–George Washington’s historic “Letter to the Jews of America”
Washington envisions America as a country “which gives bigotry no sanction…persecution no assistance…[the Jews] shall continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants…there shall be none to make him afraid.”
The letter is currently mounted on the back wall of Touro Synagogue’s Main Chapel in Newport, Rhode Island.
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In the original colonies, anti–Semitism was essentially non–existent. The overwhelming bulk of the colonists were Protestant. The original Thirteen Colonies were a good place to be Jewish.
Tolerance “filled the air.” The Protestants had come to America in the first place to flee Catholic persecution back in Europe.
Ultimately, Catholic immigrants would come in several waves and ultimately in great numbers; with Catholic pastors and often virulent lore and Passion Sagas in–tow; the super–tolerant climate in America towards the Jews would gradually deteriorate, infecting a wide spectrum of American society beyond Catholic parishes; toxicity towards the Jews would increasingly manifest and would steadily increase up through and until the point of the Nazi Death Camp photograph–images and the gruesome murder–torture details and statistics, which started to emerge in 1945; the images burst the toxic bubble to some extent.