Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome, I'm Rabbi David Lyon from Congregation Beth Israel in Houston.
Fourth of July weekend is one of the most special
times in our country all of us. Many of us
have childhood memories that bring back picnics and barbecues, time
for fireworks, family and friends that are gathering to celebrate
(00:20):
freedom and liberty that is the benchmark and foundation of
our country's origin and its future. In the best and
worst of times. We all have a role to play
in making our country great and appreciating the liberties that
we have in a time in the world when not
everybody enjoys what we do, and therefore we can feel
(00:42):
not only very grateful for what we have, but also
profoundly committed to building up and strengthening what is good
and making things even better for us and all who
are touched by everything that our country means to the
world around us. In the Jewish community in particular, the
roots of Judaism in our country are long and they
(01:04):
are deep. You might not be aware of the connection
between George Washington, our country's first president, and the Jewish
community of Newport, Rhode Island. On August twenty first, seventeen ninety,
George Washington responded with a letter to the then head
of that congregation, Moses Satious. He expressed hope in his
(01:26):
letter that the newly formed United States would accord respect
and tolerance to all of its citizens. Here's a part
of that letter that George Washington sent. In it, he writes, gentlemen,
that citizens of the United States of America have a
right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples
(01:47):
of an enlarged and liberal policy, a policy worthy of
imitation all possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of
as if it was by the indulgence of one class
of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent
natural rights. For happily, the government of the United States,
(02:12):
which gives to bigotry, no sanction, to persecution, no assistance,
requires only that they who live under its protection, should
demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it, on all occasions,
their effectual support. I wish I had the time to
read it to you again, But play it back and
(02:32):
hear the words from George Washington in seventeen ninety, who
believed that all that the United States would be then
and in the future would be a place for all
people who were citizens and enjoy the protection of the
United States. In their new land they called home, would
(02:53):
be a place where tolerance was not the word that
they would use to describe how people would come to
behave towards each other, but rather appreciation that we are
all citizens' duty bound to build up and serve our
great country. Furthermore, George Washington said needed the close of
(03:13):
his words to the congregation, May the children of the
stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to
merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants,
while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine
and fig tree, and there shall be none to make
him afraid. May the Father of all mercies scatter light
(03:35):
and not darkness in our paths, and make us all,
in our several vocations, useful here and in his own
due time and way, everlastingly happy. George Washington could have
been a preacher. The truth is that George Washington and
the founding fathers knew their Hebrew Bible very well. Some
(03:55):
spoke Hebrew, many read Hebrew and could read the Boss
in the original language. Some founding fathers, it is said,
even hope that Hebrew would become the language of the land.
I think you and I agree that we're glad that
English has become the language of the land. But what
Washington wanted for the congregation to know and for us
(04:18):
to remember all these decades later, is that all of
us should sit under his own vine and fig tree,
and none shall be made to feel afraid. Washington was
citing the Hebrew Bible. The prophets urged all of us
that in some day and time we would be able
to sit under such vine tree and fig tree and
(04:40):
be unafraid. I think that in some part all of
us have found the place where we feel at home
and at peace in America. But we know that there
is not the kind of peace that we enjoy that
everybody else has come to know too. We live in
a polarized time, and so perhaps this weekend, this time
of the fourth of July, we want to dig deeply
(05:02):
to go back to what our founding fathers wanted us
to know and enjoy. It isn't about interpreting the Constitution,
It's about what that Constitution stood for for all the
people would come to know that America is home, a
free home for them, their families, and their descendants after them.
