My Facebook header pic of an Israeli flag has been up for 10 months and will remain so until every living hostage is at home and every murdered hostage rests in native soil.
But on the first anniversary of the terror attacks by Hamas, I also think of my own country, and how in far too many places, even pictures of those hostages are not safe. We often consider ourselves and our views of the 21st century as far more enlightened than previous days, and how our understanding of other cultures is more inclusive.
In this one area, though, I think a figure of the 18th century might teach us today, and the words of the first president could prove fruitful for his successors’ contemplation. George Washington’s letter “to a Hebrew Congregation” in Rhode Island in 1790 during the second year of his first term is a response to a letter of congratulations from The Congregation of Khal Kadosh Yeshuot Israel, sent to mark Washington’s visit to Newport, RI. In it, the new president quotes the synagogue leader’s words back to him and assured that the in the new nation, there would be “to bigotry no sanction; to persecution no assistance.” He closed with this paragraph:
“May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Of course we note how far short Washington fell of his own standard, especially when it came to racial attitudes and slavery. But at least he held a standard, and claimed it, and it is one when it is kept could be an aspiration of all of us toward all of us.
The standard so visible on college campuses and in the tearing hands of poster vandals is a different one, I fear. An older one, come round again at last, that seeks not a lasting solution, but a final one.
