President Kennedy said, “No better tradition exists than the history of Touro Synagogue’s great contribution to the goals of freedom and justice for all.”

Drawn to the promise that in Roger Williams’ Rhode Island colony “none shall be disturbed in their worship,” Newport’s Sephardic Jewish settlers were innovators, helping lead the town into its economic and cultural “Golden Age.” It was to the Newport Jewish community that George Washington wrote his powerful “Letter to the Hebrew Congregation” in 1790, promising that the government of the United States would “give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

Newport is home to historic Touro Synagogue, the nation’s oldest Jewish house of worship. The Revolutionary War drove Newport, and especially its Jewish community, into decline but the synagogue was never abandoned or allowed to decay. Starting in the 1890s, a remarkable series of events led to the revitalization of the community and Touro Synagogue. In 1947, Congress declared the building a National Historic Shrine. Since then, the modern Jewish community of Newport has restored and beautified Touro Synagogue and its surrounding park and added the Loeb Visitors Center with interpretive exhibits on history and culture.

Melvin I. Urofsky’s lively history of the Jews of Newport and Touro Synagogue recounts that unique American experience.