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Overview

Jewish American Heritage Month is a month to celebrate the contributions Jewish Americans have made to America since they first arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654.

Jewish American Heritage Month had its origins in 1980 when Congress passed Pub. L. 96-237 which authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation designating a week in April or May as Jewish Heritage Week. President Carter issued this first proclamation, Presidential Proclamation 4752 in April 1980. In this proclamation President Carter spoke about the bountiful contributions made by the Jews to the culture and history of the United States. He also spoke of the significance of April 1980 in the Jewish calendar, which was the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Israeli Independence Day, and the Days of Remembrance of Victims and Survivors of the Holocaust.

Between 1981 and 1990, Congress annually passed public laws proclaiming a week in April or May as Jewish Heritage Week and Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush issued annual proclamations which detailed important events in the history of the Jews. In 1991, Congress passed Pub. L. 102-30 which requested the President designate the weeks of April 14-21, 1991 and May 3-10, 1992 as Jewish Heritage Week. In 1993, Congress passed Pub. L. 103-27 which requested the President designate the weeks of April 25-May 2, 1993 and April 10-17, 1994 as Jewish Heritage Week. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Clinton then issued three presidential proclamations between 1991and 1994 for Jewish Heritage Week.

Between 1995 and 2006, Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush issued a series of annual presidential proclamations designating a week in April or May of each year as Jewish Heritage Week. On April 24, 1998, President Clinton issued Presidential Proclamation 7087 which celebrates the many contributions of Jewish Americans along with the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel.

Then on February 14, 2006, Congress issued House Concurrent Resolution 315 which stated:

Resolved ... that Congress urges the President to issue each year a proclamation calling on State and local governments and the people of the United States to observe an American Jewish History Month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.

Pursuant to this, on April 20, 2006 President Bush issued the first Presidential Proclamation which designated May 2006 as Jewish American Heritage Month. Since 2007 Presidents George W. Bush, Obama and Trump have issued proclamations for Jewish American Heritage Month. These proclamations celebrate the contributions of Jewish Americans and urge the people of the United States to learn more about Jewish Americans.

Legislative Branch Material

The public laws between 1980 and 1993 which designate a week in April or May as "Jewish Heritage Week" can be found in the United States Statutes at Large which is available online and at many Federal depository libraries. The House Concurrent Resolution urging the president to designate a month in the year as Jewish American Heritage Month can also be found in the U.S. Statutes at Large. The specific citations are as follows:

Pub. L. 96-237, 94 Stat. 338 (1980)

Pub. L. 97-10, 95 Stat. 12 (1981)

Pub. L. 97-173, 96 Stat. 69 (1982)

Pub. L. 98-20, 97 Stat. 64 (1983)

Pub. L. 98-247, 98 Stat. 114 (1984)

Pub. L. 99-26, 99 Stat. 52 (1985)

Pub. L. 99-287, 100 Stat. 409 (1986)

Pub. L. 100-39, 101 Stat. 307 (1987)

Pub. L. 100-292, 102 Stat. 94 (1988)

Pub. L. 101-25, 103 Stat. 53 (1989)

Pub. L. 101-290, 104 Stat. 183 (1990)

Pub. L. 102-30, 105 Stat. 172 (1991)

Pub. L. 103-27, 107 Stat. 72 (1993)

H.Con.Res. 315, 120 Stat. 3712 (2006)

Executive Branch Documents

Presidential Proclamations and Executive Orders have been used by presidents to rule on substantive issues of law; to administrate the executive branch of government; and to make general announcements to the public. These general announcements which exhort the public to observe a holiday such as Thanksgiving or honor a particular group of citizens as in National Black History Month are usually issued in the form of a Presidential Proclamation. On many occasions Congress will pass a law specifically requesting the President to take certain action proclaiming the recognition of a particular group of citizens as Jewish or Hispanic Americans.

Listed below are links to examples of Presidential Proclamations for Jewish Heritage Week or Jewish American Heritage Month along with the citations to the Code of Federal Regulations or the Federal Register, the official publications for Presidential Proclamations.

To search for other Presidential Proclamations on the annual observances of Jewish Heritage Week, and Jewish American Heritage Month can be found through American Presidency Project by selecting the year and clicking on the Apply button.

Presidential proclamations as well as Presidential statements, messages, remarks for Jewish Heritage Week and Jewish American Heritage Month can be searched from the Government Printing Office's Advanced Search page in the collections for the Code of Federal Regulations, the Compilation of Presidential Documents and the Federal Register.

