Before 1776, each American colony had its own, uniquely phrased law about voter qualifications. Typically, white men over the age of 21 who owned 50 acres of land might vote, but the details varied by colony and were often a bit murky.
By 1865, it seemed self-evident that American emancipation resonated with biblical emancipation in powerful ways. But it had not always been so: This new resonance of meaning captured the hearts of American Jews only during the vicissitudes of the Civil War. Before the Civil War, most American Jews did not oppose slavery. There were exceptions, but most Jews voted Democrat, and Democrats were tolerant of slavery. The anti-slavery parties were tarred with nativism, which was distasteful and threatening to a Jewish community composed largely of immigrants and first-generation Americans. And many, including such luminaries as the Reform rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise and the Orthodox rabbi Morris Raphall, considered acceptance of American slavery consonant with the Bible, which documents slavery and sets parameters for its practice within the Israelite community.
The legacy of this half-forgotten conflict is an important one for those who care about religious freedom and religious pluralism today.
Like fanfic authors today, Franklin extended a beloved text in a direction that fulfilled his vision of it, that satisfied his questions and fired his imagination. In other words, he wrote midrash.
What I had naively imagined was this: Some central authority parceled out lists of names systematically to all of the Jewish communities around the world that read names aloud on Yom HaShoah
