Drawn by the chance to celebrate 350 years of American Jewish history at the newest addition to the most historic square mile in the nation’s first capital, hundreds of people from across the country descended on Philadelphia to hear Vice President Joseph Biden announce that a new museum’s Jewish stories were, in fact, manifestations of distinctly American ideals.
“In telling the story of the American Jewish experience, this museum in my view, tells the story of America’s identity,” Biden said Sunday at festivities in front of the new $150 million home of the National Museum of American Jewish History.
In hailing the contributions of a host of American Jews, Biden – a Scranton, Pa., native who represented neighboring Delaware in the U.S. Senate before ascending to the White House – quoted from a diary entry written by the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, upon his 1940 departure from Lisbon, Portugal, and much-awaited arrival in the United States. The diary page is on permanent display in the museum’s “Only in America” exhibit, along with two other items connected to the Chabad-Lubavitch leader. (The museum also highlights the contributions of 17 other Jewish figures, including Dr. Jonas Salk and Albert Einstein.)
The Rebbe taught that “every living thing, and especially living persons, must not remain static, but [they are] expected to grow from strength to strength,” stated Biden, they “must always add even if [they have] already achieved good things and holy things. [They] should never be satisfied with what was achieved yesterday, no matter how perfect or good it was.”
Adding that the museum, “gives all of us the opportunity to make sure that we don’t remain static,” the Vice President emphasized that more can always be done to perfect the world.
After his remarks, the vice president instructed his Secret Service agents to invite Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, the director of the Lubavitcher Center in Philadelphia, to make his way from the audience and join him at the stage. The two embraced and conversed for several minutes.
Along with the diary entry, the museum’s display includes a Congressional Gold Medal posthumously awarded in 1995 on occasion of the Rebbe’s birthday and corresponding National Education Day, and a dollar that the Rebbe gave businessman Ronald Perelman to signify his participation in the philanthropist’s charitable distributions. On that bill, the Rebbe circled the words “In G‑d We Trust,” and in an attached letter, empowered Perelman to be an emissary to “spread the proclamation on the bill.”
According to Shemtov, who also serves as chairman of the umbrella organization of Agudas Chasidei Chabad, the vice president’s remarks were poignant. They encapsulated the Rebbe’s insistence that not only Jews living in America, but all Americans, remain steadfast in – as the words in the Declaration of Independence state – their “firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.”
The Rebbe’s guidance, noted Shemtov, strengthened a modern spiritual awakening on these shores and inspired generations of Jewish activists and leaders.
“The Rebbe restored confidence and faith and hope to the physically destitute who had given up, and the spiritually destitute, who had been given up on,” explained the rabbi. “He taught that a person must always do more to reach his potential.”
Other speakers on Sunday, including Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, pointed to the museum’s location – caddy corner to Independence Hall – as significant.
“Nowhere else but in Philadelphia,” said the mayor, “the cradle of American liberty, can this story be told so well or so honestly.”
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