Jewish Voices in Early America (Institute for Curriculum Services)

Middle School (Grades 6-8)

High School (Grades 9-12)

A primary source lesson from the Institute for Curriculum Services on how America’s first Jewish communities, most of them Sephardic, fought for religious liberty and the right to participate in civic life.

Overview

In 1654, twenty three Jewish refugees from Brazil, Sephardic Jews whose families had fled the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, arrived in New Amsterdam. In this primary source lesson from the Institute for Curriculum Services, students follow early American Jews as they pressed for religious liberty and the right to vote and hold office, from state constitutions of 1776 to Moses Seixas’s 1790 letter to George Washington and Maryland’s 1826 “Jew Bill.”

Questions Students Explore

  1. How did the Jewish community work to expand religious liberty and civic participation in early America?
  2. What is the difference between religious tolerance and religious liberty?
  3. How did state constitutions limit who could participate in government?

What Students Do

  • Analyze a 1750 colonial map and a painting of New Amsterdam in 1654.
  • Compare the religious requirements in three 1776 state constitutions.
  • Investigate case studies: Jonas Phillips’s letter to the Constitutional Convention, the Seixas and Washington letters, and Jacob Cohen and Maryland’s relief bill.

At a Glance

Grade level: Grades 6 to 12; Civics, Government, and U.S. History
Time: About 90 minutes
Source: Institute for Curriculum Services (2026), with support from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program

About this resource

This lesson was created by the Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS). It is not a JIMENA lesson. The lesson plan, background reading, slides, primary sources, and handouts are free on the ICS website.

View the full lesson on ICS  Opens on icsresources.org

Procedures

Before You Teach

  • Download the lesson plan, historical background, slides, and handouts from the ICS lesson page.
  • Bring out the Sephardic story. Point out that the 1654 refugees, the Seixas family, and the Newport congregation were Sephardic Jews whose ancestors had been expelled from Spain and Portugal, and that their synagogue in Newport, built in 1763 and now known as Touro Synagogue, is the oldest standing synagogue in the United States.
Body of Lesson

Lesson Sequence

  1. Hook: what does representative government require?
  2. Religious diversity in the colonies, using a 1750 map.
  3. Zoom in on Jewish arrivals, beginning with New Amsterdam in 1654.
  4. Religion in three 1776 state constitutions.
  5. From independence to the First Amendment.
  6. Case studies: Jonas Phillips (1787), Moses Seixas and George Washington (1790), and Jacob Cohen and Maryland (1818 to 1826).
Conclusion

Assessment

Students complete an exit ticket, a one pager, or a diary entry in the voice of an early American Jew.

Extension Activities
  • Go back to the beginning. Explore the expulsions from Spain and Portugal in the Sephardi & Mizrahi Education Toolkit.
  • Washington’s letter. Students read George Washington’s full 1790 reply to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport and discuss the phrase “to bigotry no sanction.”
  • Later arrivals. Compare the 1654 refugees with the Jews who came to America from the Middle East and North Africa in the twentieth century, using JIMENA’s Oral History collection.
Resources and External Links