For the past three years, May has been Jewish American Heritage Month and I am curious as to whether this is clebrated or even recognized in reader's communities.
On April 20, 2006, President George W. Bush first proclaimed that May would be Jewish American Heritage Month. The proclamation was in response to resolutions introduced by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania urging the president to proclaim a month that would recognize the more than 350-year history of Jewish contributions to American culture. The resolutions passed unanimously, first in the House of Representatives in December 2005 and later in the Senate in February 2006.
On May 13th, 2009, President Obama reiterated the commitment to honoring the contributions of Jewish Americans.
"Jewish Americans have immeasurably enriched our Nation," the proclamation states. "Unyielding in the face of hardship and tenacious in following their dreams, Jewish Americans have surmounted the challenges that every immigrant group faces and have made unparalleled contributions."
"Among the greatest contributions of the Jewish American community," it continues, "is the example they have set for all Americans. They have demonstrated that Americans can choose to maintain cultural traditions while honoring the principles and beliefs that bind them together as Americans. Jewish-American history demonstrates how America's diversity enriches and strengthens us all."
What are those contributions?
- The first Jews came to America in 1654, to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam and requested permission to stay. Peter Stuyvesant, the Director-General of New Amsterdam, initially denied them refuge and in fact, threw the leader in jail. However, many of the investors of the Dutch West India Company were Jewish, and their influence enabled the Sephardic Jews to stay.
- Haym Solomon is considered the primary financier of the American Revolution. He came to New York from Poland in 1772 and immediately joined the Sons of Liberty. Without his efforts in bringing in needed supplies, the American Revolution might well have failed.
- In recognition of the contributions and support of the American Jewish community during the American Revolution, George Washington wrote a note of thanks to the members of the Tuoro Synagogue in Newport Rhode Island, containing the following oft-quoted phrase: "The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."
- There is consensus that about 10,000 Jews took up arms during the Civil War and that the majority of American Jews fought for the Union, but whether 2000 or 3000 Jews fought for the Confederacy is debated. Judah Philip Benjamin served as first Attorney General, then Secretary of War and finally Secretary of State for the Confederacy. Prior to the Civil War, he had been a member of the United States Senate because of his sharp mind and skills as an orator. His most famous exchange on the Senate floor was related to his religion and the issue of slavery: Benjamin Wade of Ohio accused him of being an "Israelite in Egyptian clothing," and he replied that, "It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thundering and lightnings of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain."
- Joseph Seligman stands almost in counter-point to Judah Benjamin. Born in 1819 in Germany, Seligman came to the United States when he was 18. With his brothers, he started a bank, J. & W. Seligman & Co., with branches in New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, London, Paris and Frankfurt. A friend of Ulysses S. Grant, Seligman helped finance the Union during the Civil War through the sale of $200 million in bonds, a feat that has been described as being “scarcely less important than the Battle of Gettysburg." Seligman would be offered the position of Secretary of the Treasury, but would decline due to shyness. After the conclusion of the war that he had helped win and despite being one of the richest men in America at the time, Seligman and his family would be refused admittance to the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, New York. The hotel denied entry to Joseph Seligman and his family because they were Jews, creating nationwide controversy.
- American Jews fought in disproportionate numbers, relative to the general population of America, during the Civil War, World War I and World War II.
- Jews had always been active in the American Civil Rights movement. In 1909, Henry Moscowitz joined W.E.B. DuBois and other civil rights leaders to found the NAACP. In the 1950s and 1960s, a disproportionate number of Jews were active in the Civil Rights Movement and often put their lives on the line. On June 21, 1964, three young civil rights workers were murdered near Philadelphia, in Nashoba County, Mississippi. One, a 21-year-old Mississippian, James Chaney, was black and the other two were white, Jewish New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24.
Since coming to America (even before it was America) Jews have embraced American culture and religous freedom and the American commitment to social justice. America has been very, very good to us and we have tried to reciprocate.
Given the breadth of contributions that Jews have made to American society and the official recogntion by the government, was anything done in your community to recognize those contributions?