It started as a mystery.
During a lecture in England last December, Jonathan Sarna, America's foremost scholar of American Jewish history, said he did not know the whereabouts of one of American Jewry's most important documents: George Washington's letter to the Hebrew Congregation, in Newport, R.I.
Upon this yellowed piece of 18th-century rag paper is a short but powerful statement from the first president of the United States reassuring one of the original colonial congregations that his nascent government guaranteed religious liberty for all.
"For, happily,"� Washington wrote to the Jews of Newport in 1790, "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."�
More than a vital piece of American Jewish history, the letter is one of the primary documents guaranteeing religious tolerance in America, its famous words still quoted by community leaders and politicians whenever they want to underline America's commitment to religious liberty.
But where is the letter?
After months of searching, the Forward has found the elusive letter in an art storage facility in a squat, nondescript building in an industrial park in Maryland, a stone's throw from the home of the Washington Redskins, at FedEx Field. The letter is owned by the Morris Morgenstern Foundation and has been on loan to the B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum for more than 50 years.
The letter has not always been hidden from sight "” it was originally displayed in the exhibition hall of B'nai B'rith International's headquarters, on Rhode Island Avenue, in Washington. But when B'nai B'rith sold that building and moved to smaller offices in 2002, there was no longer space for the entire collection, and so a significant portion of it was put into storage.
Over the years, the Library of Congress asked for permission to exhibit the letter, as did the new National Museum of American Jewish History. All requests were denied. During the Forward's investigation, it became clear that many scholars did not even know where it was, who owned it and why it was not on public view.
B'nai B'rith would not give permission to publish a photograph of the original letter in the Forward.
Washington's correspondence to Newport's Hebrew Congregation is not the only letter he wrote to the Jewish community at that time. Washington wrote two more letters: one to the community in Savannah, Ga; the other, a combined letter to the communities in New York; Philadelphia; Charleston, S.C., and Richmond, Va.
Newport was singled out, Sarna explained, as part of a public relations campaign Washington waged on behalf of the new U.S. Constitution. Though the Constitution needed to be ratified by only nine of the original 13 states, Washington wanted a unanimous vote. "Rhode Island was the great holdout,"� Sarna said, "because it thought that it would be bullied into signing."�
So Washington made a deal: If Rhode Island approved the Constitution, Washington and his entourage would personally make a state visit there.
After Rhode Island ratified the Constitution, Washington and Thomas Jefferson toured the state in August 1790, stopping in Providence and Newport.
In Newport, Moses Seixas, president of the local congregation, presented a communication on behalf of the Jewish community, praising Washington's victory and giving thanks for the establishment of a government that guaranteed "civil and religious liberty."�
Indeed, were it not for Seixas's eloquence "” his letter expressed gratitude for the establishment of "a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance"� "” then perhaps Washington's response, which copies Seixas's phrasing almost word for word, would not be nearly as powerful as it is today.
Steve Frank, chief interpretative officer of the National Constitution Center, said that Washington replied to many religious groups and communities in those days. But the Newport letter is special precisely because of the language. "The ringing tones of the declaration really set it apart,"� Frank said.
But when Frank was asked where he thought the letter was, he, like Sarna, was unsure.
Other scholars were puzzled, too. Susan Malbin, director of library and archives at the American Jewish Historical Society, said she did not know where to find the letter. Sharon Mintz, curator of Jewish art at the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, did not know where to find it either. Neither did Tony Michaels, professor of history and Jewish studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, nor Zachary Baker, curator of the Judaica and Hebraica collections at Stanford University.
Finally, Sharon Bender, B'nai B'rith's spokeswoman, said that a private organization, the Morris Morgenstern Foundation, owned the letter and had loaned it to B'nai B'rith about 50 years ago. "Our current offices do not have space for a museum,"� she wrote in an e-mail. "Therefore, the letter is now stored in a climate-controlled fine arts storage facility and is not readily accessible."�
If you want to see the Declaration of Independence, you can go to the National Archives. If you want to see Washington's letter to the Jews of New York, Philadelphia, Charleston and Richmond, you can go to the new Jewish history museum in Philadelphia.
But if you want to see Washington's letter to the Jews of Newport, you have to drive about 25 minutes from downtown Washington, to an art storage facility in suburban Maryland. And you're not allowed to ask any questions.
Such were the conditions laid down by B'nai B'rith for the Forward's June 10 visit to Artex Fine Art Services. There, in a warehouse, atop a palette covered by a blue drop cloth and flanked by two Artex employees and Cheryl Kempler, the museum's sole remaining employee, is Washington's letter.
The letter is extremely sensitive to light, heat and humidity. Even during the Klutznick Museum's heyday, when it attracted about 40,000 visitors a year, the document was on display only a couple of months of the year.
The Artex employees ensured that the temperature in the warehouse was carefully controlled. Dwarfed by towering shelves and enormous, canvas-shaped cardboard boxes, the 220-year-old letter looked fragile. There are no distinguishing features "” no letterhead, stamp or seal "” just row upon row of very straight, handwritten lines.
Ahead of this visit, James Hutson, chief of the manuscript division at the Library of Congress, had advised that the most important factor to note was the condition of the paper. To the untrained eye, the letter looked fine. It was resting on what seemed to be a piece of cardboard and had been covered by what looked like acid-free paper.
"The lines are very straight,"� Bender said.
Anyone who has tried to chase down the whereabouts of Washington's letter has ended the search at the Morgenstern foundation.
Morgenstern's life "” he died in 1969 "” has a Horatio Alger ring to it that is common to Jews of a certain era. He grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side in the late 19th century, and made his first living selling newspapers and shining shoes.
Somehow, he parlayed such humble beginnings into a career as a wealthy financier and philanthropist who, according to The New York Times, often claimed to have "the most diversified philanthropic portfolio in the United States."�
"He was an exuberant person,"� said Howard Rubenstein, a New York PR guru whose clients include the New York Yankees and Rupert Murdoch. "He was short "” maybe 5' 2"� "” but he was very tall in spirit."�
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