Dear Friends,

In November 1905, Chester County, Pennsylvania, decided to make something more of the Thanksgiving holiday. Throughout the Delaware Valley region, municipal celebrations of Thanksgiving blended the traditional multicultural (however fraught) themes of Pilgrims and Native Americans with the 250th anniversary of the Dutch West India Company’s decision to grant privileges to the band of Jews who had arrived in New Amsterdam some six months prior.

The Jewish “take” on Thanksgiving was championed by non-Jewish local leaders, figuring, quite correctly, that the toleration of Jews in North America was an early instance of religious pluralism in the New World. In kind, the local press anticipated that the addition of the Jewish element to the Thanksgiving narrative “will be the most notable feature of this year’s holiday.”

The United States is preparing for a new 250th in 2026. Under the stewardship of America250, preparations are underway to deepen our understanding and widen our thinking about the Declaration of Independence and its impact on and promises for American life.

Here, too, the Jewish history offers a lot to consider. And while the Jewish experience, by comparison, has been exceptional in the United States—it’s no Horatio Alger tale. American Jewish history throws light on the complexities of religious freedom, the fragility of “race” and the loaded and latent forms of antisemitism packed into terms such as “dual loyalty” and “cosmopolitan elites.”

Gratz College has a very important role to play in this latest 250th. Our growing repositories of crucial collections will debut on the Grayzel platform in 2025. Our goal is to leverage our digital materials to enhance our degree programs and to exhibit them online. They will be freely available to anyone looking to learn from the successes, false starts, and work left to be accomplished by the women and men who gave birth to this nation some two hundred and fifty years ago.

With best wishes for a happy Thanksgiving,

Zev Eleff