Religion: Abraham’s Stock

Last week the rabbi of Manhattan’s Spanish and Portuguese congregation, Dr. David de Sola Pool, journeyed to Newport, R. I. to help celebrate the tercentenary of the city’s founding. On the Sabbath eve, in Touro Synagogue (the nation’s oldest, circa 1760), Dr. de Sola Pool took part in a service recalling one in 1790, when the Jews welcomed George Washington to Newport. George Washington’s reply, a famed letter, was broadcast in part by Dr. de Sola Pool in a radio speech. Excerpt:

“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. . . . May the Children of the Stock of Abraham who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while every one shall sit in safety under his own Vine and Figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”