It’s really sad that the modern, revolting social media antisemites - Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and others - have been so successful at demonizing the American Jewish community and accusing it of dual loyalties that it necessitates a column like this in response.
But we Jews have learned that lies unanswered are lies eventually taken as gospel.
So let’s state clearly to these reptilian haters - as well as those on the fence - a clear historical fact: without Jews America would simply not exist. And the closer we get to the 250th birthday of that great nation, the more these facts must be known and spread.
In an age when Jews are told we are guests in other people’s lands-tolerated at best, blamed at worst-it is mandatory to state the inconvenient historical truth plainly and unapologetically: American Jewish financiers mostly paid for the War of Independence and American would not exist as a republic without the decisive financial, diplomatic, and moral support of Jews.
This is not exaggeration. It is not nostalgia. It is documented history.
America’s War of Independence was not won by muskets alone. It was won by credit, currency, international trust, and an improbable alliance between a tiny Jewish minority and Christian revolutionaries who believed that liberty must belong to all-or it belongs to none.
That alliance changed the world.
The Revolution Was Bankrupt Before It Was Victorious
By 1780, the American Revolution was on the brink of collapse.
The Continental Army was starving. Soldiers were deserting. Congress had no power to tax. Paper currency was worthless. George Washington wrote desperate letters warning that the army might dissolve entirely if it was not paid in hard currency-gold and silver.
Take the best known example, the winter of 1777-1778 at Valley Forge. It was not merely a military setback; it was a slow-motion human catastrophe. Nearly 12,000 American soldiers encamped there without adequate food, clothing, or shelter. Men marched barefoot through snow, leaving trails of blood behind them. Many lacked coats, blankets, or even shirts. Hunger was constant. Rations often consisted of little more than firecake-flour mixed with water and baked over open flames-when flour could be found at all. Disease swept through the camp: typhus, dysentery, pneumonia. More than 2,000 soldiers died that winter, not from British bullets, but from exposure, starvation, and neglect.
Valley Forge revealed a brutal truth: ideals alone do not sustain an army. Courage cannot replace logistics. Patriotism cannot substitute for pay. As Washington wrote in anguish, the army was in danger of “dissolving" entirely. Mutiny was not a moral failure; it was a human response to abandonment.
The Revolution survived that winter only because supplies, organization, and-critically-money began to arrive. Valley Forge stands as the clearest proof that American independence was not inevitable. It was rescued, at the edge of collapse, by those who refused to let the experiment in liberty die-through sacrifice, endurance, and the financing that finally allowed the army to live long enough to fight.
True, France had pledged support, but French loans arrived irregularly and often in unusable forms. The revolutionaries were fighting the greatest empire on earth with empty coffers and IOUs.
And that is where a Jewish immigrant-almost forgotten by history-entered the story.
Haym Solomon: The Man Who Financed Liberty
Haym Solomon was born in Poland, spoke multiple languages, and arrived in America with little more than nerve, intellect, and faith in freedom. By the time the Revolution reached its darkest hour, Salomon had become the single most important private financier of the American cause.
He was not a general. He never commanded troops. He commanded something far more decisive: money when there was none.
All vile Jew-hating enemies love to assail Jewish capital and finance, portraying Jews as greedy bankers. Recently, I was accosted in Times Square by the millionth Jew-hater (they recognize me from my debates on Israel against the world’s foremost antisemites) that I’m owned by the Rothschilds. I told him that he’s an ignoramus and an idiot. “You’re a century behind. The Rothschilds, who I knew in London when I lived there, are pauper compared to today’s Jewish tech billionaires. At least say I’m owned by Sergey Bryn of Google, Larry Ellison of Oracle, or Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, you imbecile. At least get your antisemitism current."
Yet for all our of the attacks on Jewish finance, Tucker Carlson would be speaking the King’s English if not for Jewish funders who bankrolled the revolution and paid the troops. Contrast that with allegations that Carlson is bankrolled by Qatar which subverts American interests. Forget the King’s English. Now that he has a new home in Qatar, Carlson is learning Arabic. And not the Arabic of our friends in the UAE or Bahrain, but of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood who he now defends.
Working closely with Robert Morris, the Superintendent of Finance, Haym Salomon:
-Converted French loans into usable cash
-Personally underwrote massive government obligations
-Sold war bonds when no one trusted the government
-Loaned money directly to members of Congress
-Paid troops when mutiny loomed
-Most famously, in 1781, when Washington needed immediate funds to move troops south for what would become the decisive Battle of Yorktown, Morris turned to Salomon. Within days, Salomon raised $20,000 in hard currency-the equivalent of tens of millions today.
-That money paid the troops.
-That march happened.
-Yorktown was won.
-The war effectively ended.
Without Jewish financing, Yorktown could never have happened. Without Yorktown, America would never have become a nation.
