Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Independence Day: Who We Were

This post at Wetmachine's Tales of the Sausage Factory (as in "you don't want to know what goes into sausage or legislation"), normally a great blog on telecom policy, is a terrific read for Independence Day.

It's about Asser Levy, one of the first Jews in Pieter Stuyvesant's Nieuw Amsterdam, who created, through lawsuits, the fundamentals of religious freedom in America: that there be no establishment of state religion, that citizens be allowed to freely exercise their religion; and that members of all faiths are equally citizens of this Land.

Asser Levy is today commemorated by a street in Manhattan.

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