Jonas Phillips was not born into privilege. Born in Germany around 1736, he arrived in the American colonies in 1756 as an indentured servant to Moses Lindo, a Jewish indigo merchant in Charleston, South Carolina. After completing his service, Phillips moved north — first to Albany, then New York, and eventually Philadelphia. He became a merchant, married Rebecca Mendes Machado, raised a huge family with 21 children, and became deeply involved in Jewish communal life, helping build Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia, one of the historic synagogues of early American Jewish life.

But Phillips was not only a Jew living in America. He was a Jew who believed in America.

He supported the Revolutionary cause, served in the Philadelphia militia, and identified with the patriots who sought independence from Great Britain. In 1776, he wrote a letter in Yiddish to a relative in Europe and enclosed news of the Declaration of Independence. The British intercepted it and, apparently unable to read Yiddish, thought it might be some kind of code.

In a way, it was. It was the code of Jewish survival, holding on to his parents’ language, his faith and people while engaging the world around him. Eleven years later, Phillips wrote a much more consequential letter. In 1787, Pennsylvania’s state constitution required public officeholders not only to affirm belief in God, but also to affirm that the Old and New Testaments were divinely inspired. For a believing Jew, that meant public service required a violation of conscience.

So, on September 7, 1787, Phillips addressed a letter to George Washington, then president of the Constitutional Convention, and to the members of the........

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