Today is a special day. In some way, I believe it is a holy day.
The 250th birthday of the United States of America — a nation unlike any other in the annals of history. A nation founded, from its very beginning, upon a radical and unprecedented conviction: that man must be free to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience and that this freedom is not granted by kings or governments but is rooted in something higher than them both.
Those brave souls who left Europe and settled these shores came armed only with faith in God and trust in His providence. Out of that faith, they planted the seeds of a society that would grow into a nation that would become an empire of opportunity and kindness. The greatest history has ever seen.
I am sure that your hearts, like mine, are filled with something special on this day of July 4, 2026 — whether you share my sense of patriotism or not, whether you feel this is the greatest country in the world or simply one among many.
What cannot be denied is that the United States has become inextricably linked with the story of the modern world and in a very deep way with the story of the Jewish people. Not only in relation to Israel, but in the shaping of Jewish life across the globe. In ways visible and invisible, America has altered the destiny of entire civilizations.
My heart, my soul,and my spirit have been soaring in these weeks leading up to this July 4.
There is a concept in Sefer Yetzirah — that reality unfolds as sefer, sofer, ve-Sippur: the book, the uthor, and the story. If so, the story of America is certainly part of the story of God.
I want to tell you where my deep attachment to America comes from.
My Bobbie … She would speak about Auschwitz with a kind of stoic silence as if words themselves could not carry what she had seen. But when she spoke about reaching America — she would cry tears of gratitude.
I am sure many of you have similar memories of grandparents who lived through worlds we can barely imagine, that expressed such deep admiration for this land of the free.
Today, too many people take America for granted. They take democracy for granted. They take freedom of conscience for granted. They take for granted the extraordinary gift that is the United States of America — the almost unimaginable fact that such a society exists at all.
Even if one does not accept every claim about American greatness, one cannot deny this: the course of human history was irreversibly altered when those Founding Fathers — those great men, those giants of spirit — signed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on this day.
America has flaws. Every country in history has flaws. But it is historically irresponsible to forget that the outcome of both world wars, the survival of Western civilization as we know it and the rebirth of the Jewish people in their land would be unthinkable without American power, sacrifice and love.
The freedom we live in today was not given. It was fought for, bled for and died for by hundreds of thousands of people on battlefields across this land and across the world.
Lincoln captured this truth forever on Nov. 19, 1863, at Gettysburg:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…
“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure…
“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
That phrase remains the moral condition of freedom. Nothing is ever finished. Liberty is never self-sustaining. Every generation must decide whether it will continue the work, or allow it to fade.
In this sense, America is not only a historical achievement. It is an ongoing responsibility.
It is not for nothing that those who harbor hostility toward America so often, in the same breath, express hostility toward the Jewish people. This is not the place to fully unpack the historical, political and theological reasons for that convergence, but at its core lies something profound.
Both Judaism and the American founding rest on a shared moral architecture: the conviction that temporal political power is not ultimate and that no human authority — king, state, majority or empire — has unlimited claim over the human person. Authority itself is real, but it is bounded. It is judged. It is accountable.
In that sense, what links these two traditions is not simply “belief in God,” which many civilizations share. It is something more specific: the idea of covenantal accountability. A framework in which law stands above rulers, moral obligation stands above coercion and human dignity is grounded in something that precedes political power altogether.
This is precisely what made the American experiment so radical. In most civilizations, freedom was defined as what authority permits. In the biblical covenantal tradition that so deeply shaped the moral imagination of the founding generation, freedom is defined differently: as the space in which a human being can stand freely before God, even while living within a political order.
That distinction changes everything.
Because when freedom is defined only in relation to the state, it becomes fragile, reversible and ultimately contingent. But when freedom is grounded in a moral reality that stands above the state itself, then even power must recognize its limits.
Human dignity is not granted by society, and therefore cannot be withdrawn by society. Law, as Divinely inspired, must bind those who rule as much as those who are ruled. Torah and America share the encompassing truth that the deepest form of freedom is not autonomy from obligation but the ability to stand in fidelity to a higher moral claim.
This is the essence of kabbalas ol malchus Shamayim — accepting the yoke of Heaven in truth. Not as suppression of freedom but as its purification: the alignment of free human will with a moral order that no human being invented and no human being can erase.
And it is this covenantal idea — at once demanding and liberating — that quietly underlies both the Jewish story and the American one.
But what I would like to do now is turn from 250 years ago to something that happened on this very day 200 years ago — on the first jubilee of our nation, the 50th anniversary of July 4th. Every American should know this anecdote, and think about it often.
On that Jubilee day, two men died only a few hours apart.
Two men died on the same day — July 4, 1826. One lived in Virginia and one lived in Massachusetts.
