A more than civil relationship

Abraham Lincoln’s support for the 150,000 Jews in his America transcended religious and ideological differences.

By ELAINE MARGOLIN
Abraham Lincoln's first presidential portrait. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Abraham Lincoln's first presidential portrait.
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Ask any American Jew what they know about Abraham Lincoln’s relationship with the Jews and they will probably say, “What relationship?” But elite scholars of American Judaism Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell have joined forces to produce a fascinating volume that chronicles Lincoln’s ongoing support for the Jews.
Lincoln and the Jews: A History is beautifully illustrated with copies of handwritten letters, maps and photographs from the Library of Congress that show us, in Lincoln’s shaky but recognizable scrawl, his hands-on intervention on behalf of America’s Jews.
There were only about 150,000 Jews in the US as the Civil War beckoned, but anti-Semitism was alive and thriving in both the military and civilian populations.
Jews were not deemed worthy of full citizenship; they were seen as foreigners who threatened the status quo.
Lincoln was born in 1809 in rural Kentucky, where there weren’t any Jews. By almost all accounts, he was a decent and humble man raised in numbing poverty.
Shapell began collecting documents about Lincoln over three decades ago, and was awed by the raw compassion and wisdom that infused Lincoln’s private letters and speeches. He found several letters Lincoln wrote that revealed the depth of his compassion for the Jewish people and the Jewish religion.
Lincoln met Jews when he went to Illinois to practice law. One of the letters Chapell uncovered contained Lincoln’s declaration of friendship to Abraham Jonas, a Jew who supported the bid for the presidency and became a cherished friend. When Jonas lay dying in 1864, Lincoln permitted the former’s son, a Confederate officer imprisoned by the Union Army, to be released to go visit his ailing father.
Another few letters handwritten by Lincoln are testimonials about his foot doctor, the Jewish chiropodist Issachar Zacharie, who treated Lincoln for his ongoing foot troubles.
Lincoln used his presidential authority to repeatedly aid the Jews. When the 7,000 Jewish Union soldiers requested rabbis to tend to their spiritual needs, he complied. When Gen. Ulysses S. Grant issued his notorious Order No. 11 expelling all Jews from the war zone because he was convinced they were smugglers, Lincoln immediately reversed the order, saying, “I do not like to hear a class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners.”
Moreover, during the Civil War, Lincoln employed Jewish quartermasters who were responsible for housing, transportation, clothing and supplies for troops, beginning with Moritz Pinner and eventually hiring another 51 Jewish quartermasters to assist him in his war against slavery and the Confederacy.
Sarna and Chapell agree that Lincoln “represented Jews, admired Jews, commissioned Jews, defended Jews, pardoned Jews, consulted with Jews and extended rights to Jews.” Both authors indicate Lincoln’s positive experiences dealing with Jews allowed him to transcend the ugliness of the anti-Semitic sentiment that could be found everywhere.
Lincoln even began to change his rhetoric to include those in the country who were not Christian, by using phrases in his speeches like, “This nation under God” – which he used in his famous Gettysburg Address in 1863 after the Union troops triumphed.
The speech, which was only a few minutes long, emphasized the principles of human equality as the keystone of progress, democracy and freedom.
The authors do not shy away from the roles Jews played with regard to slavery. Many Jews in both the North and the South did not fight it; in fact, there were some who vigorously fought for it. We learn sadly about Rabbi Morris J. Raphall (1798-1868), an Orthodox rabbi who opposed Lincoln and justified slavery on the basis of his interpretation of the Bible, saying, “How dare you, in the face of the sanction and protection afforded to slave property in the Ten Commandments, how dare you denounce slaveholding as a sin?” Another rabbi, Bernard Illowy of Baltimore, attacked Lincoln for his anti- slavery stance.
Overall, there were some Jews who supported the Union and Lincoln and opposed slavery, other Jews who supported the Union but were willing to compromise on slavery, and still others who justified slavery and vilified Lincoln.
Lincoln seemed to be naturally imbued with a ferocious independence of mind and spirit; he refused to be compromised by the darker forces that had come before him. For example, Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States (1801-1809), called Jewish ideas about God “degrading and injurious.”
Jefferson labeled Jewish ethics “not only imperfect, but often irreconcilable with the sound dictates of reason and morality,” and believed Jews had a “wretched depravity of sentiment and manners.”
Perhaps it is ugly revelations like these that make both Sarna and Shapell take such solace in Lincoln’s fair-mindedness.
Yet, sometimes, their love affair with Lincoln seems to blind them to the more complicated reality of Jewish life in America back then – and now. Being Jewish in America today is certainly better than it was then, but it is still a complex negotiation, filled with ambivalence and confusion about identity and belonging, and the chafing need to accommodate others’ expectations.
But for some Jews, America has been a wonderland, and Sarna seems to fit into this mix. Sarna teaches at Brandeis, as does his wife. His father also taught there for many decades; his name was Nahum Sarna and he was a renowned biblical scholar who arrived in America from London in 1951. Sarna’s paternal grandfather, Jacob Sarna, left Poland for England where he became a rare Jewish books dealer. Sarna’s daughter attended Yale; his son works for Google as a computer analyst. One senses his incredibly smart, tight-knit and loving family has been blessed with an abundance of opportunities in the US, and has thrived accordingly. America has been a place of refuge for them; far away from the forces that made his grandfather Jacob flee Poland for England so many years ago.
Shapell’s parents, both Holocaust survivors, found refuge in America after the war. His parents built one of the most successful real estate development companies in California, and have worked tirelessly for years to promote Holocaust awareness by collecting and preserving the physical evidence of the Holocaust in a museum they have helped fund. Shapell and his two siblings were born in America, where their parents held on to the hope that they would be able to live without fear.
Both authors still seem to be holding on to that hope, to the promise of a genuinely inclusive America – one that Abraham Lincoln spoke so eloquently about over 150 years ago.