Yesterday was both Shabbat and the seventh day of Passover. It was also the 250th anniversary of what Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his poem Concord Hymn (1837), termed “the shot heard around the world”

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood

And fired the shot heard round the world.

The remembrance of the Jewish fight for freedom in ancient times and the battles that began the transformation of British colonies into a demo...