In response to an apparently coordinated set of bomb threats to 10 Jewish Community Centers around the country, Ivanka Trump Kushner recently tweeted, “America is a nation built on the principle of religious tolerance.” We are sure that she had good intentions, but her understanding of this country’s values is incomplete. America is not built on the principle of religious tolerance. It is built on the principle of religious freedom and equality.
George Washington explained the difference in his 1790 letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. “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.” Instead, he wrote, “the Government of the United States, 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.”
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