large number of Ashkenazi Jews, Shearith Israel was the model of what American Jewish life would become, a huge mixing of ideas and traditions into a truly unique form of Jewish life.  Colonial New York, under the Crown, was still a place relatively hostile to Jewish life.  Britain has a state religion and, still, enforces strictures on anyone who is not Anglican.   That said, New York was not London and its Dutch roots created an atmosphere that was relatively tolerant for Jews relative to what was experienced in Europe.

When hostilities broke out in Boston (1773), Seixas’ congregation was split on the issue.  Many of the congregants had strong financial and commercial ties to the British Empire; Others favored supporting the rebellion in Boston as a check on imperial abuses.  When General Howe invaded New York in 1776, Seixas persuaded a majority that Shearith Israel should support the revolution and close rather than operate during a British occupation.  He packed the congregation’s books and Torah scrolls and removed them, with his family, to his father-in-law’s home in Strafford, Connecticut.

In 1780, Seixas relocated to Philadelphia to become hazzan of congregation Mikveh Israel. Despite his personal abhorrence of war, in his sermons Seixas regularly called on G-d to bless the Revolution, the Congress and George Washington, the commander-in-chief of the patriot armies. He considered the American cause, with its emphasis on individual liberty, as a just war, and independence a blessing for America’s Jews.  In 1787, when George Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the United States, Seixas was one of three clergymen who participated in the inaugural ceremony.  His invocation called for “the blessings of Almighty God on the Members of these States in Congress assembled and on his Excellency George Washington, Commander-General of these Colonies“.  Two hundred and fifty years later, we still see this prayer in the daily liturgy as “Our God and God of our ancestors, with mercy accept our prayer on behalf of our country and its government. Pour out Your blessing upon this land, upon its inhabitants, upon its leaders, its judges, officers, and officials, who faithfully devote themselves to the needs of the public. Help them understand the rules of justice You have decreed, so that peace and security, happiness and freedom, will never depart from our land….”[i]

Seixas zealously defended religious liberty all his life. He and several members of his congregation addressed the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Council of Censors in December 1783, opposing the adoption of a religious test for prospective office holders. In 1787 Seixas became the first Jew to be elected a trustee of Columbia College (formerly King’s College) and abolished the religious test (at King’s College, only members of the Church of England were welcome) for its faculty and students. He also as a trustee of the Humane Society of New York.

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[i] Siddur Lev Shalem

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