The oldest synagogue in the U.S. opened a visitors center Sunday. The Newport, Rhode Island $12 million center opened next door to the historic synagogue. The Touro Synagogue was built in 1759 and dedicated in 1763 by Congregation Jeshuat Israel, which was first established in 1658.
Former Ambassador John L. Loeb, financier of the visitors center, told the Providence Journal that although he was raised in an assimilated Jewish home, his classmates reminded him that he was Jewish. As Loeb’s classmates viewed newsreels of reports of Nazi atrocities in Germany, they taunted him, “We don’t like Hitler, but at least he killed the Jews.” Loeb feels that is what prompted him to explore his Jewish roots.
The synagogue has faced financial troubles as the number of congregants is dwindling. Three decades ago, several hundred families with children were members of the historic synagogue. Today, only 110 families of mostly older people belong. Bea Ross, the synagogue’s co-president has no idea how the congregation will pay off a $500,000 debt on the synagogue restoration, particularly when its endowment was hit hard by the global economic crisis.
The current fiscal troubles actual mirrors another time when the Newport Jewish community was struggling – after the American Revolution, when the British ransacked the town’s port.
Haven for Persecuted Jews
Thousands of Jews fled religious persecution from Spain in 1492, seeking refuge in the Netherlands, Caribbean Islands, and South America. When the Inquisition followed on their heels, they searched for sanctuary in the America’s newly-founded colonies.
In 1658, a group of 15 Jewish families, hearing about Roger William’s “Lively Experiment,” where the civil government was devoid of power over spiritual matters, sailed into Newport harbor. These Sephardim (Hebrew term for “Spanish Jews”), who like their ancestors were seeking a haven from religious persecution, founded the second Jewish settlement in the colonies and Congregation Jeshuat Israel (Salvation of Israel). In 1677, they purchased and consecrated property as a Jewish cemetery, a place where they could bury their dead according to Jewish tradition.
Over the next 100 years the Jewish population of Newport flourished. In 1758, Isaac Touro, a Dutch Jew became the congregation’s first spiritual leader. A year later, the congregation purchased land and hired Peter Harrison, the preeminent architect of the colonial era, to design Touro Synagogue, the oldest synagogue building in the United States. The synagogue was completed and dedicated in 1763 during the festival of Hanukah.
In 1946, the Synagogue was designated a National Historic Site by the National Park Service and was renovated in 2005 by the National Historic Trust and the Park Service. Touro Synagogue took on a special significance in 1790 when President George Washington, in his letter “To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport,” declared that the new nation would “… give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” These few words affirmed the founding fathers’ commitment to the principles of religious freedom as a cornerstone of democracy in America.