Charlie:
[Adams] Furthermore the religious education you mentioned was Puritan. Had their been any Jews in Massachusetts back then, we would have had to pay taxes to support the Puritan religious schools, as were Christian minorities .. Adams would die in 1826 and Massachusetts would finally distablish its Puritan Church (by then, largely Unitarian in the eastern part of the state) in 1833.
Their logic was that religion is required to teach morals. As you are saying, there was a machloket whether there should be only a public Puritan church, or others can register too. As you mentioned it was resolved… If we were to pay taxes to support Puritan ministers – and have a right to have our own, this would not be much different from current situation, where we pay taxes to support government schools, and then open our own.
>> The first Jewish religious congregation would not be started until 1842. Like every other Ashkenazi congreatation in existence in the US at that time that has survived, it is not orthodox.
Well, you are cancelling Sephardim, like Puritans were cancelling Catholics 🙂