And George Washington, speaking to the Newport Congregation, one of
(05:25):
the oldest naturally in the United States, was to say,
you and I are a like. We speak of one Father,
one God, to whom we reach in respective ways, but
one father over all, who blesses our land with prosperity, goodness, hopefulness,
(05:45):
and peace. And each of us, as we're inclined to
contribute to that promise and that hope, we are all
partners who old hands and link arms together to get
it done. I'm not sure exactly where one would say
we went off the respective path to become so polarized,
But if we can remember as the rockets go up
(06:09):
and the fireworks are displayed, and we eat our apple pie,
and remember the greatness of our country, that we will
try to find the place where common ground can be
enjoyed again between us and among us. It's interesting that
George Washington use the word tolerance not as a positive descriptor,
(06:29):
but rather as a negative detractor from what he really
wanted us to know. Because the truth is and We've
often talked about it, even in our own contemporary world,
that if I only tolerate you, it still says something
negative about my expectations or the relationship that we've come
to share. Rather than tolerate, I'd like to respect you,
(06:52):
and I'd like you to respect me. Because although we
may believe differently, pray differently, or even have a different background,
what we do have in common is something that we
both want. We all desire for our country to be
at its very best, to be strong, to be economically viable,
to be welcoming to those who want to join us
(07:13):
in the pursuit of America's values and the American dream.
I know that as I raise my children and you
raise yours, we want them to have the best of everything.
We want them to be able to afford what they can.
And even as we used to say in previous generations
that our children and grandchildren should do better than their
parents and their grandparents, we know that economically it isn't
(07:36):
always possible or easy today, but it is always our
hope that we can give our children something more than
we did in every successive generation. In America, we have
continued to live by and teach and convey a dream
that this is the land of opportunity and happiness. I
(07:57):
think as we look around us, we see so many
many positive examples of exactly that thing. And while we
open the newspaper and turn on the internet and find
very negative and critical headlines, sometimes we lose perspective and
we think that the country is going down in a spiral.
But if we find reasons to feel optimistic and hopeful,
(08:21):
I think will also find the headlines that remind us
that it is a great country founded on the basic
principles that have allowed many generations before us not only
to thrive and succeed, but also to work through their
challenges of their time and find their way over and
around them to enjoy prosperity, mutual respect, and prosperity. Again,
(08:46):
sometimes people say to me, this is the worst of
times and what are our children doing? And they really
lament where we are not excusing the fact that we
have challenges to overcome. But if we look back sixty
years ago, seventy years ago, and more even during the
time of civil war, we know that our country applied
(09:08):
itself its principles to be sure that when we sing
a national anthem and we look at each other as
fellow Americans, we know that we can accomplish everything that
we need in order to move on beyond the challenges
and struggles, to accomplish what we all hope to know
(09:28):
and do as fellow Americans. I am hopeful and I
do believe that as long as we have continued to
have the right to vote and the right to protest,
and all the other liberties that we've come to enjoy,
and there's nothing stopping us from becoming the land that
we need to be. But as our country continues to diversify,
(09:50):
and as the city of Houston, where I live, is,
by all accounts and proven by statisticians and demographers to
resemble the country in the year twenty fifty already, then
we have some thinking to do about what does it
mean to be a tolerant people? Do we only want
(10:12):
to continue to grow to be tolerant or is there
a new way to become mutually respectful too? I think
if we learn from and borrow George Washington's words, we'll
find that he too is beginning to understand a new
land in a new way that no one had ever
known before him. And certainly as he gained victory and
(10:34):
promise for the future. It was his hope that we
would continue to thrive as a nation, even as much
as we would change and so build saying goes, the
more things change, the more they stay the same. Every
generation will ultimately come to know that the world is
changing around it, but what we do with it it
(10:54):
will always be the reflection of who we are as
a generation and what we ultimately want to each the
next generation to do and to be as well. I
know that we speak sometimes of the greatest generation. It
doesn't mean that there can be another great generation. And
perhaps that's the promise that we can hold in our heart,
(11:15):
we can commit to with our hands, and as we
teach our own children and grandchildren to look around them
to see the diversity of people that they will come
to know, even more so than we did when we
were young. Perhaps they will be the role models for
us and brothers who are touched by their young lives
as they continue to make their way and build on
(11:36):
without discrediting the beautiful American values that we were born with,
that we were taught and we wish to convey to
every child and every person who calls America home. So
as you find time with your family and friends this
Fourth of July season, not just on the day, but
beyond it as well. I hope that the colors in
(11:58):
the sky inspire you and the foods delight you. The
friends that you welcome into your backyard or into your
home are those who are new or familiar and always
conveying the hope that we wish for each other. Not
to mean but to lift up, not to be discouraged,
(12:18):
but to be optimistic, and to know that sometimes we
have to join new hands and link new arms to
find our way, not to tolerate each other, but to
find real reasons to be mutually respectful. I'm Rabbi David
Lyon from Congregation Beth Israel in Houston, and to hear
this message again or to share it with someone else,
please find it in my podcast called Heart to Heart
(12:41):
with Rabbi David Lyon at Sunny ninety nine dot com
on the iHeartMedia app. This is a special season. Wherever
you might be on the West Coast, the East coast,
in the Midwest, or where I am in Houston, Texas,
we know that these are times filled with challenges for
(13:01):
all of us to think about and to do something
about too. But let's remember that we stand together in
a foundation that is built on American values, and all
of us have a place to stand together, to make
a difference and to be sure that what we are
building is something we want to leave for our children
and our grandchildren after us. The world changes, but perhaps
(13:26):
we can maintain some consistency, something durable that is America.