Proclamation No. 4752, 3 C.F.R. 55 (1980)

Proclamation No. 4844, 3 C.F.R. 30 (1981)

Proclamation No. 5321, 3 C.F.R. 33 (1985)

Proclamation No. 5652, 3 C.F.R. 69 (1987)

Proclamation No. 6272, 3 C.F.R. 42 (1991)

Proclamation No. 6665, 3 C.F.R. 26 (1994)

Proclamation No. 6788, 3 C.F.R. 32 (1995)

Proclamation No. 6887, 3 C.F.R. 28 (1996)

Proclamation No. 7423 (PDF), 3 C.F.R. 64 (2001)

Proclamation No. 8005 (PDF), 3 C.F.R. 42 (2006)

Proclamation No. 8136 (PDF), 3 C.F.R. 51 (2007)

Proclamation No. 8660 (PDF), 3 C.F.R. 43 (2011)

Proclamation No. 9109 (PDF), 3 C.F.R. 39 (2014)

Proclamation No. 9596, 3 C.F.R. 75, (2017)

Proclamation No. 9868, 84 F.R. 19685 (2019)

Web Resources

Library of Congress: Jewish American Heritage Month

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To view PDFs Back to Commemorative Observances Jewish American Heritage Month is a month to celebrate the contributions Jewish Americans have made to America since they first arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654. Jewish American Heritage Month had its origins in 1980 when Congress passed Pub. L.

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The ancient Middle Eastern setting

The Bible depicts the family of the Hebrew patriarchs- Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (all early 2nd millennium bce)-as having its chief seat in the northern Mesopotamian town of Harran, which then belonged to the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni. From there Abraham, the founder of the Hebrew people, is said to have migrated to Canaan (comprising roughly the region of modern Israel and Lebanon), which was a vortex of west Asian, Egyptian, and east Mediterranean cultures throughout the biblical period and later ages. From Canaan the Hebrew ancestors of the people of Israel (named after the patriarch Jacob, also called Israel) migrated to Egypt, where they lived in servitude; a few generations later they returned to occupy part of Canaan.

Sacrifice of Isaac© Renata Sedmakova/Shutterstock.com

Israelite culture initially resembled that of its surroundings; it was neither wholly original nor wholly primitive. The Hebrews were seminomadic herdsmen and occasionally farmers. Their tribal structure resembled that of the West Semitic steppe dwellers known from the 18th-century-bce tablets excavated at the north-central Mesopotamian city of Mari; their family customs and law have parallels in the Old Babylonian and Hurro-Semite law of the early and middle 2nd millennium. The conception of a messenger of God that underlies biblical prophecy was Amorite (West Semitic) and also found in the tablets at Mari. Mesopotamian religious and cultural conceptions are reflected in biblical cosmogony, primeval history (including the Flood story in Genesis 6:9-8:22), and law collections. The Canaanite component of Israelite culture consisted of the Hebrew language and a rich literary heritage-whose Ugaritic form (which flourished in the northern Syrian city of Ugarit from the mid-15th century to approximately 1200 bce) illuminates the Bible's poetry, style, mythological allusions, and religious or cultic terms. Egypt provides many analogues for Hebrew hymnody and wisdom literature. All the cultures among which the patriarchs lived had cosmic gods who fashioned the world and preserved its order, all had a developed ethical system expressed in law and moral admonitions, and all had elaborate religious rites and myths.

Although plainer when compared with some of the learned literary creations of Mesopotamia, Canaan, and Egypt, the earliest biblical writings are so imbued with contemporary ancient Middle Eastern elements that the once-held assumption that Israelite religion began on a preliterate level must be rejected. Late-born amid high civilizations, the Israelite religion had from the start features characteristic of all the known religions of the area. Implanted on the land bridge between Africa and Asia, it was exposed to crosscurrents of foreign thought throughout its history.

The pre-Mosaic period: the religion of the patriarchs

Israelite tradition identified YHWH (by scholarly convention pronounced Yahweh), the God of Israel, with the creator of the world, who had been known and worshipped from the beginning of time. Abraham did not discover this God but entered into a new covenantal relationship with him, in which Abraham was promised the land of Canaan and numerous progeny. God fulfilled that promise, it is believed, through the actions of the Hebrew leader Moses (14th-13th century bce): he liberated the people of Israel from Egypt, imposed covenantal obligations on them at Mt. Sinai, and brought them to the Promised Land.

