Though now in his senior years, retired Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. can still remember his encounters with anti-Semitism as a youth at The Harvey School in Katonah and The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn.
In one instance, the students cheered as they were shown some of the first images of the Holocaust. Afterward, a student came up to the young Loeb and said, “We hate Hitler, but at least he killed the Jews.”
Such experiences stay with you, though Loeb recalls them now with a certain rueful irony.
“My family did everything to turn us into WASPs,” he says of his father, John L. Sr., an investment specialist whose company was a predecessor of Shearson Lehman/American Express, and his mother, the former Frances Lehman, whose name adorns the art center at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, among other cultural institutions. “We celebrated Christmas. My father was on the board of Temple Emanu-El, but he didn”™t attend.”
The younger Loeb”™s early experiences with anti-Semitism plunged the history buff into a lifelong exploration of its roots and imbued him with a passion for religious freedom. Loeb can be described in many ways ”“ as an investment counselor; Purchase resident; former ambassador to Denmark; collector of 19th-century Danish paintings that have been shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan and the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn.; winemaker on the Sonoma-Loeb label. But it”™s fair to say that he is most proud of being the founder of the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom and the Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Visitors Center at the Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I.
Situated across from the synagogue amid a cluster of historic buildings, the $12-million center opened last year to introduce visitors to the temple (1763), the oldest extant Jewish synagogue in North America, and to entertain the issue of religious freedom that was so integral to our country”™s founding. Visitors can use touch screens to learn about prominent Jews throughout American history and read a copy of the 1790 letter that Washington wrote to synagogue cantor Moses Seixas in response to his missive congratulating him on achieving the presidency of the new nation.
Evoking a passage from the Book of Micah, Washington wrote in part:
“For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens ”¦ while everyone shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Seated in the creamy yellow TV room of his Purchase home beneath some of the elegantly spare Danish paintings in his collection, the tall, dapper Loeb says that America has in general achieved the ideals Washington embraced in that letter:
“I think at the moment we”™ve fundamentally changed. People like Mel Gibson may say extremist things. But in politics, government, we”™ve fundamentally changed.”
Loeb, however, wants to make sure that future generations don”™t forget the lessons of Washington”™s letter. That”™s why the George Washington Institute has partnered with The Bill of Rights Institute in Washington D.C. and the Massachusetts-based Facing History and Ourselves for teacher training.
The George Washington Institute also sponsors an essay contest on Washington”™s letter for students at Harrison High School, Rogers High School in Newport and yes, The Hotchkiss School.
With all of these elements in place, Loeb says, “I”™m thrilled and relieved.”
Though he takes great pride in his art collection and his wine-making, the institute and visitors”™ center are something quite special:
“This is what I hope will be my legacy.”
For more on the Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Visitors Center, log on to loeb-tourovisitorscenter.org
