Fireworks, parades, maybe a mixed martial arts smackdown on the White House lawn? Those are a few of the ways Americans will be marking the country’s 250th birthday.
A Jerusalem-based yeshiva and an interfaith project started by a rabbi are suggesting a similar idea: a little learning. What would happen if you treated the Declaration of Independence the way Jewish tradition treats its own foundational texts - as documents to be pored and argued over, and put in conversation with ancient sources?
That’s the idea of “Talmud of America,” a collection of four essays published by the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, and Faith250, the brainchild of Rabbi Michael Holzman of Northern Virginia.
“The Torah is a living document,” Rabbi Leon Morris, president of Pardes, said recently. “Classic Jewish texts have something fresh and relevant to say about everything - including the Declaration of Independence.”
The four essays in “Talmud of America” - on equality, on “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” on the right of rebellion, and on ideas of sacrifice and civic engagement - are written by Pardes faculty members Yiscah Smith, Leah Rosenthal, David I. Bernstein, and Rabbi Rahel Berkovits. Each was born in America and lives in Israel.
“Talmud of America” applies the techniques of the beit midrash - the Jewish study hall - to America’s founding document. The Talmud preserves its arguments, including the minority opinions and the unresolved disputes, because the wrestling matters as much as the conclusions.
The idea for seeking common ground over “sacred” American documents arrives at a fraught moment. Liberal democracy is under pressure in the United States and in Israel, with rising authoritarian tendencies, deep polarization, and the fraying of norms that once connected the two countries. With many also seeing the erosion of the wall between church and state, is reading American texts from the perspective of any faith group a helpful exercise?
Holzman, a rabbi of the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation in Reston, Virginia, insists it is. Faith250 encourages churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples to come together and read America’s “sacred texts” - including the Declaration and Emma Lazarus’ Statue of Liberty poem “The New Colossus” - as affirmations of shared civic values. So far, 246 congregations have signed up.
“We desperately need a sense of dignity between American citizens at a moment when all of the cultural forces are pushing us towards conflict,” Holzman said in an interview on Monday. “So we decided to try out this methodology of studying American documents the way we study scripture, and then see how people react to encounters with their neighbors over these shared treasured documents.”
Holzman called the conversations he attended “magical.”
“It’s something to behold because people walk in with this really profound sense of anxiety that they’re going to talk about America with a bunch of strangers,” he said. “And then you see them interact with each other over dinner [and study] and you just watch the anxiety evaporate right in front of you.”
Evangelicals embrace MAGA Republicanism, rabbi says
Although not by design, most of the participants have been Jewish and mainline Protestant, with fewer Catholic, African-American, and Latter-day Saint congregations. Evangelical churches tend not to engage in interfaith work, said Holzman. “The Evangelical church, although it’s a very loose term, has broadly embraced MAGA Republicanism,” he said. “They’ve opted out.”
A project like Faith250 acts in some ways as a counterweight to efforts to put a distinctly Christian stamp on the anniversary, as seen at the “National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving” hosted by the Trump administration last month. That modestly attended event on the National Mall featured mostly Christian pastors from the religious right.
Critics of the “Jubilee” event said it reinforced a one-sided Christian narrative at the expense of the First Amendment, a theme of several efforts this year by groups on the Christian right. In April, the Evangelical Liberty University hosted an academic conference to explore America’s “Christian heritage” and to assert the “biblical principles” presenters say animated the founders.
Although some Jewish scholars insist on the “Hebraic echoes” in the American political tradition, the Pardes project isn’t out to prove that America is founded on Jewish ideas. Instead, the authors offer close readings of the Declaration of Independence and draw on Jewish texts for exercises in comparison and contrast.
“We didn’t want to produce something that just said, ‘Oh, all these great American ideals? We had them in the Torah first,” said Morris. “We wanted it to be filled with nuance and tension.”
'Talmud of America' project analyzes concepts of equality. liberty
Morris was also careful to say that the project is not driven by a political agenda; nonetheless, each essay deals with concepts bedeviling Americans - and, to some extent, Israelis - on the milestone birthday.
Berkovits, in her essay on equality, traces “all men are created equal” to the creation story in Genesis - but then, as Talmud scholars are wont to do, runs into a textual problem: Are some more equal than others? A famous passage in the Mishnah Sanhedrin declares each person “a world entire,” which, in its original form, applied to all human beings, Jew and non-Jew alike. Later, however, editors added the words “from Israel,” narrowing the universal to the particular.
Similarly, the Founding Fathers limited their conception of equality, in their case excluding women and enslaved people from their grand proclamations. Berkovits suggests both traditions were subject to a human problem that hasn’t been resolved, either over the past 250 years or over the past two millennia.
In her essay on “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Smith argues that America is still dealing with tensions that arise over the notion of rights. The Declaration’s conception of “rights,” Smith contends, was very different from the rabbis’. While Thomas Jefferson describes rights as “inalienable,” Jewish tradition insists that rights must be earned through merit and the fulfillment of obligations.
As a result, Smith worries that too many Americans, out of a sense of entitlement, have chosen self-gratification over a life of service and focusing on the needs of others.
“I’m not convinced that 250 years ago people were as self-centered and self-absorbed as now,” she said in an interview. “I’m going to be 75, and I can tell you: When I was in college protesting the Vietnam War, I didn’t hear as many people saying ‘you’re violating my rights’ the way I hear it today.”
Rosenthal asks what may be the most crucial question in these divisive times: What are the limits on resistance to an unjust government, and when does the accumulation of injustice justify overturning established authority?
A late-2025 PRRI poll reported that 20% of Americans agreed with the statement that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” A separate PBS News/NPR/Marist poll found that number closer to 30%, showing a sharp rise from previous years across all political affiliations.
Rosenthal’s essay compares the Declaration’s justification for legitimate rebellion - “a long train of abuses and usurpations” - to a Talmudic debate over when the rulings of a court can be overturned. In contrast to the Declaration’s calls for rebellion, Rosenthal paraphrases a “more nuanced position” by the Talmudic sage Rav Nachman: “He resists a system in which every dissatisfaction becomes grounds for reversal. Stability requires a measure of acceptance, even in the face of imperfect outcomes.”
Bernstein, meanwhile, finds a point of convergence between American and Jewish texts. Both traditions call for sacrifice, even martyrdom, in the service of a higher cause. But they also insist that citizenship is not only about heroic action but also about the daily work of living in and creating a just society. “Both traditions converge on a profound insight: the ultimate test of commitment is not only what one is willing to die for, but how one chooses to live,” he writes.
As for when these ideals fall short, Morris noted that the founding documents of both Israel and the United States are “incredibly aspirational” texts, and that a society that stops wrestling with them is a society in trouble. He floated a future project: a Torah commentary on Israel’s Declaration of Independence. “It’s really the basis of a constitution that we don’t yet have,” he said.
Smith said Jews have a particular need to revisit America’s founding ideals. Having just returned from a speaking tour in the United States, Smith encountered a Jewish community gripped by fear of antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and a cultural climate in which Jewish identity feels increasingly embattled.
“American Jews need to know they can be American and they can be Jewish,” Smith said. “The whole Declaration of Independence is very much inspired and affected by core Jewish values. That really needs to be brought to their attention. I think we’re at the right place at the right time.”
“Talmud of America” is available free of charge to synagogues, Jewish community centers, educators, and anyone interested.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.