Presented by Dr. Jonathan Sarna
Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University, Emeritus
The American Jewish community played a significant, if little-known, role in the American Revolution. Perhaps as a consequence, President George Washington in 1790 sent a memorable letter to the “Hebrew Congregation” in Newport, promising Jews liberty and equality. Many are familiar with the key words in Washington’s letter – “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance” – but there is much more to the correspondence than that.
Join esteemed Jewish scholar Dr. Jonathan Sarna to dig into the context and unlock the deeper secrets of this correspondence, highlighting its meaning for Jews and Americans of every faith.
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Dr. Jonathan Sarna is University Professor and the Joseph H. Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History (emeritus) at Brandeis University. He is also a past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, Chief Historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, and co-chair of the advisory board of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati.
Dubbed by the Forward newspaper in 2004 as one of America’s fifty most influential American Jews, he was Chief Historian for the 350 th commemoration of the American Jewish community, and is recognized as a leading commentator on American Jewish history, religion and life. In 2009, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the first American Jewish historian ever elected to that body. He is also a member of the American Academy for Jewish Research and holds five honorary degrees.
Born in Philadelphia, and raised in New York and Boston, Dr. Sarna attended Brandeis University, the Boston Hebrew College, Merkaz HaRav Kook in Jerusalem, and Yale University, where he obtained his doctorate in 1979.
From 1979-1990, Dr. Sarna taught at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, where he rose to become Professor of American Jewish history and Director of the Center for the Study of the American Jewish Experience. He has also taught at Harvard, Yale, the University of Cincinnati, and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Dr. Sarna came back to Brandeis in 1990 to teach American Jewish history in its Department of Near Eastern; Judaic Studies. He chaired that department three different times, and for a decade also chaired Brandeis’ Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program. He co-chairs the Academic Advisory and Editorial Board of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati.
Dr. Sarna has written, edited, or co-edited more than thirty books, including Coming to Terms with America, as well as Lincoln and the Jews: A History (with Benjamin Shapell), and When General Grant Expelled the Jews. He is best known for the acclaimed American Judaism: A History, which recently appeared in a second, revised edition.
Winner of the Jewish Book Council’s “Jewish Book of the Year Award” in 2004, it has been praised as being “the single best description of American Judaism during its 350 years on American soil.” Princeton University Press will publish his Mark Twain and the Jews: Defying Antisemitism in the Gilded Age, with Benjamin Shapell, in 2027.
Dr. Sarna is married to Professor Ruth Langer, and they have two married children and five delightful little grandsons.