Published April 2025
THE FOUNDING FATHERS AND PASSOVER
It is a well known fact that very few citizens of this country, when asked about their background, will respond “American”. Virtually everything else, however, is deemed acceptable: Irish, Italian, Japanese, African, Jamaican, Indian, or Jewish. The lack of inclination to regard one’s ancestors as American results from two factors. First of all, the bulk of the populace has not yet been here for two or three generations. Secondly, the physiognomy of today’s citizens diverges sharply from that of the Founding Fathers. In short, a recently arrived Asian or Haitian immigrant has a hard time identifying George Washington or Abraham Lincoln as his forebear.
The Jews, however, possess a most extraordinary instrumentality for transcending differences. It is contained in the exhortation of the Haggadah: “In every generation a person is obliged to look upon himself or herself as though he or she personally went out of Egypt”.
It is not enough for Jews on Passover to eat the same food as the Hebrew slaves or to recount the saga of their emancipation. We must actually become those Hebrew slaves. This mandate of our tradition summons us to develop the indispensable attribute of humane living: sympathetic imagination, the ability to put yourself in another’s place. By this process, even though one cannot discover common ethnic, racial or religious connections with Hamilton or Jefferson, we can still make them part of our history and, indeed, our very being.
The faculty of sympathetic imagination overcomes biological barriers which make it difficult to regard the nation’s founders as our ancestors. Even more important, however, is its efficacy in making these first Americans our moral and spiritual forebears. What they stood for becomes what we stand for- a free society where all people have equal opportunity and are equal before the law.
Some institutions such as the Daughters of the American Revolution take pride in the fact that many of their members are descendants of early American families. They may even have ancestors who landed on these shores from the Mayflower. However, when they act unworthily by discriminating against other Americans on the basis of race, color, or creed wherein lies their greatness? There are many fools and bigots who are 3rd and 4th generation Americans. When these nonentities boast of their origins, they make themselves look ridiculous. More significant than whether you are proud of Adams and Madison is whether they would be proud of you. When sympathetic imagination impels us to emulate the values, the ideals and the service of the Founding Fathers, we truly become their heirs no matter how briefly we lived in the United States or how different we look from them. When we guarantee the posterity of the creators of this country, we truly become their blood descendants and a source of abiding satisfaction to them.
Finally, it should be noted that what the Founding Fathers were trying to accomplish in this nation is what the holiday of Passover is all about. Like the ancient Israelites, most immigrants came to these shores neither for conquest or for gold, but the exercise of their God-given right of living in freedom. The seal for the newly founded United States, drawn up by Franklin and Jefferson, showed Pharaoh sitting in a open chariot with a crown on his head and a sword in his hand passing through the divided waters of the Red Sea in pursuit of the fleeing Israelites. On the shore stands Moses extending his hand over the sea and causing it to overwhelm Pharaoh and his men. Underneath is the slogan: “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God”. No citizens of this country ought to have an easier time than Jews performing that act of sympathetic imagination, which entitles them to regard the Founding Fathers as their ancestors and themselves as 100% Americans.
Rabbi Alvin Kass
Chief Chaplain of the NYPD