A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom

Adam Jortner discusses his book A Promised Land, a new history that centers Judaism at the dawn of the United States. Jews played a critical role both in winning the American Revolution–fighting for the Patriot cause from Bunker Hill to Yorktown–and in defining the republic that was created from it. As the most visible non-Christian religion, Judaism was central to the debate over religious freedom in America at a critical juncture. During the war every city with a synagogue fell to the British-with the exception of Philadelphia, birthplace to the Declaration of Independence and a core of resistance. Jewish patriots throughout the colonies flocked to the city, where they re-founded the local synagogue as a distinctively American organization. After the war, Jews began to press for full citizenship in the hope that liberty would apply to everyone, and that the limits to freedom imposed on Jews in the Old World would be removed in the New World