America 250: Faith, Freedom, and Mikveh Israel The "Synagogue of the American Revolution"

By Carl Montoya

As America marks its 250th anniversary, Philadelphia rightly takes center stage as the birthplace of the Republic. Lost in that celebration is the story of the early Jews who were already there — mostly Sephardim (Jews of Spanish and Portuguese descent) — who helped finance the Revolution, shape the Constitution, and lay the legal foundation for religious freedom in the United States.

Most American Jews today have little connection to this history. They know Ellis Island. They know the Lower East Side. But the Jewish story in America begins much earlier, and a Sephardic Philadelphia congregation sits at the center of it.

The Synagogue of the American Revolution

Congregation Mikveh Israel was founded in Philadelphia in 1740 — 286 years ago this year. It brands itself appropriately as the "Synagogue of the American Revolution."

Mikveh Israel is Sephardic, one of only three synagogues in North America that still observes the Spanish/Portuguese minhag — the liturgical tradition dating to the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. The other two are Shearith Israel in New York City and Shearith Israel in Montreal. Before the Revolution, there were six synagogues in America, all Sephardic: New York (1654), Newport (1658), Savannah (1733), Philadelphia (1740), Charleston (1749), and Montreal (1760). Richmond was founded later in 1789 by Ashkenazim and adopted the Spanish/Portuguese minhag.

The first organized Ashkenazi congregation in America, Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia, was founded in 1801 by Jews from Germany, Holland, and Poland who had been members of Mikveh Israel but wished to practice their own Ashkenazi liturgy and traditions. German Jewish immigration began in earnest around 1820, and Eastern European immigration followed in 1880. The Ashkenazim soon vastly outnumbered the Sephardim, and the early Sephardic founders were largely forgotten.

For readers unfamiliar with the Sephardic tradition: unlike Ashkenazi Judaism, which has Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform branches, Sephardic Judaism has no equivalent divisions — its congregations are rooted in Orthodox practice, though customs vary by region: Mizrahi, Persian, Egyptian, Syrian, and others. Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish language of the Sephardim, is still spoken by some, though the language is gradually fading. The Sephardim also use different terms for religious leaders of the congregation such as Reverend, Minister, Hazan, and Hakham, although Rabbi is commonly used today.

A World of Persecution and Exclusion

To understand what the early Jewish community accomplished, it helps to know what they left behind.

By the late 18th century, Jews across most of the world lived under severe legal restrictions, were persecuted, and were excluded from the societies around them. In Russia, they were confined to designated provinces. In Ukraine, pogroms targeted their communities and property. In Spain, Portugal, and their colonies, the Inquisition continued to persecute suspected crypto-Jews — those who practiced Judaism in secret. In Italy, Jews were confined to ghettos. In the German lands and Austria, they faced special taxes and strict limits on where they could live and work. In England, the mother country of the Colonies, Jews could not vote, hold public office, or attend major universities. In the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, they held protected but second-class status as dhimmis — a legally inferior standing under Islamic law.

What drew them to America was straightforward: the freedom to be Jewish — openly, legally, and without fear — and the promise of economic opportunity and a better life.

Financing the Revolution

Haym Salomon arrived in Philadelphia as a Polish émigré with Portuguese Jewish roots. He became a founder of Mikveh Israel and was one of its most illustrious congregants.

Salomon contributed approximately $650,000 of his own money to the American Revolution — roughly $15 million in today's dollars. He served as a key financial broker to Congress, to Robert Morris (Superintendent of Finance), and to the French and Spanish governments. He helped fund General Washington's decisive victory at Yorktown in 1781. He was never repaid. He died in debt, leaving his family destitute, and is buried in an unmarked grave in Mikveh Israel's cemetery.

In 1975, the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring him as a "Financial Hero of the American Revolution."

The Liberty Bell

Nathan Levy was an early founder of Mikveh Israel. In 1740, he petitioned Thomas Penn, the Proprietor of Pennsylvania, for a Jewish burial ground — helping to establish both the cemetery and the congregation that same year.

Levy and his business partner David Franks operated a merchant shipping company. In 1752, they were contracted to bring a bell from England to Philadelphia aboard their ship, the Myrtilla. The bell had been ordered by Isaac Norris, the Quaker Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Norris was proficient in Hebrew and owned a Hebrew Bible. He chose a verse from Leviticus 25:10 for the bell's crown that inspired him: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."

The bell became known as the “Liberty Bell” in 1835 when abolitionists adopted its inscription as a rallying cry and first coined the name. The name, however, did not come into widespread use until years later.

Building American Institutions

The contributions of Mikveh Israel's founders extended well beyond the Revolution itself.

Reverend Gershom Mendes Seixas — the first American-born Jewish religious leader and “Patriot Rabbi of the Revolution” — led Shearith Israel in New York City before moving his congregation to Philadelphia in 1780 during the British occupation. He helped formally establish Mikveh Israel in 1782, assist in the construction of its first synagogue building, and reinforce its Spanish/Portuguese minhag. Seixas and his congregation returned to New York in 1784, but his ties to Mikveh Israel endured.

Isaac Moses in 1781 helped establish the Bank of North America, the first bank in the United States, and co-founded the Bank of New York alongside Alexander Hamilton.

Benjamin Seixas was one of five Jewish signatories, among 24 total, who executed the Buttonwood Agreement in 1792 — the founding document of the New York Stock Exchange.

