Jewish Identity vs. Identity Politics

The eight most audacious words in American Jewish history were written by a German immigrant to Charleston, and yet they do not form a single sentence, nor do they proclaim a proposition. The words form a date set atop of a piece of correspondence written by Jonas Phillips, one of the most remarkable men in the story of American Jewry. Phillips had arrived in Charleston in 1756, penniless and an indentured servant to another Jew. By 1776, he had earned his freedom and married a member of the Jewish community in New York. Entirely dedicated to the revolutionary cause, he fled the city before the British landed, served in the American militia, and created a successful life for himself, his spouse, and — this is not a typo — their 21 children.

He emerged from the Revolution financially successful but civically unequal. In Pennsylvania, the state that was his new chosen home, individuals could not serve in the legislature unless they affirmed, under oath, that both the Old Testament and New Testament were divinely inspired. Phillips was aware that no Jew could take such an oath, and in 1787 he decided to write to the Constitutional Convention, then meeting in his city, and to its president, George Washington, in order to air his grievances.

In this letter, Phillips referenced not only the claims of religious doctrine, but of Jewish peoplehood. He described himself “as being one of the people called Jews of the City of Philadelphia, a people scattered and dispersed among all nations” and sternly informed the Constitutional Convention that “to Swear and belive that the new testement was given by devine inspiration is absolutly against the Religious principle of a Jew.” Noting that the Jews of America had embraced the patriot cause, he argued that the nascent country was not making good on the principles for which the Jewish community had fought: