‘Four Score and Seven Years Ago’: A Jewish link

One of the greatest personal and political legacies in American history is certainly that of Abraham Lincoln. This is not the result of his image on the penny or the five dollar bill, nor from your driving through the Lincoln Tunnel; his legacy derives from his living a life that reflected his deepest passions for the basic foundational beliefs of this nation’s founding fathers as reflected in the opening words of our Declaration of Independence and the preamble of the United States Constitution.

This week I wish to bring to your attention a new work about Lincoln, the latest among many recent works about him, “We Called Him Rabbi Abraham: A Documentary History” (Southern Illinois Press) by Gary Phillip Zola, executive director of the Jacob Marcus Rader Center of the American Jewish Archives.

This work goes into great detail concerning Lincoln’s relationships, both directly and indirectly, with the American Jewish community of his time. In terms of his personal regard to the dignity of our faith, there is no lack of references to Lincoln’s high regard for our traditions and scripture. 

Next Wednesday, Nov. 19, marks the 151 anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, and in respect to this great event I choose to reference Dr. Zola’s scholarship as it concerns a famous phrase in that greatest of all prose written in the English language.

On July 4, 1863, a morning Shabbat service was taking place in Philadelphia, 90 miles from the just concluded Battle of Gettysburg. The rabbi leading the congregation, Mikve Yisrael, was the Italian-born scholar Sabato Morais. At the time of the sermon it was still not known who won the battle whose destiny it was to be a turning point of the Civil War. The rabbi’s somber tone and demeanor was to be reflected by this circumstance.

Dr. Zola in his work presents the full text of Rabbi Morais’ sermon and details the following background: