Newport, Religious Liberty, and the Renewal of America

As America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, there is one place every American should visit: Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island.

Completed in 1763, Touro Synagogue is the oldest surviving synagogue building in the United States and one of the great symbols of the American experiment. It was here that President George Washington responded to the Newport Hebrew Congregation with words that have echoed through American history: the new nation, he wrote, would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”