Rhode Island
Where America’s promise meant me too.
Newport · Providence · Pawtucket
The Journey
Rhode Island has been baked into me since childhood.
My father first took me there when I was twelve, only a few weeks before my Bar Mitzvah. That trip gave me a contrast I never forgot.
We visited the Newport mansions, The Breakers, The Elms, Marble House, enormous summer homes built for some of the wealthiest families of the Gilded Age. I walked through rooms covered in gold, marble, art, and unimaginable luxury, thinking about how these were simply summer homes while so many Americans at the time did not know where tomorrow’s bread would come from.
At twelve years old, that did not fully add up in my brain.
Then my father took me to Touro Synagogue.
I did not expect much. We arrived at a humble yellowish brown building that, from the outside, seemed almost simple compared with the mansions we had just seen.
We walked inside and someone handed me a little leaflet.
“This is the oldest synagogue in America,” the guide announced.
Wow.
Then he told us that the paper in my hand contained a letter George Washington had sent to this Jewish community in 1790. In it, Washington wrote that the new government would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
Those words stayed with me.
Years later, I stood in the same synagogue with my own daughters.
This time, the guide was an older Jewish gentleman with a cold. He asked whether someone in the group could help read from the papers in front of him.
Rachel’s hand immediately went up.
He called her forward.
And there she stood, in front of a room filled with people, reading aloud the same words that had reached me when I was almost her age.
I stood there watching her and thinking, who knows?
Maybe they will alter her life too.
George Washington spoke to a Jewish kid in Newport more than two centuries ago. Somehow, all these years later, he was still speaking to us.
Providence gave us another side of Rhode Island. We spent time around the State House, walked the downtown streets and riverfront, stopped at charming cafés, and enjoyed the parks with the girls.
At night, WaterFire transformed the river. Little fires seemed to float across the water while music filled downtown. Leah was completely mesmerized.
Jewish Rhode Island
My Jewish Rhode Island story really began when I was twelve.
After walking through the enormous mansions of Newport, my father brought me to a small synagogue on Touro Street. The building was modest, but what I discovered inside was far larger than anything we had seen that day.
The congregation traces its roots to 1658, and the synagogue itself was dedicated in 1763, making it the oldest synagogue building in the United States.
But it was George Washington’s letter that changed the place for me.
His words were not asking Jews merely to be tolerated. They described a country where religious freedom was a right, where the government would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
Coming back years later with Rachel and Leah made that history deeply personal. Watching Rachel stand where I had once stood and read those same words aloud connected three generations for me: my father bringing me, me bringing my daughters, and a Jewish community that had been hearing that American promise for more than two centuries.
We also visited Beth Sholom in Providence and experienced the Jewish community that continues to thrive there today.
Jewish life in Rhode Island is centered largely around Providence and Newport, but for me, it will always begin inside that humble synagogue in Newport.
What Stayed With Me
What stayed with me about Rhode Island began when I was twelve and came full circle when I returned with my daughters.
I had always known I was Jewish. I had always known I was American.
But standing inside Touro and reading Washington’s words made those two identities feel connected in a way I had never understood before.
Years later, I watched Rachel stand in that same room and read the same promise aloud.
“To bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
At twelve, those words told me that America’s promise included Jews.
Coming back with my daughter reminded me of something even more powerful.
It meant me too.
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