The oldest existing synagogue in the United States announced that it must cancel tours due to financial difficulties. The Touro Synagogue Foundation, originally comprised of volunteers, has disbanded its paid staff and has stopped conducting public tours, announced the president of the foundation’s board of directors, Keith Stokes, The Providence Journal reports.
Nevertheless, plans to open a new museum at the synagogue this coming summer are continuing, according to John L. Loeb, who is financing the project. He stated that the tours would be resumed when the museum, the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom, opens its doors this summer.
Stokes, who was eager to dispel rumors that the downsizing was related to the foundation’s investments in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scam, stated, “We’re making the necessary adjustments in lieu of the fact that the non-profit philanthropic market has shrunk. There is less money out there…So we have to reduce our overhead.”
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 Chanukah.
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.