The Rabbis Who Gave America the Weekend

This July 4, the United States will celebrate 250 years of freedom. Among the most American of those freedoms is the First Amendment’s right to practice one’s religion as one chooses. Usually, we think of this right as a passive protection, a barrier the state will not cross. But religious freedom in America has rarely been so simple. In fact, in the case of two famous and consequential contests, it featured the efforts of two rabbis who, refusing to surrender the Jewish Sabbath, gave America one of its most vaunted institutions: the weekend.