Jewish Historical Society Forms Committee to Celebrate Bicentennial of 1776 Revolution

The American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) has named three distinguished historians to head a committee which will formulate plans for the Society’s participation in the nation’s observance of the Bicentennial of the American Revolution in 1976. Dr. Abram L. Sachar, noted historian and Chancellor of Brandeis University, will direct the work of the Society’s Committee of ’76. He will be assisted by Dr. Jacob R. Marcus of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, an authority on American Jews of the Colonial period, and Dr. Oscar Handlin of Harvard, a Pulitzer Prize winning historian. The Committee, which will include leading figures of American Jewry, is now being formed and will hold its first meeting September 20. In announcing the formation of the Committee, AJHS President Abram Vossen Goodman said, “The Jews played an honorable part in the Revolution, and today’s American Jewry will participate in the bicentennial observances of that early struggle for freedom and by those observances will contribute to the further safeguarding of our inalienable rights – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”