Gemma R. Birnbaum: All We Have Standing Between Us is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Knapp Family Foundation. Additional funding provided by the Leon Levy Foundation, the Achelis and Bodman Foundation, the Atran Foundation, and Anonymous.
Visit the companion exhibition in New York City, on view at the Center for Jewish History July 21st through December 31, 2026.
Archival Audio – John F. Kennedy Recites the Declaration of Independence: When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: On July 4, 1957, thousands of public radio listeners tuned in to a broadcast of Massachusetts Senator – and future American President – John F. Kennedy reading the Declaration of Independence. Now, 1957 was a formative year in American history – as the nation faced a reckoning on issues like civil rights and an escalating fight against Communism – but we’ll get to all that later.
Welcome to All We Have Standing Between Us. I’m Gemma R. Birnbaum, executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society.
Today’s episode, The Rest of Mankind, begins with a migration.
Laura Arnold Leibman: The first Jews in early America arrived from Iberia into the Spanish colonies, and they arrived in the 16th century, and then were subjected to the Inquisition.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: Laura Arnold Leibman is the Leonard J. Milberg Professor of American Jewish Studies at Princeton University, and author of Once We Were Slaves: The Extraordinary Journey of a Multiracial Jewish Family.
Laura Arnold Leibman: And so a lot of the early records we have revolve around Jews who were both what we would consider today Sephardic, but also were people who were experiencing a lot of hardship in the Americas. The first really major Jewish community in the Americas where Jews are allowed to openly practice Judaism occurs in Recife, in modern day Brazil, and that was because it was taken over by the Dutch who allowed Jews to practice openly, and that set a precedent later for opening Jewish communities, which primarily involved people settling in the Dutch and British colonies.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: In 1654, the Dutch surrendered control of Recife back to the Portuguese, which sent the Jewish population scattering throughout the Americas.
Laura Arnold Leibman: One of the places that they settled was in New York. And so we get that first group of Sephardic refugees settling in what is then New Amsterdam arriving in 1654.
And while there were a couple of Ashkenazi Jews in New Amsterdam slightly before the arrival of the refugees from Recife, we don’t tend to think of them as a Jewish settlement as much because it didn’t involve women and children. We tend to mark the beginning of Jewish communities when you have a complete Jewish community involving all segments of society as opposed to just an isolated male Jewish merchant or two.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: Adam Jortner is the author of A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom.
Adam Jortner: If you’re living in 1776 and you’re asked to pick a city in the new world that’s going to become the hub of Jewish life and Jewish civilization, you would not have picked New York. All of the Jewish communities in the Caribbean are larger. They’re more prosperous, they have bigger institutions in the mainland British North American colonies. There are a couple of cities that have managed to put together small Jewish communities: New York; Newport, Rhode Island; Philadelphia; Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia. And in all except Savannah, they’re able to actually form a functioning synagogue that’s legally operating. These are very urban Jewish communities. Most of the people, they are involved in trade, and in general they have some degree of freedom, but we would call it toleration, which is to say, legally speaking, they’re allowed to practice, but they do not have anything like full rights.
Archival Audio – John F. Kennedy Recites the Declaration of Independence: Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: On April 18, 1775 – during a chilly, rainy evening in Massachusetts – residents awoke to a warning from patriot Paul Revere that the British were coming – on their way from Boston to seize a weapons cache. Colonial militiamen quickly mobilized, took up their arms, and rushed to intercept the incoming army.
There, on the Lexington town green, the confrontation exploded into fiery chaos. The patriots, armed with an arsenal, managed to fend off the invading British forces, who retreated under the fog of the gunfire.
A revolution had begun.
Laura Arnold Leibman: I think of Jews’ contribution to the revolution as being tripartite. One part is serving in the militia, which is incredibly important as an opportunity for Jews and really, going forward, is something that later American Jews will recognize as being a hallmark of Jews participation.
Adam Jortner: Not only are they allowed to join the army, they become officers, and this is something that had not happened in Europe. It couldn’t happen in Europe. Because all of the major states in Europe are not only monarchies, but they’re monarchies with a state church. The army is not just an army of France. It is a Catholic army. It’s not just an army of Britain. It’s a Protestant, Anglican army, and you can’t have Jews in charge of Christian soldiers. Washington’s army isn’t like that. And we don’t know if this is because Washington has, you know, deep seated ideas about religious tolerance, or more likely he just needs people.
