Edward G. Lengel
The following excerpt is from a chapter titled “Washington’s Visions” in Edward G. Lengel’s book Inventing George Wastington. Lengel examines some of the spiritual and religious myths and traditions associated with George Washington, such as his praying at Valley Forge, the subject of several famous pieces of artwork including The Prayer at Valley Forge (1866) by Henry Brueckner, The Prayer at Valley Forge (1976) by Arnold Friberg, and the stained-glass window in the Congressional Prayer Room in Washington, D.C.
Not all the religious traditions of Washington at Valley Forge are Christian. In the 1880s and 1890s, some books claimed that Washington had visited one Daniel Hart, a Jew living in Philadelphia. The visit probably never took place—there is no primary evidence for it—but in this simple form the story amounted to just another of the relatively harmless “George Washington slept here” stories common in local folklore. But it did not end there. Sometime in the twentieth century stories circulated—probably orally—that Washington had told Hart of an episode at Valley Forge on the evening of Christmas Day 1777. Entering a shack where some soldiers had bedded down, the story goes, Washington noticed a young soldier off in a corner, softly crying. The general asked the lad what troubled him and noticed that he held a strange lamp. The soldier replied that it was his Hanukkah lamp and that he was a Jew recently arrived from Poland. He then told Washington about how the lamp commemorated the victory of a small band of Israelites over a much larger foe and explained that he had cried in hopes that the Continental army would experience the same kind of victory. The experience, Washington allegedly told Hart, inspired him to fight on against all odds. Taking hold among the Jewish American immigrant community, the legend spread and appeared in several books—most recently Stephen Krensky’s award-winning children’s book, Hanukkah at Valley Forge (2006). The story, says Krensky, “is based on facts, but the tale itself must be taken on faith.”1
(2011)