“I always carried my little Book with me”: Benjamin Franklin and his Method for Examination. Digital collage — Shai Afsai
Benjamin Franklin’s Contribution to Jewish Practice
The Wisdom Daily, January 19, 2023
The American founding father, who was born on January 17, 1706, has had a lasting impact on Judaism.
How Benjamin Franklin became an antisemite
Atlanta Jewish Connector, November 15, 2021
The myth that American founding father Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706–April 17, 1790) was antisemitic first emerged 144 years after his passing, with the publication of a fraudulent and since then repeatedly discredited text commonly known as the “Franklin Prophecy.”
Benjamin Franklin and the Parable against Persecution
JewTh!nk, August 12, 2021
According to Benjamin Franklin’s correspondence with Benjamin Vaughan, the inspiration for his Parable against Persecution was taken “from an ancient Jewish tradition.” Franklin composed his version of the parable no later than 1755 and brought it with him from the American colonies to England. Exceedingly fond of hoaxes, he memorized the parable and would “read” it aloud from the Book of Genesis, thus “proving” the scriptural obligation of religious tolerance to his less biblically erudite listeners.
However, not only isn’t the Parable against Persecution found in Genesis, it may not even be based on “an ancient Jewish tradition.” The parable as a whole has no known rabbinic source, and no Jewish source has been discovered containing the key section of the parable in which Abraham learns the lesson of religious tolerance.
A Forgetting of Benjamin Franklin
JewTh!nk, April 16, 2021
Marking the passing of Ben Franklin on April 17, 1790
Rabbis and Jewish scholars have often been unaware of, confused about, or uncomfortable acknowledging American founding father Benjamin Franklin’s influence on Judaism. Franklin specialists have been largely oblivious to it.
How Rabbi Klein used Jewish ethics to help rehabilitate inmates
The Wisdom Daily, September 9, 2020
An interview with the rabbi who used a combination of musar and the teachings of Benjamin Franklin to help prison inmates on their path to rehabilitation
An earlier article about how Rabbi Eliahu Klein integrated Franklin’s autobiography and musar practice into a California rehabilitation program may be found here:
Benjamin Franklin’s virtues — and practical Jewish ethics in prison
The Jerusalem Report/The Jerusalem Post, May 14/21, 2020
PDF of the article from The Jerusalem Report print magazine, May 18, 2020, pp. 33–35
Rabbi Eliahu Klein at his home in Providence, Rhode Island. Photo — Shai Afsai
Segula: The Jewish History Magazine 50 (Kislev 5780/December 2019), pp. 54–63
Benjamin Franklin worked hard to refine his character, but it took a rabbi in Poland to turn the founding father’s method into a book. This volume became one of the texts used by the Lithuanian Musar movement — but its origins have been consistently overlooked.
Leading members of the Lithuanian Musar movement loved Rabbi Menahem Mendel Lefin of Satanów’s method of character refinement. But did they know where it came from?
See here for the Hebrew version of the article.
Benjamin Franklin’s Influence on Mussar Thought and Practice: a Chronicle of Misapprehension
Review of Rabbinic Judaism 22:2 (September 2019), pp. 228–276
Benjamin Franklin’s ideas and writings may be said to have had an impact on Jewish thought and practice. This influence occurred posthumously, primarily through his Autobiography and by way of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Lefin’s Sefer Cheshbon ha-Nefesh (Book of Spiritual Accounting, 1808), which introduced Franklin’s method for moral perfection to a Hebrew-reading Jewish audience.
This historical development has confused Judaic scholars, and Franklin specialists have been largely oblivious to it. Remedying the record on this matter illustrates how even within the presumably insular world of Eastern European rabbinic Judaism — far from the deism of the trans-Atlantic Enlightenment — pre-Reform, pre-Conservative Jewish religion was affected by broader currents of thought.
Benjamin Franklin and Judaism
Journal of the American Revolution, Annual Volume 2018 (Yardley: Westholme, 2018), pp. 291–304
Though not always able to offer definitive evidence of a link between the two men, since the nineteenth century Jewish scholars have affirmed that Sefer Heshbon Ha-nefesh (The Book of Spiritual Accounting) — a Hebrew work published in 1808 by the early Eastern European maskil (proponent of the Jewish Enlightenment) Rabbi Menahem Mendel Lefin of Satanów (1749–1826) — is based on the writings of Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790). Some scholars have been more specific in their source-attribution, noting that the method for self-examination and character improvement presented at greater length by Lefin in Spiritual Accounting is similar to one the American founding father outlined earlier in his famous Autobiography.
An earlier version of this article is available online:
Benjamin Franklin and Judaism, Journal of the American Revolution, November 17, 2016