There’s one militia company in South Carolina that’s called the Jew Company, ‘cause 28 of its 40 members are Jewish and they fight in the Battle of Beaufort. But they don’t call themselves the Jew company. That was their nickname. They called themselves the Free Citizens, which I think gives some indication as to what the Jews who fought for the Patriots thought they were fighting for.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: In addition to military service, some Jewish patriots lent their support to the revolutionary cause through financing and working to get soldiers provisions.
Laura Arnold Leibman: So the financing doesn’t just mean that they lent money directly to the Revolutionary Court cause, though Jews did lend money to the revolutionary cause. It also means they served as brokers, which allowed them to create finance networks between people who are willing to loan money and the Patriots.
The third way that Jews participated in the revolution was by supplying provisions, and we see that in both the loyalist and the Patriot side. A lot of times people want to think about the provisions that are supplied is what I refer to as sexy provisions, which are guns and ammunition. But Jews also were crucial for supplying everyday items that allowed the Patriots to succeed. And that would include things like shoes or fabric for uniforms or food.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: Among those helping to finance and provision the war was 35 year old Haym Salomon. He’d arrived in America in 1775, and was immediately drawn to the patriot cause.
Adam Jortner: Salomon is a Polish born Jew who makes his way to British North America and becomes wrapped up in the revolution. He’s sometimes called the financier of the American Revolution. That’s a little bit overstated, but he does serve in terms of, he does help create financial loans, which he knew were really gifts, and, and is part of the team that keeps Congress afloat during the war. But he also serves as a spy behind enemy lines in occupied New York.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: In September 1776, the British arrested Salomon for his role in the Sons of Liberty, an underground group that had become known for carrying out acts of violence in support of the patriot cause. Alongside the revolutionary Nathan Hale, Salomon stood accused of arson, after a night of mayhem in New York City ended with entire city blocks burned to the ground.
After eighteen months in prison, he was pardoned. His freedom, however, wouldn’t last long, and he was arrested again in 1778, on charges of espionage. He was convicted and sentenced to death, but escaped to Philadelphia before the sentence could be carried out.
After his arrests, he turned his efforts towards raising money for the patriot cause.
Adam Jortner: There’s a legend that George Washington really needed some money. So he goes to a Yom Kippur service, and Haym Salomon just gathers all the money he needs right then and there. And this story is made up. It’s not true. Haym Solomon doesn’t just have bags of money. He works to get the money to support the Patriot cause. And of course there are Patriots doing a lot of the other difficult work, including serving in the military and serving on organizing committees that actually see that these funds and goods get distributed.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: Women were typically barred from serving on these organizing committees, but they still had active roles on both sides of the Revolution. Some served on the frontlines, whether it was on the battlefield alongside their husbands, or on the homefront, when war came to their doorsteps.
While women, and Jewish women in particular, had limited autonomy in the early American period, they found ways to express their ideas about religious identity and politics.
Laura Arnold Leibman: They were one of the ways that people cemented trading partners with people in Jews in other ports. So if I were a Jew in Newport and I wanted to trade with some of the Jewish community of Jamaica, I might marry off a daughter or son to that community. We see that paying off in spades during the revolution, that as Jews sort of take refuge in different places, Jews from communities that were very small who might never have met each other suddenly are drawn together and unite and end up mirroring.
And a lot of the artifacts that we have left related to Jewish women from the revolution are related to those marriages. Some of the surviving items that we have from women that were made during the revolution help us understand how women were being valued differently during this time period. And a great example of that would be the sampler that was made by Rebecca Hendricks.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: Samplers were intricately embroidered large scraps of fabric, and were created by young girls practicing their needlework. They frequently featured numbers, letters, Bible verses, and carefully stitched lines.
Featured on one of Rebecca’s samplers was the text of Psalm 78.
Laura Arnold Leibman: Which was a psalm that references Exodus, but was particularly favored by the monarchy. It was used to show that people who were obedient to monarchs would be rewarded, and those who wouldn’t like the children of Fry him would be punished.
