PHILADELPHIA — At a second when establishments throughout the nation are asking how one can have a good time America’s 250th birthday, the Weitzman Nationwide Museum of American Jewish Historical past is placing Jews on the middle of the origin story.
Its new exhibition, “The First Salute,” is concerning the tiny Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius and the relative handful of Sephardic Jewish retailers who have been on the middle of what turned a pivotal second within the Revolutionary Struggle.
The present opens with a cinematic retelling of Nov. 16, 1776, when the American brig Andrew Doria sailed into the island’s harbor flying the Grand Union flag, an early iteration of what turned the Stars and Stripes. After firing a 13-gun salute, it acquired a return volley from the Dutch governor — an trade extensively thought to be the primary formal recognition of the fledgling United States by a overseas energy.
However because the exhibit makes clear, the diplomatic provocation was the end result of a industrial and cultural drama through which Jews performed an outsized position.
By the eve of the American Revolution, Sint Eustatius — often known as the “Golden Rock” — had grow to be one of many busiest free ports within the Atlantic world. Sugar, textiles, rum and, crucially, arms and gunpowder handed via its docks. Sephardic Jewish retailers, a lot of them descendants of refugees from Iberian persecution, had constructed far-flung household and enterprise networks stretching from Amsterdam to the Caribbean.
“These have been individuals who understood statelessness, vulnerability and alternative all of sudden,” mentioned Jonathan Sarna, one of many historians who consulted on the exhibit, at Wednesday’s media opening. “They leveraged these networks not solely to outlive, however to take part in what they acknowledged as a revolutionary second.”
The exhibition argues that Jewish retailers on St. Eustatius have been instrumental in supplying the American colonies with the matériel wanted to maintain their conflict towards Britain — a dangerous proposition that may finally invite British retaliation. In 1781, British forces underneath Admiral George Rodney seized the island, concentrating on its Jewish inhabitants for plunder and deportation.
The Dutch municipality Sint Eustacius was a serious port within the 18th century, and the location of the primary recognition of the breakaway 13 colonies by a serious energy. (JTA)
Based on considered one of three main movies that anchor the exhibit, Rodney’s obsession with what he known as the island’s “nest of vipers” allowed unhindered French ships to lure the British Military at Yorktown, forcing the give up that successfully ended the Revolution.
The present is organized as a journey — starting with the Sephardic diaspora, shifting via the Revolutionary period in each the colonies and the Caribbean, and ending with a coda that asks what independence meant in follow for many who had helped safe it.
Multimedia installations place guests within the bustling port of Sint Eustatius; 18th-century portraits come “alive” to elucidate the tense geopolitics of the late 18th century. Artifacts from world wide — many on view in the USA for the primary time — reinforce the narrative: transport information, private correspondence, ritual objects carried throughout oceans.
For Laura Arnold Leibman, the Princeton professor of American Jewish research who helped form the exhibit’s focus round these objects, the exhibit’s energy lies in its insistence on interconnectedness. “Early American historical past didn’t occur in isolation,” she mentioned. “It was formed by world migrations, by diasporas, by individuals who moved items and concepts throughout borders. Jewish retailers have been central to that story.”
Additionally central to the story is race. A show that features wrist shackles utilized by slave house owners notes that enslaved Africans have been “a big a part of the island’s inhabitants and financial system.” It cites a 1781 census recording that Jews on the island owned 86 folks, or 6.4% of the island’s whole inhabitants.
Though the Weitzman is a Smithsonian “affiliate,” the museum is autonomous and impartial, mentioned Dan Tadmor, its president and CEO, in an interview. Because of this, it’s not topic to the efforts by the Trump administration to form what can and may’t be mentioned about slavery, the remedy of Native People and different reminders of the nation’s founding paradox. Steps away from the Weitzman is the President’s Home monument, the place efforts by the administration to take away panels that deal bluntly with George Washington and the enslaved folks in his family have landed within the courts.
“We should say actually – the freedoms practiced on its shores didn’t lengthen equally to all who lived there,” mentioned Alida Francis, the island governor of Sint Eustatius, in her remarks on the opening. “However historical past isn’t easy, and the reality doesn’t grow to be weaker after we inform it absolutely.”
A pair of wrist shackles, a reminder that slavery was on the middle of worldwide commerce in revolutionary instances, is featured in “The First Salute.” (JTA)
Leibman, who has written extensively concerning the Jews within the Caribbean, mentioned it was necessary to speak concerning the anniversary, and the Jewish group, in all its complexity and contradictions. The exhibit additionally features a Torah scroll from Suriname, the place by 1800 about half of the Jewish group had no less than one African ancestor, making it maybe “probably the most multiracial Jewish group on the time, but additionally, actually, right now,” mentioned Leibman.
The exhibit additionally reframes patriotism — rejecting the “heritage American” concept championed by JD Vance and others, which defines Americanness by ancestry. As a substitute, the exhibit celebrates an id rooted in an adherence to a set of common ideas, together with non secular liberty. In “The First Salute,” the Jews signify all the newcomers, who, as one of many exhibit’s movies places it, “leverage their commerce networks and household ties for a dangerous and revolutionary trigger: freedom.”
Sarna pointed to a facsimile of a letter written by Jonas Phillips, a German Jewish dealer who arrived within the New World as an indentured servant. In a letter dwelling, written in Yiddish, Phillips included a replica of the newly issued Declaration of Independence. Sharing information of the newly created nation, he additionally steered that the Revolution supplied new and thrilling enterprise alternatives.
For Sarna, professor of Jewish historical past at Brandeis College and one of many museum’s founding historians, Phillips’ correspondence is distinctly American, written at a time when Jews have been supplied rights in Europe solely on the indulgence of its numerous governments and sovereigns. “It’s all wrapped up right here within the rags-to-riches story that’s so American,” mentioned Sarna. “Lots of people got here to America with that [economic] hope, but additionally of liberty. So you have got in a single little Yiddish handwritten letter all kinds of concepts which are going to be central” to the concept of America.
That framing will not be incidental. The Weitzman, positioned simply blocks from Independence Corridor, has since its opening in 2010 positioned itself, and by extension the Jews, on the middle of American historical past. With “The First Salute,” it doubles down on that mission, utilizing the semiquincentennial to argue that the story of American independence can’t be absolutely informed with out its Jewish protagonists.
With “The First Salute,” seen above, the Weitzman Museum stakes a declare for an American id primarily based on shared values like freedom and non secular liberty. (JTA)
“For these retailers, commerce and beliefs have been intertwined,” mentioned Pamela Nadell, the American College historian who focuses on American Jewish historical past. “They weren’t merely impartial merchants. They have been folks whose personal histories of exile and exclusion made the American trigger legible and compelling.”
With the expansion of Christian nationalism, which insists that the USA was based as an explicitly Christian nation, that message is extra necessary than ever, mentioned Tadmor.
“There was an overlap between core Jewish values and the values of the founding fathers,” he mentioned. “The concept that America was based as Christian nation is predicated on a false impression and a lie. The founding fathers, who have been Christian males, based this nation on non secular liberty and never on any denomination or particular religion. So all of that’s in right here.”
“The First Salute” will probably be on view on the Weitzman Nationwide Museum of American Jewish Historical past in Philadelphia via April 2027.
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