The July 5, 1926 edition of the Honolulu Advertiser (today's Star Advertiser) featured this editorial, quoting Rabbi Abba Hillel Silber (or Silver). The year this was featured corresponded with the sesquicentennial of the founding of the United States of America in 1776.
Born in 1893 in Lithuania who was brought to New York City at aged 9, he would rise to be one of America's leading rabbis. Go to this web link for a site dedicated to his life and works.
What America Means
Source: Honolulu Advertiser, July 5, 1926.
In a recent address, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silber of Cleveland defines what America means to him as follows:
"To me America is definitely more than an aggregate of 110,000,000 people; to me America is all that the submerged races of the world wish to be and cannot; to me America is the concrete realization of what the ages have hoped for and labored for.
"It is a definition. It is a creed. It is a challenge. God built a continent of glory and filled it with treasures untold. He carpeted it with soft rolling prairies and pillared it with thundering mountains. He studded it with soft flowing fountains and traced it with long winding streams. He graced it with deep shadowed forests and filled them with song.
Then he called unto a thousand peoples and summoned the bravest among them. They came from the ends of earth, each bearing a gift and a hope. The glory of adventure was in their eyes and the glory of hope within their souls. And out of the labor of men and the bounty of earth, out of the prayers of men and the hopes of the world, God fashioned a nation in love, blessed it with a purpose sublime and called it 'America'!"
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