Fireworks, parades, maybe a mixed martial arts smackdown on the White House lawn? Those are a few of the ways Americans will be marking the country’s 250th birthday. 

A Jerusalem-based yeshiva and an interfaith project started by a rabbi are suggesting a similar idea: a little learning. What would happen if you treated the Declaration of Independence the way Jewish tradition treats its own foundational texts — as documents to be pored and argued over, and put in conversation with ancient sources?

That’s the idea of “Talmud of America,” a collection of four essays published by the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, and Faith250, the brainchild of Rabbi Michael Holzman of Northern Virginia. 

“The Torah is a living document,” Rabbi Leon Morris, president of Pardes, told me recently. “Classic Jewish texts have something fresh and relevant to say about everything — including the Declaration of Independence.”

The four essays in “Talmud of America” — on equality, on “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” on the right of rebellion and on ideas of sacrifice and civic engagement — are written by Pardes faculty members Yiscah Smith, Leah Rosenthal, David I. Bernstein and Rabbi Rahel Berkovits. Each was born in America and lives in Israel.  

“Talmud of America” applies the techniques of the beit midrash — the Jewish study hall — to America’s founding document. The Talmud preserves its arguments, including the minority opinions and the unresolved disputes, because the wrestling matters as much as the conclusions. 

The idea for seeking common ground over “sacred” American documents arrives at a fraught moment. Liberal democracy is under pressure in the United States and in Israel, with rising authoritarian tendencies, deep polarization and the fraying of norms that once connected the two countries. With many also seeing the erosion of the wall between church and state, is reading American texts from the perspective of any faith group a helpful exercise? 

“Talmud of America” is a collection of four essays published by the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. (Pardes)

Holzman, a rabbi of the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation in Reston, Virginia, insists it is. Faith250 encourages churches, synagogues, mosques and temples to come together and read America’s “sacred texts” — including the Declaration and Emma Lazarus’ Statue of Liberty poem “The New Colossus” — as affirmations of shared civic values. So far, 246 congregations have signed........

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