“In the mid-19th century,” Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern writes in this week’s cover story, “James G. Birney, a former slaveholder hailing from Danville, Kentucky, recognized the societal scourge that was the slave trade and decided to do something about it.”
Birney accepted the nomination for president from the Liberty Party in 1840, with a platform that “demand[ed] the absolute and unqualified divorce of the general government from slavery, and also the restoration of equality of rights among men, in every State where the party exists, or may exist.”
What is noteworthy about the little-known Birney is that, as Halpern writes, he “looked to the Hebrew Bible to depict his own fight for emancipation. The logo of the Liberty Party was a biblical tree, the Cedar of Lebanon. As the Book of Kings describes, King Solomon used cedars from Lebanon to construct the Temple in Jerusalem.
“In case the symbolism was too subtle for its supporters, the party made the theology behind the image explicit. It ran campaign ads with images of the tree, accompanied by the slogan taken from Psalm 92, ‘the righteous shall … grow like a cedar in Lebanon.’
“The imagery of the Jewish Temple, the site from which justice was to, in the words of the prophet Amos, ‘well up as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream,’ served to shape the fight for a more righteous and just America.”
What is also noteworthy is that Birney’s Liberal party was the ideological precursor of the newly formed Republican party, which nominated for president in 1860 a man named Abraham Lincoln.
The moral predecessor of America’s Great Emancipator, in other words, was a man who was deeply influenced by the Torah we read in synagogue every Shabbat.
As you’ll see in Halpern’s essay, there are multiple examples of the Jewish influence in the founding of our nation. The Jewish story, he writes, “helped shape America’s moral language of liberty and articulate its highest national ideals.”
At a time when we are so bitterly divided, when political affiliation has become synonymous with civil warfare, when a pessimistic movement to redefine American history based on the sins of our past keeps gaining steam, this Jewish take on the American story could not come at a better time.
At a time when we are so bitterly divided, when political affiliation has become synonymous with civil warfare, when a pessimistic movement to redefine American history based on the sins of our past keeps gaining steam, this Jewish take on the American story could not come at a better time.
A crucial ethos of the Jewish tradition is that life is a never-ending work in progress. What brings people and nations together are shared ideals and striving toward a common destiny, even if people may differ on how best to get there.
In recent years, we’ve witnessed a fraying of these bonds in America, as a growing movement has disseminated the idea that the founding documents of our nation are irrevocably flawed, incapable of providing true justice and genuine progress. Instead of working within the system, this new movement would rather work to take it down.
This view of America downplays the incredible progress our country has made since the scourge of slavery left an indelible stain on our history.
The net result is that we’re fighting over the very soul of our nation. Are we the America that is irredeemably flawed, or the America that is a constant if imperfect work in progress? Are we the bitter and resentful America of the 1619 Project, or the optimistic America of the shining city on a hill — the America that millions of refugees are desperate to enter?
This fight over our story is fundamental and consequential. As President Barack Obama said in 2014, at a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, “The story of America is the story of progress.”
This is also the Jewish story, a story that embodies an eternal faith in the possibility of a better future, guided by the collective wisdom of our tradition. The U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence are America’s Torah. Just as the Torah, with its balance of principle and flexibility, has sustained the Jews for millennia, so have America’s foundational documents sustained the country for nearly 250 years.
As Rabbi Halpern elaborates in his essay, this Jewish-American bond will be explored this spring at a conference convened by Yeshiva University called “Restoring the American Story.” The crux of the conference will be to examine how America’s foundational documents were inspired by the Hebrew Bible.
As Rabbi Halpern elaborates in his essay, this Jewish-American bond will be explored this spring at a conference convened by Yeshiva University called “Restoring the American Story.” The crux of the conference will be to examine how America’s foundational documents were inspired by the Hebrew Bible.
It’s hard to think of a better antidote to antisemitism: A conference on the mystic bonds between Judaism and a country, flawed as it is, that is still a beacon of hope for all those dreaming of a better life.
James G. Birney will surely be there in spirit.
