|
Not sure if this is of any interest to anyone but below is a history (I just received) about the Presidents and Jews:
GEORGE WASHINGTON was the first President to write to a synagogue. In 1790
>he addressed separate letters to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, RI, and to
>Mikveh Israel Congregation in Savannah, GA, and a joint letter to
>Congregation Beth Shalom, Richmond, VA, Mikveh Israel Philadelphia, Beth
>Elohim, Charleston, S. C., and Shearith Israel, New York. His letters are
>an eloquent expression and hope for religious harmony and endure as
>indelible statements of the most fundamental tenets of American democracy.
>
>THOMAS JEFFERSON was the first President to appoint a Jew to a Federal
>post. In 1801 he named Reuben Etting of Baltimore as US Marshall for
>Maryland.
>
>JAMES MADISON was the first President to appoint a Jew to a diplomatic
>post. He sent Mordecai M. Noah to Tunis from 1813 to 1816.
>
>
>MARTIN VAN BUREN was the first President to order an American consul to
>intervene on behalf of Jews abroad. In 1840 he instructed the U.S. consul
>in Alexandria, Egypt to use his good offices to protect the Jews of
>Damascus who were under attack because of a false blood ritual accusation.
>
>JOHN TYLER was the first President to nominate a U.S. consul to Palestine.
>Warder Cresson, a Quaker convert to Judaism who established a pioneer
>Zionist colony, received the appointment in 1844.
>
>FRANKLIN PIERCE was the first and probably the only President whose name
>appears on the charter of a synagogue. Pierce signed the Act of Congress in
>1857 that amended the laws of the District of Columbia to
>enable the incorporation of the city's first synagogue, the Washington
>Hebrew Congregation.
>
>ABRAHAM LINCOLN was the first President to make it possible for rabbis to
>serve as military chaplains. He did this by signing the 1862 Act of
>Congress which changed the law that had previously barred all but Christian
>clergymen from the chaplainry. Lincoln was also the first, and happily the
>only President who was called upon to revoke an official act of
>anti-Semitism by the U.S. government. It was Lincoln who canceled General
>Ulysses S. Grant's "Order No. 11" expelling all Jews from Tennessee from
>the district controlled by his armies during the Civil War. Grant always
>denied personal responsibility for this act attributing it to his
>subordinate.
>
>ULYSSES S. GRANT was the first President to attend a synagogue service
>while in office. When Adas Israel Congregation in Washington D.C. was
>dedicated in 1874, Grant and all members of his Cabinet were
>present.RUTHERFORD B. HAYES was the first President to designate a Jewish
>ambassador for the stated purpose of fighting anti-Semitism. In 1870, he
>named Benjamin Peixotto Consul-General to Rumania. Hays also was the first
>President to assure a civil service employee her right to work for the
>Federal government and yet observe the Sabbath. He ordered the employment
>of a Jewish woman who had been
>denied a position in the Department of the Interior because of her refusal
>to work on Saturday.
>
>THEODORE ROOSEVELT was the first President to appoint a Jew to a
>presidential cabinet. In 1906 he named Oscar S. Straus Secretary of
>Commerce and Labor. Theodore Roosevelt was also the first President to
>contribute his own funds to a Jewish cause. In 1919, when he received the
>Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts while President to settle the
>Russo-Japanese War, Roosevelt contributed part of his prize to the National
>Jewish Welfare Board.
>
>WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT was the first President to attend a Seder while in
>office. In 1912, when he visited Providence, RI, he participated in the
>family Seder of Colonel Harry Cutler, first president of the
>National Jewish Welfare Board, in the Cutler home on Glenham Street.
>
>WOODROW WILSON was the first President to nominate a Jew, Louis Dembitz
>Brandeis, to the United States Supreme Court. Standing firm against great
>pressure to withdraw the nomination, Wilson insisted that he knew no one
>better qualified by judicial temperament as well as legal and social
>understanding,
>confirmation was finally voted by the Senate on June 1, 1916. Wilson was
>also the first President to publicly endorse a national Jewish
>philanthropic campaign. In a letter to Jacob Schiff, on November 22, 1917,
>Wilson called for wide support of the United Jewish Relief Campaign which
>was raising funds for European War relief.
>
>WARREN HARDING was the first President to sign a Joint Congressional
>Resolution endorsing the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate
>supporting the establishment in Palestine of a national Jewish home for the
>Jewish people. The resolution was signed September 22, 1922.
>
>CALVIN COOLIDGE was the first President to participate in the dedication of
>a Jewish community institution that was not a house of worship. On May,
>1925, he helped dedicate the cornerstone of the
>Washington, D.C. Jewish Community center.
>
>FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT was the first President to be given a Torah as a
>gift. He received a miniature Torah from Young Israel and another that had
>been rescued from a burning synagogue in Czechoslovakia.
>Both are now in the Roosevelt Memorial Library in Hyde Park. The Roosevelt
>administration's failure to
>expand the existing refugee quota system ensured that large numbers of Jews
>would ultimately become some of the Holocaust's six million victims.
>Fifty-six years after Roosevelt's death, the arguments continue
>over Roosevelt's response to the Holocaust.
>
>HARRY S. TRUMAN, on May 14, 1948, just eleven minutes after Israel's
>proclamation of independence, was the first head of a government to
>announce to the press that "the United Stated recognizes the provisional
>government as the de facto authority of the new state of Israel." Truman
>was also the first U.S.
>President to receive a president of Israel at the White House - Chaim
>Weizman, in 1948 and an Ambassador from Israel - Eliahu Elat in 1948. With
>Israel staggering under the burdens of mass immigration in 1951-1952,
>President Truman obtained from Congress close to $140 million in loans and
>grants.
>
>DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER was the first President to participate in a
>coast-to-coast TV program sponsored by a Jewish organization. It was a
>network show in 1954 celebrating the 300th anniversary of the
>American Jewish community. On this occasion he said that it was one of the
>enduring satisfactions of his life that he was privileged to lead the
>forces of the free world which finally crushed the brutal regime in
>Germany, freeing the remnant of Jews for a new life and hope in Israel.
>
>JOHN F. KENNEDY named two Jews to his cabinet - Abraham Ribicoff as
>Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and Arthur Goldberg as
>Secretary of Labor. Kennedy was the only President for whom a national
>Jewish Award was named. The annual peace award of the Synagogue Council of
>America was re-named the John F. Kennedy Peace Award after his
>assassination in 1963.
>
>JIMMY CARTER in a number of impassioned speeches stated his concern for
>human rights and stressed the right of Russian Jews to emigrate. He is
>credited with being the person responsible for the Camp David
>Accords.
>
>GEORGE H.W. BUSH in 1985 as Vice President had played a personal role in
>"Operation Joshua," the airlift which brought 10,000 Jews out of Ethiopia
>directly to resettlement in Israel. Then, again in 1991, when Bush was
>President, American help played a critical role in "Operation Solomon", the
>escape of 14,000 more Ethiopian Jews. Most dramatically, Bush got to the
>U.N. to revoke its 1975 "Zionism is Racism" resolution.
>
>BILL CLINTON appointed more Jews to his cabinet than all of the previous
>presidents put together.
>
>DUBYA BUSH is the first president since Herbert Hoover who has no Jews in
>his cabinet at all. Draw your own conclusions.
>
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
