Normally, the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies teaches students to examine Jewish texts, but Rabbi Leon Morris, president of Pardes, decided to direct the institution’s analytical skills toward a different meaningful text: the Declaration of Independence.

On Sunday, Pardes announced the publication of Talmud of America, a collection of Pardes faculty commentaries on phrases from the Declaration rooted in Jewish texts. It is one of many initiatives in the Jewish world celebrating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.

“We really wanted to give the American Jewish community a birthday gift,” Morris told eJewishPhilanthropy. “We didn’t want to produce something parve, that just showed that all of the ideas that are in the Declaration of Independence, we actually had them in the Torah first. We wanted it to be more sophisticated, more interesting and more filled with tension.”

Much of that tension comes from the distance between the ideals in America’s founding document and the real world in which they exist. Every commentator in the collection holds joint citizenship in America and Israel, a choice Morris stressed when curating who would participate in the project.

“Both countries have a big idealistic, aspirational vision, and as with any vision, we haven’t achieved the full flourishing of those projects. And that’s [reflected] in this whole set of essays and in the Talmud of America — that we’re aspiring for something more.”

Educator and author Yiscah Smith’s essay explores the difference between the modern American view of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” and the classic Jewish view, finding that they do not align.

In the American sense, she said, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are a birthright, a promise given to all citizens. But in the Jewish sense, rights, freedom and happiness are not guaranteed based on someone’s place of residence or their economic status, but earned through actions and relation to Torah.  

Born on Long Island, Smith was brought up with an American flag billowing outside her family’s house. Her father was in the Navy. “I grew up as a baby boomer with Jewish pride,” she told eJP. “America was good to my grandparents and my parents. Really good. My father was able to really rise economically and also all of us educationally, and that’s part of my background.”

Smith’s birthday falls on July 3. “My mom always used to say, when I was little, ‘We celebrate your birthday on July 3 and the rest of the country the next day,” she said.

But the America of today is not the America she and her sisters, who still live in the U.S., grew up in, she said. “I don’t identify with the breakdown of the values that have become excessively materialistic, self-absorbed, even atheistic.”

Seen against the long arc of  Jewish history, 250 years makes America a relatively young country, Smith said, and the terms the essays in the collection grapple with had very different meanings to the country’s founders than they do today.

“I really do believe that the Founding Fathers, as religious Christians, had a very different concept of ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness’ than what younger people, or even middle-aged people today, are assuming that they’re entitled to,” she said.

Another essay in the collection, by Pardes senior faculty member Rabbi Rahel Berkovits, wrestles with the phrase “that all men are created equal,” a declaration that did not include women and people of color when it was first proclaimed.

Berkovits’ essay looks at the oft-quoted Talmudic statement that anyone who saves one life, has saved an entire world. In actuality, the Torah teaches that all humans are created in God’s image, but the printed edition of the Mishnah in Sanhedrin, which was colored by the oppression Jews faced when it was written, states that anyone who saves a Jewish life saves the world.

The essay, Morris said, is “dealing with the tension that exists in everything between the ideal and the real.”

Additional essays in the collection include a contemplation on “Prudence and the Right of Rebellion” by Leah Rosenthal, the Shapira Family Chair in Rabbinic Literature, and a senior educator in Talmud at Pardes, and “Our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” by David Bernstein, dean emeritus of Pardes.

The Talmud of America initiative was funded by Maimonides Fund, and Pardes partnered with the JCC Association, UJA-Federation of New York, the Jewish Federations of North America and others to get the word out about the project, which offers free digital or physical copies to anyone. Pardes printed 13,000 copies and plans to send 10,000  to their entire mailing list, with the remaining 3,000 available on a first-come, first-served basis. 

“We’re prepared to send bulk quantities of this to any JCC or synagogue or school that wants them,” Morris said. Additionally, the initiative offers educational resources including lesson plans based on each commentary, which can be used in high schools, Hillels and adult education programs.

Pardes also partnered with Civic Spirit, a New York-based nonprofit that works with schools to strengthen civic education. Civic Spirit is distributing its own version of Talmud of America to connected Jewish schools, with an additional essay written by its executive director, Rabbi Charles Savenor.

Morris hopes the Talmud of America will be used in congregations to inspire conversations around the Shabbat table, especially since the Fourth of July falls on Shabbat this year. 

This project is important at a time when America is polarized, Morris said. “Text study and conversation and discussion and debate unify because in the midst of all of our diverse perspectives we all are engaged with the same text, and that’s what we wanted to offer the American Jewish community this Independence Day.”