One section of the Newport community was especially eager to pay their respects to Washington: the Jews of the Kahal Yeshuat Yisrael. Many of them had departed with their fellow citizens at the time of the British occupation, leaving only a few like the parnas (warden) and banker Moses Seixas to protect the deerskin Torah and the fabric of the Touro Synagogue from harm, notwithstanding the latter's appropriation for storage of arms and ammunition, making it a prime target for enemy guns. The Seixases were a little Jewish empire all to themselves. Originally from Lisbon, they had dispersed during the Revolution to Connecticut, New York and Philadelphia where Moses' pious brother Gershon was haham (rabbi), hazzan (cantor), mohel (circumciser) and shochet (ritual slaughterer), a full service minister to the community. Benjamin, another brother, had been an officer in the New York militia. You didn't get any more Judaeo-patriotic than the Seixases. So it was natural for Moses to seize the moment of Washington's visit to clear up one or two matters concerning the First Amendment.

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The letter he penned on August 17 for presentation to the president the following day was a nosegay of praise to the Father of the Nation (and not before time, since the Jews of the several American congregations had been tardy in offering congratulations on Washington's inauguration earlier that year—but then getting a handful of kehillot, community leaders, to sign on the same page of anything counts as a miracle). Between the lines Seixas was also seeking clarification. Had the great day finally arrived when Jews would be treated as all other citizens? Could they now be magistrates, councilors, constables? Above all, could they now vote?

Being "the stock of Abraham," Seixas took an ornamentally Hebraic tone with the general, reflecting on "those days of difficulty and danger when the God of Israel, who delivered David from the peril of the sword shielded Your head in the day of battle…and we rejoice to think that the same Spirit who rested in the Bosom of the greatly beloved Daniel enabling him to preside over the provinces of the Babylonish Empire, rests and will ever rest upon you." That must have softened the old boy up—visions of David at Yorktown; President Daniel. Then the nub of the matter: "Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events behold a Government erected by the Majesty of the People, a Government which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance—but generously affording to all Liberty of conscience and immunities of Citizenship—deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue or language equal parts of the great governmental Machine—This so ample and extensive Federal Union whose basis is Philanthropy, Mutual Confidence and Public Virtue [nice touch that, putting tzedakah, righteous charity, first in the Masonic trio], we cannot but acknowledge to be the work of the Great God who ruleth in the Armies of Heaven." Cleverly Seixas wasn't asking. He was in this manner merely describing what he took to be self-evident, leaving Washington to demur if he must. "For all these Blessings of civil and religious liberty which we enjoy under an equal benign administration, we desire to send up our thanks to the Ancient of Days." (God, not the president.) May he like Joshua when gathered to his Fathers be admitted into "Paradise to partake of the water of life and the tree of immortality."

Washington loved this kind of thing. The next day, after an all-out dinner in the Old State House, he responded to Moses Seixas in a way designed to make Yeshuat Yisrael happy. "The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship." And then came Washington's endorsement of the presumption that active citizenship for all Americans was indeed what was understood in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. America was the republic in which toleration was not bestowed as an "indulgence of one class of people" to another but the "exercise of their inherent national gifts." Then Washington simply lifted the Jew's lovely characterization of a nation "which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance" and rather grandly failed to acknowledge (or perhaps notice) that he had taken it from Moses Seixas' letter. Not until the poet Emma Lazarus came along would a Jew manage to supply so perfectly felicitous phrasing for what the United States was supposed to stand for. Rest assured, the president concluded, in this benign state of affairs, every one of the "Stock of Abraham" "shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid." A neat touch this, straight from the prayer book of the psalmist. Well, Washington had just been compared to David.

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