Oldest active US synagogue opens RI visitor center.

[elleng]

NEWPORT, R.I. -- The Touro Synagogue was barely 25 years old when George Washington offered a vision of religious tolerance in a letter he sent its congregants.

The new American government, the president wrote in the most famous passage of the 1790 letter, "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance."

A copy of the letter is the highlight of a new $12 million visitors center opening Sunday next to the Touro Synagogue, the oldest existing Jewish house of worship in the United States.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/01/AR2009080101426.html?hpid=sec-religion