Keynote speaker: Washington Letter just a start – there’s more work to be done

NEWPORT – At the 71st annual reading of the George Washington Letter, delivered to a packed audience at Touro Synagogue on Aug. 19, keynote speaker Sister Jane Gerety spoke of the need to move beyond tolerance toward love and compassion.

“Toleration is a minimum, a necessary but not sufficient attitude for us to flourish as a people and as a civilization,” said Gerety, the president of Salve Regina University, in Newport. “We need to go beyond the law, the First Amendment right, to realize the ideal and richness of religious liberty.  We must move beyond protection and toleration to openness, dialogue and inclusion.” 

R.I. Secretary of Commerce Stefan Pryor, who was among the speakers, drew a special lesson from President Washington’s phrase “everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”  Pryor pointed out that Washington used this phrase in many other speeches and letters, but in the letter to “the Hebrew Congregation of Newport,” the vine and fig are living things that must be diligently protected and nourished if they are to provide shelter from fear for all citizens for all time.

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed brought greetings from the nation’s capital and noted that Washington’s letter provided the foundational ideas for religious freedom, which we cannot take for granted. However, Reed said Washington’s words were more aspirational than descriptive – in his own time, and even now.

The honor of reading Touro Warden Moses Seixas’ 1790 letter to Washington went to Col. Jonathan de Sola Mendes, a Marine Corps hero in both World War II and Korea, and a member of Congregation Shearith Israel, of New York City.

Among his many achievements, de Sola Mendes, 97, taught baseball great Ted Williams and astronaut and U.S. Sen. John Glenn how to fly jets, and he flew with them both in combat in Korea, where he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. 

The honor of reading the George Washington Letter went to Philip Mintz, a longtime member and supporter of Touro’s Congregation Jeshuat Israel and of the Touro Synagogue Foundation.

Gerety, who spoke after the reading of the letters, reiterated the theme of tolerance and the need to move beyond that to dialogue, understanding and pluralism.

She said that, as a nun, she was honored to be standing in the sacred space of Touro Synagogue. 

“In a way, my presence is a powerful symbol of the fruit of religious liberty promised by George Washington, who, using the words of Warden Moses Seixas, promises a government that gives ‘to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.’ ”

Gerety went on to acknowledge the role of Christians in persecuting Jews, planting the seeds for the Holocaust. But today, she said, Jews and Christians “celebrate a mutual heritage beginning with our father Abraham.”  

She also drew comparisons between the persecution of Catholics and Jews in the 18th-century Colonies, where in 1719 both Jews and Catholics were barred from voting. 

“We have not arrived at the ideal set forth in Washington’s letter, where ‘everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.’  Last year it was Charlottesville; this year it’s children in cages and so much in between.  There is much to make us afraid,” she said.

“Part of our job is to create conditions to deepen self-understanding and values, and to test them in the crucible of an inclusive community that, I hope, replicates what we wish for the larger society.” 

Gerety noted that Martin Luther King Jr. never turned his back on his deep roots as a Baptist, although he was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and marched with, and learned from, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. King, she said, is an example of a man who was rooted in his own religion but who used those strong ties to have the confidence to see the good in other faiths and expand their own beliefs as they worked for justice.

Gerety concluded by thanking Congregation Jeshuat Israel for inviting her to speak and expressing gratitude that she could speak frankly because we live in a country that values religious freedom, as originally espoused by Roger Williams, George Washington and the Bill of Rights.

SAM SHAMOON, of Providence, is a member of the Touro Synagogue Foundation Board of Directors