They were at the beginning of the American story, not merely colleagues, but brothers in blood and in vision — who together accomplished something no generation before them, and arguably none since, has ever matched.
In later years, they became bitter rivals — separated by politics, ideology and years of resentment, suspicion and personal estrangement.
Then, in the final chapter of their lives, something remarkable happened once again: reconciliation. They returned to one another through a written correspondence that has become one of the most extraordinary and revealing exchanges in the entire history of the United States.
Of course, I am speaking about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third presidents of the United States. Today is their yahrzeit.
Jefferson, of course, is remembered as the great author of the Declaration of Independence. His language reshaped the modern understanding of human dignity. “All men are created equal” became not merely an American slogan but a universal moral claim. Mankind was not born with a saddle on his back. That liberty of conscience is not granted by rulers but inherent to the human being.
On his tombstone which he drafted himself, lists only his three proudest achievements:
“Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.”
Notably absent are his terms as governor, secretary of state, vice president or U.S. resident, as he wanted to be remembered for the principles he championed rather than the political offices he held.
George Washington’s famous letter of 1790 to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island — the earliest and most powerful public affirmation of Jewish equality in American life — articulated a revolutionary principle for its time. In it, Washington declared that the government of the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
Those words were not merely courteous language. They expressed a foundational principle of the American experiment: that religious liberty is not a favor extended by the majority, but a right secured equally for all citizens under the Constitution.
He understood that toleration is not enough. Toleration still implies hierarchy — one group granting permission to another, one authority magnanimously allowing a minority to exist.
By contrast, in 1791 just a few months later, Catherine “the Great” forced all the Jews of Russia to be confined in the Pale of settlement. The freedom granted in America to Jews was certainly not the norm around the globe.
Many historians believe that this letter was penned by Jefferson himself but it is certainly, according to all opinions, his spirit: liberty of conscience is not a concession granted by government at all. It is an inherent and inalienable right, prior to government itself.
In that sense, the United States does not bestow religious freedom as a privilege. It recognizes it as a reality already embedded in the dignity of the human person.
John Adams gave his life to the cause of independence, often at great personal cost. Unlike Jefferson, he did not die surrounded by monuments or popular acclaim. He knew, in fact, that history would forget him.
And yet Adams’ greatness lies precisely there — in a life of sacrifice without expectation of recognition. It is truly worth reading his great biography by David McCullough to really appreciate the inception of this country and understand what it means to sacrifice one’s own comfort for a cause greater than oneself. Years of diplomatic labor in Europe, away from his beloved Abigail, political conflict at home and personal strain marked his path. But his influence survived and his monument is America.
Then came July 4, 1826.
Both men had been invited by many places in the country to celebrate the Jubilee — the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The last surviving signers of that historic document: Jefferson, its author; Adams, its great advocate in Congress. One was the pen of independence; the other was its voice.
But by then, Adams was 90 years old, and Jefferson was 83. Neither was able to make the journey.
Jefferson lay gravely ill in Virginia. He had been unconscious since July 2. At one point he briefly awoke and asked whether it was already the Fourth of July. When told that it was not yet certain, he drifted back into sleep.
He died in the early afternoon of July 4.
In Quincy, Massachusetts, John Adams’ mind remained clear even as his strength faded. In the afternoon, he spoke his final words — spoken clearly enough to be understood. His last utterance was heard as: “Thomas Jefferson survives.”
And then, at 6:20 in the evening, John Adams himself passed away.
That John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had died on the same day and that it was of all days the Fourth of July jubilee could not be seen as a mere coincidence: it was a visible and palpable manifestation of Divine favor, wrote John Quincy Adams, then president and son of John Adams, in his diary that night, expressing what was felt and would be said again and again everywhere the news spread.
God did this miracle to prove His own love for America.
Therefore, this day is not only about remembering history but about strengthening what the original Pilgrims envisioned and what this country was originally grounded upon: God is not distant — not confined to the heavens above (rakia shevi’i) — but present within the very fabric of life itself. One could have faith in God but that does not yet mean one has the trust in Him, which could only come from believing that He is involved in one’s daily life.
The great people who founded this country believed that God could be trusted and relied upon. They experienced God as palpable and tangible and to be trusted. It is with this trust they set out for a New World and that is how they educated their children.
“In God We Trust” is printed on every dollar bill. It is not merely a national motto printed on currency; it is meant to express a deeper truth — that trust in God is the moral foundation upon which our freedom itself stands and the ultimate purpose of that freedom.
But there is one man, above all others, upon whom the birth of this country most clearly depended: George Washington.
“First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen” — Henry Lee’s famous eulogy has echoed through the centuries.
Washington’s achievement must be properly understood. Leading the continental army in the Revolutionary war to victory was just the beginning of his accomplishment that shaped this country. When he assumed the presidency, there was not, in any meaningful sense, a fully formed American nation. The Constitution had just been ratified and its opening words—“We the People of the United States” — expressed a powerful aspiration, but not yet a fully integrated political reality. It was a vision more than it was a functioning national identity.
