Touro Synogogue, Newport RI

We passed by this, the oldest synagogue in the US, founded in 1658 by Sephardic Jews on a hillside in Newport, a town then renowned for religious tolerance. From the Touro website...

In 1658, a group of fifteen Jewish families, hearing about Roger William's "Lively Experiment," where the civil government was devoid of power over spiritual matters, sailed into Newport harbor. These Sephardim (the Hebrew word for Jews from the region in the Iberian Peninsula that is now Spain and Portugal), who like their ancestors were seeking a haven from religious persecution, founded the second Jewish settlement in the colonies and Congregation Jeshuat Israel (Salvation of Israel). In 1677, they purchased and consecrated property as a Jewish cemetery, a place where they could bury their dead according to Jewish tradition.

With all the mansions on that Island, I have to say that this is the richest of all the gilt structures as it is a tribute to the potential of love and respect of differences in a nascent community. In it a letter hangs, written to the congregation by George Washington in 1790, in which he writes that the new nation would "… give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance."

Lovely, ardent words, but do they go far enough, ultimately? How much better to live in love and admiration than simply tolerance. If we can someday not only respect our differences, but love the infinite array of combinations our world seems to spawn by the second, all the more joy! But that infinity can be a little overwhelming at times, I think.