And as America continues, let's be sure that our children
can believe in the opportunity that this land provides them,
just as it has provided us, and that the American
dream is not something that is fading at all, but
becoming more brilliant and more optimistic than ever before, even
(13:50):
as the world changes so much so in technology and politics,
and economics and society. But that is the way of America.
We don't really want want to be America of seventeen
ninety when George Washington lived, but we do want to
take with us from his day the opportunity and hope
that all of us, as he said, quoting the Hebrew Bible,
(14:11):
that we should sit under our own vines and fig trees,
and there none of us shall ever be afraid, none
of us shall ever make each other afraid. But rather
we shall come to know the word that he surely
knew as a Hebrew reader and a student of the Bible,
shalloon real peace, real wholeness, and completeness. That's certainly my
(14:35):
hope for all of you, for all of us together
on the special day when we celebrate independence in America,
the United States of America. Thank you for joining me.
I look forward to being with you again next time.
Welcome, I'm Rabbi David Lyon from Congregation Beth Israel in Houston.
Fourth of July weekend is one of the most special
times in our country all of us. Many of us
have childhood memories that bring back picnics and barbecues, time
for fireworks, family and friends that are gathering to celebrate
(00:20):
freedom and liberty that is the benchmark and foundation of
our country's origin and its future. In the best and
worst of times. We all have a role to play
in making our country great and appreciating the liberties that
we have in a time in the world when not
everybody enjoys what we do, and therefore we can feel
(00:42):
not only very grateful for what we have, but also
profoundly committed to building up and strengthening what is good
and making things even better for us and all who
are touched by everything that our country means to the
world around us. In the Jewish community in particular, the
roots of Judaism in our country are long and they
(01:04):
are deep. You might not be aware of the connection
between George Washington, our country's first president, and the Jewish
community of Newport, Rhode Island. On August twenty first, seventeen ninety,
George Washington responded with a letter to the then head
of that congregation, Moses Satious. He expressed hope in his
(01:26):
letter that the newly formed United States would accord respect
and tolerance to all of its citizens. Here's a part
of that letter that George Washington sent. In it, he writes, gentlemen,
that citizens of the United States of America have a
right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples
(01:47):
of an enlarged and liberal policy, a policy worthy of
imitation all possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of
as if it was by the indulgence of one class
of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent
natural rights. For happily, the government of the United States,
(02:12):
which gives to bigotry, no sanction, to persecution, no assistance,
requires only that they who live under its protection, should
demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it, on all occasions,
their effectual support. I wish I had the time to
read it to you again, But play it back and
(02:32):
hear the words from George Washington in seventeen ninety, who
believed that all that the United States would be then
and in the future would be a place for all
people who were citizens and enjoy the protection of the
United States. In their new land they called home, would
(02:53):
be a place where tolerance was not the word that
they would use to describe how people would come to
behave towards each other, but rather appreciation that we are
all citizens' duty bound to build up and serve our
great country. Furthermore, George Washington said needed the close of
(03:13):
his words to the congregation, May the children of the
stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to
merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants,
while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine
and fig tree, and there shall be none to make
him afraid. May the Father of all mercies scatter light
(03:35):
and not darkness in our paths, and make us all,
in our several vocations, useful here and in his own
due time and way, everlastingly happy. George Washington could have
been a preacher. The truth is that George Washington and
the founding fathers knew their Hebrew Bible very well. Some
(03:55):
spoke Hebrew, many read Hebrew and could read the Boss
in the original language. Some founding fathers, it is said,
even hope that Hebrew would become the language of the land.
