Jonathan Sarna

Last week the New York City Council voted unanimously to remove a statue of Thomas Jefferson from the Council chamber in City Hall. The decision was not a surprise; Black and Latino lawmakers have long lobbied for its removal, given Jefferson's tarnished history as the owner of some 600 humans. Amid the debate over race, history and the statue, it is important to understand the reason Jefferson was placed there in the first place. Uriah P. Levy, the Jewish naval hero who donated the statue, by Pierre-Jean David d'Angers, in 1834, intended it to serve as a symbol of religious liberty.

The matzo proved ephemeral; it was soon broken up and distributed. What I found fascinating at the factory's opening (which I attended) was an off-the-cuff remark by Israel's chief rabbi, Yona Metzger, before he blessed the plant. "Who knew," he quipped, "that the world's largest manufacturers of gefilte fish were two Moroccan Jews from Casablanca?" Manischewitz, founded in 1888 in Cincinnati, once symbolized the emergence of Eastern European Jews on American soil. Dov Behr Manischewitz, the company's founder, hailed from Memel in Lithuania and spun gold in the New World by discovering new ways to combine flour and water. The technological innovations introduced by Manischewitz and his sons revolutionized the production of matzo in America and catapulted Manischewitz's company into the world's largest producer of Passover matzo. So it is more than just a curiosity that an Eastern European Jewish firm named Manischewitz is currently headed by two Moroccan Jews from Casablanca; it is a sign that a whole new community of Jews is emerging on the American scene. While the "world's largest matzo" may have been ephemeral, the rise of Mizrahi and other immigrant Jews will change the face - and the tastes - of the 21st-century American Jewish community.

Shocked B'nai B'rith leaders in Mobile, Ala., wrote to the national secretary of B'nai B'rith, Leon Lewis, expressing interest in the case and wondering what the Jewish organization's response would be. The answer, in one word, was "Hillel." Following World War II, thanks in part to the G.I. Bill, the number of Jews on college campuses mushroomed. The American Jewish community's interest in campus affairs, meanwhile, waned. As B'nai B'rith support for Hillel diminished, Hillel professionals - fatefully - concentrated their attention on the minority of involved Jewish students. For the rest, Hillel became irrelevant. The 1988 appointment of Richard Joel as international director began [Hillel]'s modern-day revival. During the course of his tenure, Joel remade, re-energized and repackaged the organization. Exploiting communal concerns over "Jewish continuity," he reminded Jewish leaders that "the campus is ... a key gateway for Jewish continuity and a key definer of the Jewish future."

In 1788, when North Carolina debated whether or not to ratify the new federal constitution with its guarantee that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States," its governor, Samuel Johnston, described two possible conditions under which "Jews, Mahometans, pagans, &c." might be elected to "the office of President or other high office." "First," he declared, "if the people of America lay aside the Christian religion altogether, it may happen." "Another case," he continued, "is if any persons of such descriptions should, notwithstanding their religion, acquire the confidence and esteem of the people of America by their good conduct and practice of virtue, they may be chosen."