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Editors’ Pick

November 26, 2025

Theodore Roosevelt’s Thanksgiving Message to New York City’s Jews

“Fine qualities of citizenship have been displayed by the men of Jewish faith.”

On Thanksgiving Day in 1905, New York Jews gathered in Carnegie Hall to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the city’s first Jewish congregation. The rabbi gave a sermon, holiday psalms of praise known as Hallel were recited, and Jacob Schiff—one of America’s foremost Jewish grandees—read a letter from then-President Theodore Roosevelt. As Stuart Halpern recounts, Roosevelt explained that he was moved to do so

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