In 1783, Reverend Seixas and Jonas Phillips — the latter a Mikveh Israel founder, President, and Revolutionary War veteran — protested the state's Religious Test Oath before the Pennsylvania Council of Censors, the body responsible for reviewing the state's constitutional compliance. The Oath required public officials to swear on a Christian Bible, which effectively barred Jews from public office.

In 1787, Jonas Phillips sent a letter to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia urging the framers to guarantee religious liberty explicitly — an early act of Jewish civil rights advocacy in America.

Reverend Jacob Cohen walked in Philadelphia's Grand Federal Procession of July 4, 1788, celebrating the ratification of the Constitution alongside Christian clergy. Newspapers reported that "the clergy of different Christian denominations, with the Rabbi of the Jews, walked arm in arm" before 17,000 onlookers. For Jews who had known persecution and exclusion in other countries, it was a visible declaration that America was different. Among the clergy was Bishop White of Christ Church — the first Anglican church founded in Pennsylvania, in 1695 — whose congregation included George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Betsy Ross. 

Christ Church and Mikveh Israel supported a non-established national church model reflecting the shift toward no state religion and equal standing of faiths under law. Together, they helped shape the American principle of religious freedom. Mikveh Israel and Christ Church have maintained their special relationship ever since, meeting annually for dinners at each other's place of worship.

In April 1789, Reverend Seixas attended Washington's presidential inauguration in New York. He was the only Jewish clergyman among the 14 present, marching alongside Episcopal bishops and Presbyterian ministers in the official inaugural procession. In most of the world, such a scene would have been unthinkable.

Beyond its individual members' contributions, Mikveh Israel's institutional legacy extended well into the 19th and 20th centuries. It founded or helped establish many institutions benefiting Jews in America: the Association for the Protection of Jewish Immigrants (1884), later absorbed into HIAS; the American Jewish Historical Society (1892); Gratz College (1895); the Young Men's Hebrew Association (1890s); the American Jewish Committee (1906); Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning (1907); and the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History (1976), originally co-located with Mikveh Israel.

The Washington Letters

When the Constitution was ratified in 1788, it was largely silent on individual rights. The sole religious provision was Article VI, which barred religious tests for federal office. Religious liberty for ordinary citizens was not yet law.

Manuel Josephson, President of Mikveh Israel, proposed that all six Hebrew congregations send George Washington a unified letter. After more than a year of disagreement among the congregations, three letters were ultimately presented — from Savannah, Newport, and a joint letter from Philadelphia, New York, Charleston, and Richmond.

Washington visited Newport in August 1790. Moses Seixas, Warden of the Touro Synagogue and the older brother of Reverend Gershom Mendes Seixas, presented Washington with a letter from the Newport Hebrew congregation. In it, Seixas described the new government as one “which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” Washington's reply adopted Seixas's exact words and elevated them into a presidential declaration of religious liberty, making it the most powerful of the three letters.

Washington did not offer tolerance. He declared religious liberty an inherent natural right: that the government of the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” and that it was “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 natural rights.” That a president of the United States would adopt a Jewish leader's own words as a declaration of principle was itself a powerful statement.

The other two letters, while significant, did not reach that standard. Washington's earlier reply to the Savannah congregation expressed support for religious liberty in more general terms. His December 1790 reply to Josephson and the four congregations reaffirmed the same principles but in warmer, more personal language — falling short of Newport's explicit declaration of religious liberty as an inherent natural right.

What all three letters shared was Washington's consistent message: that religious freedom in America was not a privilege granted by the government, but a right belonging to every citizen.

The timeline is worth noting:

September 1789 — Congress proposes the Bill of Rights; ratification is not yet assured.

August 1790 — Washington's Newport letter declares religious liberty an inherent natural right, before it is law.

December 1790 — Washington reaffirms those principles in reply to the four congregations.

December 1791 — The First Amendment is ratified: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Whether Washington's letters directly influenced ratification cannot be established. What is clear is that they gave presidential voice — before it was law — to the principle that became the First Amendment. Supreme Court justices have cited Washington's letters in at least three religious liberty cases, and scholars consistently rank them among the most significant documents in American Jewish history.

The three Washington letters had different fates. Washington's reply to Josephson is preserved by Mikveh Israel in a secure location; a facsimile is on display in the synagogue lobby for visitors to view. The original 1790 letter from George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport is owned by the Morris Morgenstern Foundation and is not on permanent public display. The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia displays a reproduction. The Savannah original was lost.

The Washington Letters closed a remarkable founding chapter for Mikveh Israel. But the congregation's influence on American life didn't stop there. In the decades that followed, three of its more prominent members left their own lasting marks on American Jewish history — and on the nation itself.

Their stories will be told in Part II.

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Carl Montoya, a native of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona. He retired from a federal career spanning several assignments, primarily in the Washington, D.C. area: the Office of the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Foreign Service Officer at Embassy London, the Office of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. He concluded his career as an Associate Regional Administrator in Philadelphia, where he now resides.

Carl is married to Donna Leibowitz and has four sons and four grandchildren. His interests include Judaism, genealogy, writing, and improving his Spanish fluency. He and Donna are enthusiastic travelers.

Carl serves on the Board of Adjuntos of Congregation Mikveh Israel — the "Synagogue of the American Revolution" — in Philadelphia, one of only three Spanish-Portuguese Sephardic congregations in North America. He also heads the Docent program, and the tours of the synagogue and cemetery. Carl gratefully acknowledges Rabbi Emeritus Albert Gabbai and Rabbi Yosef Zarnighian of Mikveh Israel for their time and effort to review the information covered in the article, particularly the Sephardic traditions and practices.

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