JEWISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH

May is Jewish American Heritage Month.  It was proclaimed to be so by President George W. Bush in 2006.  By 2004 there had been 350 years of American Jewish history, so it was about time to recognize the contribution of Jews to our national history.  In 2010, Jewish astronaut, Garrett Reisman, carried this presidential proclamation to the International Space Station.  It now resides at the new National Museum of Jewish American History in Philadelphia.

By April of 2015, the census of the Jewish state of Israel showed 6,251,000 Jewish residents out of a population of 8,345,000.  It may surprise you to know that the United States has approximately the same number of Jews as Israel, over six million!  New York City is the city with the second highest population of Jews in the world, 2,028,200 Jews, as of the year 2012.  The only city exceeding that number is Tel Aviv in Israel, with 3,214,800.

Jews have made an enormous contribution to the United States of America.  A few names that are easily recognized are Irving Berlin (composer of "God Bless America"), George Gershwin ("Rhapsody in Blue" pianist and composer), Houdini (magician), Groucho Marx (comedian), and Leonard Nimoy ("Star Trek" television star). I will tell of many more in following blogs.

However, the most famous Jew on the planet who has fans by the millions in the U.S.A. and billions in the world down through history is Jesus Christ, known by His Hebrew name, "Yeshua HaMashiach."  You may say that He walked the earth before the discovery of America, and you would be right. However, you may not know that He is the One who inspired the discovery of America, and there were many Jews who assisted Him.  Let us take a look at the beginnings of American history, starting with this Jew, Christopher Columbus.

The Jews were expelled from Spain in the same year and month that Christopher Columbus set out to discover the New World, 1492.  There was no doubt that he was a Catholic, but his parents were a new Christian family from Genoa, which implied in the 15th century that they had previously been Jewish, probably Spanish.  Most important of all the clues indicating that Columbus was Jewish was the fact that he signed his letters to his son Diego in the upper left corner with the Hebrew letters, bet hey, which stood for the Hebrew blessing, "Be Ezrat Ha Shem," or "with God's help."  Columbus was aware of his divine calling as evidenced in his words recorded in an obscure Spanish volume, Book of Prophecies:

     "It was the Lord who put into my mind (I could feel his hand upon me) the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies.  All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me.  There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because He comforted me with rays of marvelous inspiration from the Holy Scriptures ... I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.  It is simply the fulfillment of what Isaiah had prophesied ...." (August Kling, Jr. 1971. Quoted in Peter Marshall and David Manuel. The Light and the Glory, Fleming H. Revell Co., 1977.)

Columbus described in his journal the time when he dreamed that he heard a voice which reminded him that "the Almighty had singled him out ... for the honor of bearing the Light of Christ to a new world, had given him all that he had asked for, and was recording in heaven every event of his life!" (Marshall and Manuel 1977, p. 21)  Columbus, a Jew, was living out his destiny, blessing the world by discovering the New World, according to divine plan.

STAY TUNED FOR NEXT BLOG ON JEWISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH!