I hope that, along with all of you, I am an unabashed patriot believing in the resilience of this nation to mindfully meet the expectations the founders of this country set for it.

In August of 1790, Moses Seixas, an official of Touro Synagogue in Rhode Island, wrote a letter of admiration and blessing to President George Washington, to which the President replied:

“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation .... 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, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Though political storms and lapses of leadership periodically battered our nation through the course of history, our citizenry has typically responded with courage and inspiration. And from the time of the Declaration of Independence until now, despite divisions on the home front, the members of our military have resolutely stood united on the ramparts of freedom and decency, hallmarks of our nation’s spirit.

In the imagery of “The Building of the Ship” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, our ship of state has passed through troubled waters, and yet we have persevered:

“For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o’er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives!”

This country has nourished freedom of religion and thereby has been formed one of the greatest and safest Jewish and other immigrant communities in history.

The principles of which George Washington spoke and the values anchoring our Constitution illuminate this nation’s history and formulate our national commitments to justice and righteousness and peace. At times when those principles are under attack, the men and women of our armed services have been sent forth as a bulwark against villainy. Our armed services are our vanguard of universal decency and they have been the defenders of the powerless who are caught in the clutches of murderous armies or imperious and brutal overlords.

These men and women who fought and died in faraway places may not have agreed with the policies for which they did battle, but they served our nation with a commitment to national service and patriotic duty.

On this Memorial Day weekend let the words inscribed in a Presidential Proclamation guide us to commit to our “sacred duty to remember the courageous warriors who have made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure that our great country would endure. It is our responsibility to strive to ensure that their noble acts of dedication to our country and the cause of freedom were not in vain and to comfort the families they have left behind, who bear the heartbreak of their loss.”

In Longfellow’s words this, too, becomes our vision and our prayer:

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O UNION, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

In spite of rock and tempest’s roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee, — are all with thee!