To Honor America’s Birthday, Jewish Journal Launches “250 Reasons to Thank America”

Too many Americans are approaching America’s 250^th birthday through a partisan lens. Sitting in a Jerusalem café recently, we decided to fight the negativity, polarization and hyper-politicization with gratitude.  We’re an odd couple: one of us, Professor Gil Troy, is a New York-born American historian currently living in Jerusalem. One of us, David Suissa, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of Tribe Media/Jewish Journal, was born in Casablanca, Morocco, raised in Montreal, and now lives in Los Angeles.  Both of us are profoundly grateful to America for all it’s done for Jews, for Israel, but, most important, for what America has done for Americans and the world.

So we decided to say thank you – 250 times.

Making the list was easy – limiting it to 250 was the hard part.

In our newly-released e-book “250 Reasons to Thank America,”  we express our gratitude again and again and again, for big ideas and small touches, through five historical periods each with forty thanks:

1. 1776-1826: Laying the Foundations;
2. 1827-1876: Making This New Republic Truly Democratic – and Free;
3. 1877 to 1926:  Giving Birth to Modernity;
4. 1927 to 1976: Inventing the First Mass Middle Class Society; and
5. 1977 to 2026: The Information Age.

Part Six — the final fifty reasons – details why Jews should be especially grateful, although those 50 reasons resonate broadly for anyone who believes in liberal-democracy, appreciates freedom of religion, and acknowledges that all of us are created equal.

As we go through the milestones in our e-book, we track America’s extraordinary progress: “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery” in the Pennsylvania legislature in 1790; the First Amendment in 1791 that guaranteed freedom of speech and religion; the 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision that established the principle of judicial review; the 1826 Lyceum Movement, a nationwide network  of public lecture halls to educate the electorate; Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Harvard lecture in 1837 that is remembered as “the declaration of independence of American intellectual life”; Harriet Tubman’s escape from slavery in 1849 and 19 Underground Railroad rescue missions; and on and on.

Progress, of course, is never perfect or linear; it’s halting, it’s jagged, it’s frustrating. Even after 600,000 Americans died during the Civil War to keep the country from breaking apart and to end slavery, it took another century-plus to end segregation and formalize the rights of Blacks, women and gays. No matter how far we go, the road never ends.

Too many Americans, however, choose not to see that road. They’d rather see a volcano that is always erupting. It’s become trendy these days to trash America as an imperialist, colonialist, oppressive, irredeemable ogre or a victim of mysterious, elite, conspiratorial forces.

Count us out of both trends.

And count us in as those who count amazing American-made miracles far beyond politics. Our list celebrates Noah Webster and his dictionary, Davy Crockett and his tall tales, the invention of the telegraph, the telephone, penicillin, and cures for cancer, as well as the emergence of the ice cream cone, the commercial pizzeria, and, of course, the deli.

Given all the great ideas we couldn’t include, we’re sure others will be happy to add to our list  — and we invite them to join. But, most important, without minimizing our current challenges, our past failures, or our future headaches, let’s take a moment on July 4 to celebrate and to say thank you.

David says, “Happy birthday to a nation of stubborn dreamers.”

Gil says, “Happy Birthday to the land of liberty that makes the impossible possible.”

And we both say, “God Bless America.”

Gil Troy and David Suissa