And she is in a Loyalist family that stays behind in New York. In fact, her father is one of the 16 Jewish men who signs the loyalty address to King George III. So we see that playing out In terms of her samplers. She has another sampler that has the 10 Commandments and has a crown modeled on George III’s crown that emphasizes obedience to God and obedience to the monarch should be wedded to each other.
Hendricks’s sampler is such a great example of how we can use everyday objects in order to get at what were Jewish women and girls thinking about during the revolution.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: On September 3, 1783, King George III and representatives of the United States signed the Treaty of Paris, and the US was formally recognized as an independent nation, bringing an end to nearly a decade of war.
Haym Salomon passed away soon after the war’s end, at just 44 years old. He was never repaid for his loans to the Patriot cause, and died penniless. His widow Rachel Franks and their four small children were left with nothing.
As for Rebecca Hendricks, rather than leave the United States, as many Loyalist families did, she and her family stayed in New York, where she and her siblings married into Patriot families.
Archival Audio – John F. Kennedy Recites the Declaration of Independence: Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: After the Revolution, many Loyalist families retreated to England or Canada, while others went to the Caribbean, which was home to a significant Jewish population.
Laura Arnold Leibman: Before 1825, the largest wealthiest, best educated Jewish communities in the Americas were all in the Caribbean and the Caribbean Jews definitely had an impact on the revolution. One of the great impacts on the communities was the disruption of trade, which really had long lasting ramifications on the Caribbean community in terms of undermining the economic base of those sugar colonies. And those colonies often, and the Jewish merchants of them, don’t recover after the war.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: In the 1790s, siblings Sarah and Isaac Brandon were born enslaved in Barbados, the “legal property” of Hannah Esther Lopez, a Sephardic Jewish shopkeeper. Their father Abraham – perhaps the wealthiest Jew on the island – eventually financed their manumission, freeing them from a life of slavery. But as free people of color in early nineteenth-century Barbados, the Brandon siblings still encountered numerous barriers. They could not vote, nor could they hold office, and despite their Jewish lineage, were shut out from Jewish institutional life. Their quest for civic rights, and their desire to adopt their father’s religion, led Isaac to new shores.
Laura Arnold Leibman: When Isaac is a teenager, he goes to the colony Suriname, which is at the time, formerly a Dutch colony, now currently occupied by the British. He converts officially to Judaism and then comes back to the island of Barbados.
While back on the island of Barbados, after he’s converted to Judaism, he gets involved in civil rights struggles to gain the right to vote on the island for Jews.
Adam Jortner: Obviously, not everybody counted equally, but the Jews are one of the first groups that begins to raise this question and actually achieve degrees of freedom and citizenship they had not possessed before the war.
Laura Arnold Leibman: This ends up not working out well for him and he ends up getting demoted to being not a full member of the congregation and encourages him to come northward to the US where he first goes to Philadelphia and is involved in congregation Mikvah Israel.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: Throughout their lives, Sarah Rodriguez Brandon and Isaac Lopez Brandon traveled around the Atlantic world – where their identities as Jews were often challenged due to the color of their skin. But through leveraging familial and commercial networks, they became some of the wealthiest Jews in New York City by the end of their lives.
Laura Arnold Leibman: He marries the daughter of Isaac Moses and becomes not only a voting member of Congregation Shearith Israel, but also a voting citizen of the United States.
Through that migration around the Atlantic world, they undergo racial reassignment, not because people don’t know that they had been born enslaved, or that they had been born of partial African descent, but because the way race was understood was different in the different places that they settled.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: Like her brother, Sarah left Barbados, converted to Judaism, and travelled to London where she received an elite education. She married Joshua Moses, a well-established Ashkenazi Jew, with whom she settled in New York.
Archival Audio – John F. Kennedy Recites the Declaration of Independence: We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved.
Gemma R. Birnbaum: From the American Jewish Historical Society, I’m Gemma R. Birnbaum. This episode was written by me, and Andrew Sperling. Recording, sound design, and mixing were done at Sound Lounge. Archival material is from the AJHS collection, and the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.
For episode transcripts, additional resources, and links to the collections discussed in this episode, visit ajhs.org/democracy. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on your preferred podcast platform which helps others discover our series.
