PHILADELPHIA (JTA) — At a moment when institutions across the country are asking how to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia is putting Jews at the center of the origin story.

Its new exhibition, “The First Salute,” is about the tiny Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius and the relative handful of Sephardic Jewish merchants who were at the center of what became a pivotal moment in the Revolutionary War.

The show opens with a cinematic retelling of November 16, 1776, when the American brig Andrew Doria sailed into the island’s harbor flying the Grand Union flag, an early iteration of what became the Stars and Stripes. After firing a 13-gun salute, it received a return volley from the Dutch governor — an exchange widely regarded as the first formal recognition of the fledgling United States by a foreign power.

But as the exhibit, which runs through April 2027, makes clear, the diplomatic provocation was the culmination of a commercial and cultural drama in which Jews played an outsized role.

By the eve of the American Revolution, Sint Eustatius — known as the “Golden Rock” — had become one of the busiest free ports in the Atlantic world. Sugar, textiles, rum and, crucially, arms and gunpowder passed through its docks. Sephardic Jewish merchants, many of them descendants of refugees from Iberian persecution, had built far-flung family and business networks stretching from Amsterdam to the Caribbean.

“These were people who understood statelessness, vulnerability and opportunity all at once,” said Jonathan Sarna, one of the historians who consulted on the exhibit, at Wednesday’s media opening. “They leveraged those networks not only to survive, but to participate in what they recognized as a revolutionary moment.”

The exhibition argues that Jewish merchants on St. Eustatius were instrumental in supplying the American colonies with the matériel needed to sustain their war against Britain — a risky proposition that would eventually invite British retaliation. In 1781, British forces under Admiral George Rodney seized the island, targeting its Jewish population for plunder and deportation.

According to one of three major videos that anchor the exhibit, Rodney’s obsession with what he called the island’s “nest of vipers” allowed unhindered French ships to trap the British Army at Yorktown, forcing the surrender that effectively ended the Revolution.

The show is organized as a........

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