SCALA/Art Resource, New York

Historical and anthropological studies present formidable objections to the continuity of YHWH worship from Adam (the biblical first man) to Moses. The Hebrew tradition itself, moreover, does not unanimously support even the more modest claim of the continuity of YHWH worship from Abraham to Moses. This lack of continuity is demonstrated in Exodus 6:3, which says that God revealed himself to the patriarchs not as YHWH but as El Shaddai-an archaic epithet of unknown meaning that is not specifically Israelite but is found throughout the patriarchal narratives and in the Book of Job. The epithet El Elyon (God Most High) also appears frequently in the patriarchal narratives. Neither of these epithets is used in postpatriarchal narratives (excepting the Book of Ruth). Other compounds with El are unique to Genesis: El Olam (God the Everlasting One), El Bethel (God Bethel), and El Roʾi (God of Vision). An additional peculiarity of the patriarchal stories is their use of the phrase "God of my [your, his] father." All these epithets have been taken as evidence that patriarchal religion differed from the worship of YHWH that began with Moses. A relation to a patron god was defined by revelations starting with Abraham (who never refers to the God of his father) and continuing with a succession of "founders" of his worship. Attached to the founder and his family, as befits the patron of wanderers, this unnamed deity acquired various Canaanite epithets (El, Elyon, Olam, Bethel, Qone Eretz ["Possessor of the Land"]) only after their immigration into Canaan. Whether the name of YHWH was known to the patriarchs is doubtful. It is significant that while the epithets Shaddai and El occur frequently in pre-Mosaic and Mosaic-age names, YHWH appears as an element only in the names of Yehoshuaʿ (Joshua) and perhaps of Jochebed-persons who were closely associated with Moses.

Titian: Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden SCALA/Art Resource, New York

The patriarchs are depicted as objects of God's blessing, protection, and providential care. Their response is loyalty and obedience and observance of a cult (i.e., a system of religious beliefs and practices) whose ordinary expression is sacrifice, vow, and prayer at an altar, stone pillar, or sacred tree. Circumcision was a distinctive mark of the cult community. The eschatology (doctrine of ultimate destiny) of their faith was God's promise of land and a great progeny. Any flagrant contradictions between patriarchal and later mores have presumably been censored; yet distinctive features of the post-Mosaic religion are absent. The God of the patriarchs shows nothing of YHWH's "jealousy"; no religious tension or contrast with their neighbours appears, and idolatry is scarcely an issue. The patriarchal covenant differed from the Mosaic, Sinaitic covenant in that it was modeled upon a royal grant to favourites and imposed no obligations as conditions of the people's happiness. Evidently not the same as the later religion of Israel, the patriarchal religion prepared the way for the later one through its familial basis, its personal call by the Deity, and its response of loyalty and obedience to him.

Little can be said of the relation between the religion of the patriarchs and the religions of Canaan. Known points of contact between them are the divine epithets mentioned above. Like the God of the fathers, El, the head of the Ugaritic pantheon, was depicted as both a judgmental and a compassionate deity. Baal (Lord), the aggressive young agricultural deity of Ugarit, is remarkably absent from Genesis. Yet the socioeconomic situation of the patriarchs was so different from the urban, mercantile, and monarchical background of the Ugaritic myths as to render any comparisons highly questionable.

The Mosaic period: foundations of the Israelite religion

According to Hebrew tradition, a famine caused the migration to Egypt of the band of 12 Hebrew families that later made up a tribal league in the land of Israel. The schematic character of this tradition does not impair the historicity of a migration to Egypt, an enslavement by Egyptians, and an escape from Egypt under an inspired leader by some component of the later Israelite tribes. To disallow these events, it can be argued, would make their centrality as articles of faith in the later religious beliefs of Israel inexplicable.

Tradition gives the following account of the birth of the nation. At the Exodus from Egypt (13th century bce), YHWH showed his faithfulness and power by liberating the Israelites from bondage and punishing their oppressors with plagues and drowning them in the sea. At Sinai he made the Israelites his people and gave them the terms of his covenant, regulating their conduct toward him and each other so as to make them a holy nation. After sustaining them miraculously during their 40-year trek in the wilderness, he enabled them to take the land that he had promised to their fathers, the patriarchs. Central to these events is Moses, who was commissioned by God to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, mediate God's covenant with them, and bring them to Canaan.

Ann Ronan Pictures/Heritage Image/age fotostock

Behind the legends and the multiform law collections, it is possible to discern a historical figure to whom the legends and the legislative activity can be attached. And it is precisely Moses' unusual combination of roles that makes him credible as a historical figure. Like Muhammad ( c. 570-632 ce) at the birth of Islam, Moses fills oracular, legislative, executive, and military functions. He shapes the main institutions of Israel: the priesthood and the sacred shrine, the covenant and its rules, and the administrative apparatus of the tribal league. Although Moses is compared to a prophet in various texts in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), he is never designated as one-the term being evidently unsuited for so comprehensive and unique a figure.

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Judaism - Biblical Judaism (20th-4th century bce)

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Judaism - Judaism - Biblical Judaism (20th-4th century bce): The Bible depicts the family of the Hebrew patriarchs-Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (all early 2nd millennium bce)-as having its chief seat in the northern Mesopotamian town of Harran, which then belonged to the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni.

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Encyclopedia of Jewish and Israeli history, politics and culture, with biographies, statistics, articles and documents on topics from anti-Semitism to Zionism.

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Encyclopedia of Jewish and Israeli history, politics and culture, with biographies, statistics, articles and documents on topics from anti-Semitism to Zionism.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Encyclopedia of Jewish and Israeli history, politics and culture, with biographies, statistics, articles and documents on topics from anti-Semitism to Zionism.