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Fascinating and Lesser Known People Who Changed American History

Khalid Elhassan May 5, 2020 33 min

Normandy landings - Operation Overlord — Men of the 320th in Normandy. YouTube

39. The Jewish Commodore and Jefferson Fan

A young Uriah Levy in the US Navy. American Jewish Historical

US naval officer Uriah Phillips Levy (1792 – 1862) was one of the great characters of American Jewish history. An eccentric and pugnacious man, Levy was a shrewd and wealthy businessman. He was also an admirer of Thomas Jefferson – an admiration based on the third president’s track record of championing religious liberty.

As Levy put it: “I consider Thomas Jefferson to be one of the greatest men in American history. … He did much to mold our Republic in a form in which a man’s religion does not make him ineligible for political or governmental life“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.