Winter 2026

When the British fleet was on the verge of landing in New York City in 1776, Reverend Gershon Mendes Seixas called the community together at his Mill Street Synagogue. After delivering a patriotic address, he removed some of the Torahs for safekeeping and fled to Connecticut. Most of the city’s roughly 400 Jews followed suit, though some remained behind to keep the synagogue open. A handful even signed a “Declaration of Dependence” in support of continued British rule. While women were not asked to sign, some Jewish daughters stitched their views on the war into their needlework.

By the eve of the Revolution, only about 300 Jews lived in Philadelphia, but the community grew rapidly during the war as the city became a refuge for patriot Jews fleeing British-occupied cities. This ingathering fostered new business partnerships and marriages; for generations afterward, families passed down silk slippers worn at Jewish weddings during the war years. While some Philadelphia Jews remained loyal to Britain, most pledged not to trade in goods shipped from England. Members of the Continental Congress meeting in the city were clearly familiar with Jews: Benedict Arnold’s aide-de-camp was Jewish, and perhaps the most famous Jewish hero of the Revolutionary War was Philadelphia’s Haym Salomon, who helped save Washington’s army by contributing his own funds and selling bonds to raise the money needed to pay soldiers ahead of the Battle of Yorktown.

Join Dr. Laura Leibman (Princeton University) and Dr. Toni Pitock (Drexel University), nationally recognized scholars of American Jewish history, to examine how the Jews of New York and Philadelphia experienced, contributed to and were shaped by the Revolution.

America at 250: Jewish Communities at the Birth of the Nation

Stories of the Revolutionary War tend to focus on Betsy Ross sewing the Stars and Stripes, Paul Revere’s midnight ride to warn the Minutemen and George Washington and his ragtag army barely surviving the winter at Valley Forge.

But Haym Salomon is sometimes absent, although after being sentenced to execution for attempting to blow up a British warehouse on Washington’s orders, escaped and helped finance the decisive Battle of Yorktown, as is Francis Salvador, the first Jew killed in the Revolutionary War. Missing too is Mordecai Sheftall, the highest-ranking Jewish officer in the Continental Army.

While Jews made up less than 0.04 percent of the American population in 1776, they left an indelible mark on the nation’s founding.

As we celebrate the Semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, The Temple Emanu‑El Streicker Cultural Center is proud to highlight and honor the often-overlooked contributions of our  Jewish forebears in a program led by Dr. Jonathan Sarna (Brandeis University), Dr. Laura Arnold Leibman (Princeton University), Joseph Weisberg (PhD candidate, Brandeis University), Dr. Shari Rabin (Oberlin College) and Dr. Toni Pitock (Drexel University), some of the foremost experts in early American Jewish history.