July 6, 2026|כ"א תמוז ה' אלפים תשפ"ו America at 250: Gratitude Is Not Enough - It’s Time to Preserve America’s Biblical Soul By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

Americans have a funny way of celebrating their country’s birthday.

They gather around the grill, eat hamburgers and hot dogs, and watch fireworks light up the sky.

If you explained this to someone from another country, they might ask:
“How exactly do Americans celebrate the Declaration of Independence?”

And the answer would be:
“With hot dogs and hamburgers.”

And I have to admit – there’s something almost instinctively Jewish about that.

The Gemara teaches ein simcha ela b’basar v’ain simcha ela b’yayin – there is no true joy without meat and wine. Maybe the American translation is: there is no Fourth of July without a burger and a beer.

But Judaism doesn’t only teach us how to celebrate freedom.
It also helps us understand what freedom is for.

And in many ways, Judaism helped shape what America itself believes is worth celebrating.

This year marks an extraordinary milestone – 250 years since the Declaration of Independence.

As Jews, we have every reason to feel gratitude.

America has been extraordinarily good to the Jewish people. It gave us freedoms that Jews rarely enjoyed for long stretches of history. Here we built shuls, yeshivot, schools, camps, chesed organizations, and thriving Torah communities. I feel deeply grateful that my own family has been able to build a life here.

But on an anniversary like this, gratitude alone is not enough.

Because we tend to ask one question again and again:
What has America done for the Jews?

But perhaps we also need to ask a different question:
What have the Jews – and the Torah – done for America?

One of the most remarkable truths about America – one we often forget – is this:

The Hebrew Bible helped shape the moral imagination of this country.

Not because America became a Jewish nation – it didn’t.
But because its founders and early leaders repeatedly turned to Tanach to understand who they were, what kind of nation they were building, and what freedom was ultimately for.

Franklin and Jefferson, when asked to design the Great Seal of the United States, both independently chose scenes from Yetziat Mitzrayim. The Exodus was not just religious memory – it was the defining image of political freedom: a people leaving tyranny to serve God in liberty.

Thomas Paine, in his arguments against monarchy, didn’t begin with Greek philosophy. He turned to Sefer Shmuel – the biblical debate over kingship.

The Puritans understood their journey through the story of Bnei Yisrael: a people leaving oppression, entering the wilderness, and forming a covenant with God.

Across early America, towns were named after biblical places. Universities adopted Hebrew mottos. Presidents quoted Tanach in moments of crisis.

The language of American civic life – justice, liberty, covenant, moral responsibility – echoes the Hebrew Bible.

But it wasn’t only biblical stories that were borrowed.

It was a biblical vision:

That every human being is created b’tzelem Elokim.
That freedom is not only the absence of tyranny, but responsibility before God.
That liberty without moral limits eventually destroys itself.
And that a nation is sustained not only by shared interests, but by shared purpose.

And so the question naturally emerges:

Not only: what has America done for the Jews?
But: what have the Jews – and the Torah – done for America?

And perhaps the most important question of all:

Will we continue to do so?

Because if Torah helped shape America’s moral DNA, then the question becomes very practical.

So let me ask this very directly – what does that mean for us, sitting here as American Jews in 2026?

Here is how Parshat Pinchas speaks to us in this moment.

It quietly presents four yesodot – four foundations of any covenantal society, four anchors without which moral vision cannot endure, and four very practical responsibilities we carry as American Jews today.

Not abstract ideas.
But a way of life.

First: Pinchas.

Pinchas is the moment in the Torah when Israel is collapsing morally at Baal Peor – when boundaries are dissolving, confusion is spreading, and almost no one is willing to say clearly that something is wrong. Something is happening in real time: moral confusion is no longer theoretical – it is social, visible, and contagious.

Pinchas steps forward in that moment and reasserts a basic truth: a covenantal people cannot survive if everything becomes negotiable.

The Torah is not glorifying extremism. It is teaching something more basic and more difficult:
that moral clarity sometimes requires a person to say, calmly and firmly, “This is not who we are.”

And for us, that means something very simple: there are moments when silence itself becomes a statement. And Torah asks us not to be loud – but to be clear.

Second: the daughters of Tzelofchod.

Five sisters come before Moshe and say: our father died without sons, and we refuse to let his portion in Eretz Yisrael disappear.

This is about dignity – refusing erasure from the covenantal story.

And the takeaway is simple but real:
We are responsible to build Jewish life where every Jew feels seen, where no one feels invisible, and where people know they matter to Am Yisrael.

Third: the appointment of Yehoshua.

Moshe is told he will not enter the Land, and he asks God to appoint a leader so the people are not left without direction.

This is about continuity – leadership as transmission from generation to generation.

And the takeaway is direct:
we are transmitters whether we choose to be or not. The only question is what we transmit – confusion or clarity, fragility or confidence, loss or living Torah.

Fourth: the korban Tamid.

The daily offering brought morning and afternoon – no drama, no spotlight, just steady service.

And here is the Torah’s quiet truth:
Civilizations are not sustained by inspiration alone, but by consistency.

By showing up again tomorrow. And the next day.

And if we’re honest, this is probably the hardest part of Judaism – not the big moments of inspiration, but the ordinary Tuesday morning when you still show up for Shacharit even though your body is there before your neshama fully agreed to the plan.

Pinchas teaches moral clarity.
The daughters teach human dignity.
Yehoshua teaches transmission.
The Tamid teaches constancy.

Courage. Dignity. Continuity. Constancy.

Not ideas. But a way of life.

And this is where Parshat Pinchas meets our moment as American Jews.

There are voices today that suggest religion in America is weakening, even being pushed out of public life. And some voices suggest the relationship between America and Israel – or America and the Jewish State – is only strategic, only transactional, only about interests.

But I think both of those views miss something deeper.

Because as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks often taught, both America and Israel are built on more than power or geography – they are built on an idea: that life is accountable to something higher than the state.

That’s exactly what the 19th-century French observer Tocqueville noticed when he wrote that in America, religion and liberty are not in conflict but “intimately linked in joint reign over the same land.”

And John Adams put it even more strongly when he wrote that the Hebrew Bible has done more to civilize humanity than any other force in history.

Because the truth is simple:

Freedom without moral responsibility does not remain freedom.
Rights without obligation become entitlement.
And covenant without commitment becomes culture without depth.

So the question is not abstract.

It is very real.

Will we be among those who preserve moral clarity in a time of confusion?
Will we sustain a religious voice in a public world that increasingly forgets it?
And will we transmit – not only privately, but publicly – the moral imagination that shaped both Torah and the American experiment?

And now we return to where we began.

Burgers and fireworks – simple, joyful, American.

And honestly, there is something beautiful about that. Judaism understands that too. Joy is meant to be expressed in physical, human ways.

But America has not endured for 250 years because of fireworks.

It has endured because enough people lived with something deeper:

They lived with moral clarity when it wasn’t popular.
They lived with human dignity when it wasn’t convenient.
They lived with continuity when it required sacrifice.
And they lived with constancy when no one was watching.

Those are not only American ideals.

They are Torah ideals.

And so this Fourth of July, we do what Jews have always done with gratitude.

We thank God for the gift of this country.

But we do not stop there.

We recommit ourselves – to live as Jews who bring covenant into ordinary life, who speak with clarity without fear and without anger, who raise children with conviction, and who help ensure that America’s biblical moral imagination does not become history – but remains a living force in the present.

Because in the end, a covenant is not preserved by memory.

It is preserved by the people who choose to live it.

And the real question is not what America was built on – but whether we will be the generation that helps it remain what it was meant to become.