Solomon did not merely arrange loans. He gave away his own fortune. Conservative estimates place his total contribution at more than $600,000-an astronomical sum in the 18th century.
He never demanded repayment.
He never lived to see recognition.
He died in 1785, impoverished, having sacrificed everything for a country that was not yet secure enough to repay him. He would turn over in his grave to see America today being taken over by slovenly antisemitic grifters like Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes.
James Madison, future President of the United States, wrote candidly that he had survived financially only because he was, in his words, “a pensioner on the favor of Haym Solomon."
That is not metaphor. That is history.
Jewish Money Was Not an Anomaly-It Was a Network
Solomon was not alone.
Though Jews made up less than one-tenth of one percent of the colonial population, Jewish communities disproportionately supported the Patriot cause.
Jewish merchants in Philadelphia, New York, Charleston, Savannah, and Newport extended credit, donated supplies, and absorbed catastrophic losses for independence.
Synagogues raised money for soldiers.
Jewish businessmen smuggled arms.
Jewish traders used international networks Britain could not fully penetrate.
One place above all stands out.
The Caribbean Lifeline: St. Eustatius
The tiny Dutch island of St. Eustatius-nicknamed “the arsenal of the American Revolution"-was home to a heavily Jewish merchant community.
Through this island flowed:
Gunpowder, weapons, uniforms, supplies, credit.
The British knew it.
They attacked the island.
And when they did, they singled out the Jews for punishment-confiscating property and expelling families.
Why?
Because Jewish merchants were central to keeping the American rebellion alive.
When Britain struck back, it didn’t punish abstractions. It punished Jews-because it knew who was funding freedom.
And if you haven’t noticed, Britain, where six of my nine children were born, kind of hates Jews today, but actually always did.
Jews Did Not Just Pay for the War. They Fought It.
Jewish Americans did not merely sign checks. They shed blood.
Francis Salvador, a Jewish patriot in South Carolina, was the first Jew elected to public office in America-and the first Jew killed in the Revolutionary War.
Mordecai Sheftall, a senior supply officer for the Continental Army, was captured and imprisoned by the British on a hellish prison ship.
Jewish soldiers served as officers-something unheard of in Europe.
One Patriot unit in Charleston was majority Jewish.
These men fought not as outsiders begging acceptance, but as Americans claiming ownership of a new nation.
The Founding Fathers Knew the Debt
America’s founders were not blind to Jewish contributions.
They saw who stood with them when defeat was plausible and victory was not.
George Washington’s 1790 letter to the Jewish community of Newport remains one of the most radical documents of its age and one of the most celebrated homages to a Jewish community by a non-Jewish leader in all of human history.
“The Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance."
This was not charity.
It was recognition.
Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Adams-all lived in a world where Jews had financed the Revolution, fought in it, and demanded no special treatment in return.
America’s rejection of religious tests for office, its embrace of minority rights, and its unprecedented promise of full Jewish citizenship did not emerge in a vacuum.
They emerged from gratitude, alliance, and shared sacrifice.
Religious freedom in America was not invented in theory. It was earned in battle-and paid for in Jewish coin.
Why This History Matters Now
Today, Jews are again told that we are powerful but disloyal.
Influential but suspect.
Welcome-but conditional.
The same tropes that once accused Jews of dual loyalty now accuse us of “colonialism," “financial manipulation," or moral corruption.
And yet the historical record tells a very different story.
Jews did not undermine America.
Jews built America.
We funded its birth.
We fought in its wars.
We defended its Constitution.
We believed in its promise when it was weakest.
Modern Jewish-American patriotism-service in the military, leadership in civil rights, defense of democratic institutions-is not a deviation from history.
It is its continuation.
The Jewish-Christian Alliance That Created the Republic
The American Revolution created something unprecedented:
A nation born not of ethnicity or church, but of shared ideals.
Jews and Christians stood together against empire.
Together against tyranny.
Together for liberty of conscience.
That alliance is not incidental.
It is foundational.
When that alliance weakens, America weakens.
When Jews are erased from the American story, America forgets itself.
America’s Moral Debt
America does not owe Jews favors.
It owes us honesty.
Honesty about who financed its independence.
Honesty about who fought for its freedom.
Honesty about who believed in its ideals before they were proven safe.
Haym Salomon died poor so America could live free.
That is not mythology.
That is the moral foundation of the United States.
And it deserves to be remembered-especially now.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach-“America’s Rabbi"-is the international bestselling author of 36 books and is described by The Washington Post and Newsweek as “the most famous rabbi in America," by The New York Observer as “the most famous orthodox Jew in the world," and by The Jerusalem Post as one of the 50 most influential Jews alive. He is founder of The World Values Network, which champions Jewish values and fights antisemitism worldwide. Follow him on Instagram and “X" @RabbiShmuley.
--