Washington did not inherit a nation. He helped create one.
He presided over the fragile consolidation of independence into an actual state during the most delicate and formative stage of its existence. The revolution had been won, but a republic had not yet been secured.
At the time, the population of roughly four million settlers was scattered along a vast coastline, with loyalties still only tied to local authorities and regional identities. No republic in history had ever successfully governed such a dispersed population across such an immense territory. For most informed European observers, the experiment was destined to fail. As Lincoln would later quote this same skepticism: a nation so conceived and so dedicated could not long endure.
Washington entered this moment carrying more personal prestige than any figure in the country’s history. It is impossible to overemphasize how much he was venerated. He won the presidency unanimously. His authority alone could easily have tipped the young republic toward monarchy. Indeed, the “specter of monarchy” hovered over the entire founding era as a plausible alternative to republican instability.
And yet, it was precisely Washington who refused that path. In fact, no American president has ever been more reluctant to assume office or more determined not to treat it as personal elevation.
Where others might have seen the presidency as culmination, Washington experienced it as burden. He became president simply because he knew that the only person who could unite all the people in the colonies to form one federal republic would be him.
On April 16, 1789, George Washington recorded, in a rare diary entry from that period, his departure to the presidency from Mount Vernon:
“About ten o’clock I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic felicity; and with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations than I have words to express, set out for New York … with the best dispositions to render service to my country in obedience to its call but with less hope of answering its expectations.”
He led the nation, not because he wanted to, but because he believed it needed him.
This can explain one of the chief curiosities of his presidency. In his presidential correspondence, the longest letters and more of them than he devoted to any other topic deal with the management of his farms in Mount Vernon. During intense negotiations he found time to compose meticulous instructions to his managers about plowing, weeding, worming, grubbing schedules and when to stock the icehouse. His private self had been effectively obliterated by the time he reached the presidency; the man had become the monument. But he did not view himself that way, and Mount Vernon was the only place we could shed his public role and be himself.
After two terms, he stepped down — voluntarily relinquishing power at the height of his authority to the astonishment of the world. King George III is said to have remarked upon hearing that he would retire, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”
In doing so, Washington helped establish not only a government, but a principle: that leadership in a republic is service, not possession.
The Great Seal of the United States expresses this idea in three words: E pluribus unum — out of many, one.
But that unity was not merely institutional or political. It required a moral act of self-limitation. It required a leader who would not allow his own person to become the center of the nation he was helping to build.
In the language of Chassidut, this quality is called bitul — not self-erasure, but the profound capacity to place the cause above the self.
E pluribus unum — out of many, one.
Just as in the historical meaning of America the 13 colonies were joined into a single nation, so too there is, at a deeper level, a cosmic dimension to this idea embedded within the structure of creation itself. The movement from fragmentation to unity is not only a political achievement; it is, in a more profound sense, a reflection of a spiritual truth.
In the ultimate divine plan, it is through humility and service that the multiplicity of the world is revealed not as contradiction or chaos but as ה׳ אחד —ultimately jointing in One. The many are not erased; they are gathered. They are not denied; they are unified in God’s Essence.
This is the deeper horizon of E pluribus unum: that beneath the apparent diversity of creation lies a single Divine source, and that the task of history is to reveal that underlying unity within the complexity of the world.
In that sense, the messianic vision is not the negation of the many but the revelation of the One within the many of creation.
And just like George Washington’s example, that integration can only be achieved when one steps out of the way and allows that truth to shine forth without personal gain.
And perhaps that is why this week’s Torah portion speaks of Pinchas.
Pinchas did not ask what was best for himself. He did not calculate status, consequence or recognition. He acted solely for the honor of Heaven. Our sages teach that he put himself at great personal danger, physically and even spiritually.
Because he was willing to forget himself entirely, he was granted a covenant of peace — shalom, and eternal priesthood — brit kehunat olam.
Perhaps this is the deepest lesson of America’s founders as well.
Greatness is never achieved by those who seek greatness for themselves.
It is achieved by those who dedicate themselves to a cause larger than their own lives.
“In God We Trust” is not meant to remain merely an inscription on our currency. It is meant to become the inscription upon our hearts.
As America celebrates 250 years, may we recommit ourselves to the ideals that gave birth to this remarkable nation.
May we have Jefferson’s vision.
May we have Adams’ willingness to sacrifice.
May we have Washington’s humility.
And above all, may we strengthen our own kabbalas ol malchus Shamayim b’emes, so that we merit the day when all humanity will recognize the sovereignty of the Ribbono Shel Olam, במהרה בימינו, אמן.