I think you and I agree that we're glad that
English has become the language of the land. But what
Washington wanted for the congregation to know and for us
(04:18):
to remember all these decades later, is that all of
us should sit under his own vine and fig tree,
and none shall be made to feel afraid. Washington was
citing the Hebrew Bible. The prophets urged all of us
that in some day and time we would be able
to sit under such vine tree and fig tree and
(04:40):
be unafraid. I think that in some part all of
us have found the place where we feel at home
and at peace in America. But we know that there
is not the kind of peace that we enjoy that
everybody else has come to know too. We live in
a polarized time, and so perhaps this weekend, this time
of the fourth of July, we want to dig deeply
(05:02):
to go back to what our founding fathers wanted us
to know and enjoy. It isn't about interpreting the Constitution,
It's about what that Constitution stood for for all the
people would come to know that America is home, a
free home for them, their families, and their descendants after them.
And George Washington, speaking to the Newport Congregation, one of
(05:25):
the oldest naturally in the United States, was to say,
you and I are a like. We speak of one Father,
one God, to whom we reach in respective ways, but
one father over all, who blesses our land with prosperity, goodness, hopefulness,
(05:45):
and peace. And each of us, as we're inclined to
contribute to that promise and that hope, we are all
partners who old hands and link arms together to get
it done. I'm not sure exactly where one would say
we went off the respective path to become so polarized,
But if we can remember as the rockets go up
(06:09):
and the fireworks are displayed, and we eat our apple pie,
and remember the greatness of our country, that we will
try to find the place where common ground can be
enjoyed again between us and among us. It's interesting that
George Washington use the word tolerance not as a positive descriptor,
(06:29):
but rather as a negative detractor from what he really
wanted us to know. Because the truth is and We've
often talked about it, even in our own contemporary world,
that if I only tolerate you, it still says something
negative about my expectations or the relationship that we've come
to share. Rather than tolerate, I'd like to respect you,
(06:52):
and I'd like you to respect me. Because although we
may believe differently, pray differently, or even have a different background,
what we do have in common is something that we
both want. We all desire for our country to be
at its very best, to be strong, to be economically viable,
to be welcoming to those who want to join us
(07:13):
in the pursuit of America's values and the American dream.
I know that as I raise my children and you
raise yours, we want them to have the best of everything.
We want them to be able to afford what they can.
And even as we used to say in previous generations
that our children and grandchildren should do better than their
parents and their grandparents, we know that economically it isn't
(07:36):
always possible or easy today, but it is always our
hope that we can give our children something more than
we did in every successive generation. In America, we have
continued to live by and teach and convey a dream
that this is the land of opportunity and happiness. I
(07:57):
think as we look around us, we see so many
many positive examples of exactly that thing. And while we
open the newspaper and turn on the internet and find
very negative and critical headlines, sometimes we lose perspective and
we think that the country is going down in a spiral.
But if we find reasons to feel optimistic and hopeful,
(08:21):
I think will also find the headlines that remind us
that it is a great country founded on the basic
principles that have allowed many generations before us not only
to thrive and succeed, but also to work through their
challenges of their time and find their way over and
around them to enjoy prosperity, mutual respect, and prosperity. Again,
(08:46):
sometimes people say to me, this is the worst of
times and what are our children doing? And they really
lament where we are not excusing the fact that we
have challenges to overcome. But if we look back sixty
years ago, seventy years ago, and more even during the
time of civil war, we know that our country applied
(09:08):
itself its principles to be sure that when we sing
a national anthem and we look at each other as
fellow Americans, we know that we can accomplish everything that
we need in order to move on beyond the challenges
and struggles, to accomplish what we all hope to know
(09:28):
and do as fellow Americans. I am hopeful and I
do believe that as long as we have continued to
have the right to vote and the right to protest,
and all the other liberties that we've come to enjoy,
and there's nothing stopping us from becoming the land that
we need to be. But as our country continues to diversify,
(09:50):
and as the city of Houston, where I live, is,
by all accounts and proven by statisticians and demographers to
resemble the country in the year twenty fifty already, then
we have some thinking to do about what does it
mean to be a tolerant people? Do we only want
(10:12):
to continue to grow to be tolerant or is there
a new way to become mutually respectful too? I think
if we learn from and borrow George Washington's words, we'll
find that he too is beginning to understand a new
land in a new way that no one had ever
known before him. And certainly as he gained victory and
(10:34):
promise for the future. It was his hope that we
would continue to thrive as a nation, even as much
as we would change and so build saying goes, the
more things change, the more they stay the same. Every
generation will ultimately come to know that the world is
changing around it, but what we do with it it
(10:54):
will always be the reflection of who we are as
a generation and what we ultimately want to each the
next generation to do and to be as well. I
know that we speak sometimes of the greatest generation. It
doesn't mean that there can be another great generation. And
perhaps that's the promise that we can hold in our heart,
(11:15):
we can commit to with our hands, and as we
teach our own children and grandchildren to look around them
to see the diversity of people that they will come
to know, even more so than we did when we
were young. Perhaps they will be the role models for
us and brothers who are touched by their young lives
as they continue to make their way and build on
(11:36):
without discrediting the beautiful American values that we were born with,
that we were taught and we wish to convey to
every child and every person who calls America home. So
as you find time with your family and friends this
Fourth of July season, not just on the day, but
beyond it as well. I hope that the colors in
(11:58):
the sky inspire you and the foods delight you. The
friends that you welcome into your backyard or into your
home are those who are new or familiar and always
conveying the hope that we wish for each other. Not
to mean but to lift up, not to be discouraged,
(12:18):
but to be optimistic, and to know that sometimes we
have to join new hands and link new arms to
find our way, not to tolerate each other, but to
find real reasons to be mutually respectful. I'm Rabbi David
Lyon from Congregation Beth Israel in Houston, and to hear
this message again or to share it with someone else,
please find it in my podcast called Heart to Heart
(12:41):
with Rabbi David Lyon at Sunny ninety nine dot com
on the iHeartMedia app. This is a special season. Wherever
you might be on the West Coast, the East coast,
in the Midwest, or where I am in Houston, Texas,
we know that these are times filled with challenges for
(13:01):
all of us to think about and to do something
about too. But let's remember that we stand together in
a foundation that is built on American values, and all
of us have a place to stand together, to make
a difference and to be sure that what we are
building is something we want to leave for our children
and our grandchildren after us. The world changes, but perhaps
(13:26):
we can maintain some consistency, something durable that is America.
And as America continues, let's be sure that our children
can believe in the opportunity that this land provides them,
just as it has provided us, and that the American
dream is not something that is fading at all, but
becoming more brilliant and more optimistic than ever before, even
(13:50):
as the world changes so much so in technology and politics,
and economics and society. But that is the way of America.
We don't really want want to be America of seventeen
ninety when George Washington lived, but we do want to
take with us from his day the opportunity and hope
that all of us, as he said, quoting the Hebrew Bible,
(14:11):
that we should sit under our own vines and fig trees,
and there none of us shall ever be afraid, none
of us shall ever make each other afraid. But rather
we shall come to know the word that he surely
knew as a Hebrew reader and a student of the Bible,
shalloon real peace, real wholeness, and completeness. That's certainly my
(14:35):
hope for all of you, for all of us together
on the special day when we celebrate independence in America,
the United States of America. Thank you for joining me.
I look forward to being with you again next time.
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