President's Day
by Stan Schroeder (written on President's Day)

Abraham Lincoln and the Jews

By Marnie Winston-Macauley
(from aish.com)

Lincoln was the first President to make it possible for rabbis to serve as military chaplains by signing the 1862 Act of Congress, which changed the law that had barred all but Christian clergymen from the role. It all started on September 8, 1861, when a 30-year-old Philadelphia cantor, Michael Mitchell Allen, returned to his encampment with the 65th Regiment of the Fifth Pennsylvania Cavalry, known as Cameron’s Dragoons. The regiment of 1,200 men, mostly Jews, elected him their chaplain. Complaints flew up the military ladder. Lincoln then signed the Act and Jewish chaplains have been serving in the American Armed Forces ever since.

He was also the first, and happily, the only President who was called upon to revoke an official act of anti-Semitism by the U.S. government. He canceled General Ulysses S Grant's “Order No. 11” expelling all Jews in Tennessee from the district controlled by his armies during the Civil War. (Grant denied personal responsibility for this act, attributing it to his subordinate.)

Shortly after delivering the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln met Canadian Christian Zionist, Henry Wentworth Monk, who expressed hope that Jews who were being oppressed in Russia and Turkey be emancipated "by restoring them to their national home in Palestine." Lincoln replied this was "a noble dream and one shared by many Americans."

Factoid: Edward Rosewater, a young Jewish member of the Telegraphers Corps of the Union Army, transmitted President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in 1863. President Lincoln was a frequent visitor to read the field dispatches. After the war, Rosewater founded the Omaha Daily Bee, and was elected and appointed to public offices.

Lincoln and Jewish lawyer Abraham Jonas (1801-1864) were intimate confidantes. In one correspond-ence between them Lincoln wrote: "You are one of my most valued friends." The friendship began soon after Jonas settled in Quincy, Illinois in 1838. When Lincoln visited Quincy in 1854, he spent most of his time with Jonas, who came from Kentucky where he served in the State Legislature for four terms. From 1849 to 1851, he was postmaster and Lincoln re-appointed him in 1861. More, Jonas was one of the first to suggest Lincoln for the presidency when Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Daily Tribune, went to Quincy in December 1858 to meet with leading Republicans to discuss the election of 1860.

Lincoln and Jewish doctor Isachar Zacharie, an English-born chiropodist, met in September 1862 professionally. The President gave him the following testimonial: "Dr. Zacharie has operated on my feet with great success, and considerable addition to my comfort." Zacharie became both friend and emissary for Lincoln. The New York World wrote that the chiropodist "enjoyed Mr. Lincoln's confidence perhaps more than any other private individual." Zacharie also actively solicited the Jewish vote for Lincoln.

Lincoln was exceptionally generous to prominent rabbi Dr. Morris J. Raphall of Congregation B'nai Jeshurun. The Rabbi had met Lincoln only once, but asked a favor of the president regarding his son. Raphall told his congregants, Lincoln had "granted it lovingly, because he knew the speaker to be a Jew-because he knew him to be a true servant of the Lord." Lincoln did more for Raphall's son-in-law, Captain C. M. Levy. Levy had been distributing special food and clothing to Jewish soldiers in Washington's hospitals. When he was dismissed from service, Lincoln came to his rescue.

Ironically, the Lincoln head penny was designed by Russian-Jewish immigrant Victor David Brenner in 1909 to celebrate Lincoln’s 100th birthday. Happy birthday, Mr. President.

See poem in right hand column.

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Board Meeting Dvar Torah (October 2, 2019)
By Owen Delman

“Blind obedience without the restraint of reason or morality is dangerous.”

“Abraham should not be honored for willing to kill his child because of a command from God.”

“The key word is blind — this is the stuff of fanatics and terrorists.”

These are some of the concepts regarding the Akedah discussion today. There are rabbis who refuse to include the Akedah in their Rosh Hashanah services because the concept is unacceptable. They reject any of the interpretations which attempt to justify the basic premise of God commanding a sacrifice. Given the holocaust with the murderers using as a defense that they were “just following orders” (an example of ‘blind obedience’) they condemn the whole concept.

Bringing it into our present day, they say if there had been a trial of Abraham he would have used the defense of “God ordered me to do it” and that this is quite similar to the defense stated by the assassins of Yitzhak Rabin who claimed that to give any part of Israel back would be a denial of God’s plan for Israel.

So how should do we deal it?

In Stan’s Torah study group we often hear the refrain “but that can’t be true” or “but that doesn’t fit with something in another part of the bible.” The questioner gets reminded that these are stories, parables used for teaching concepts.

After services yesterday, (where I had posited a number of theories of what the Akedah meant) a friend came up to me and asked me which one was the correct interpretation.

I asked him with which one he felt most comfortable because there is no one answer.

The Bible is not history, not an accurate accounting of past events

Let me stop for a moment: I’ve studied history and literature. Let me explain the differences.  History is a written account of past events based on the author’s examination of events and documents to back up his conclusions. Literature is a creation of an author perhaps based on fact or wholly conceived by the author. The Akedah is a story in the Torah meant as a lesson; a piece of literature. In the study of literature it is accepted that it is less important what the author meant as opposed to what the reader sees in the work — how it affects him. There is no correct answer, only how the viewer is affected by the piece.

Once a piece of art (literature, painting, sculpture, etc.) is given to the world, it matters little what the artist meant. What is important is how it is perceived and how it affects the contemporary viewer.

When you understand the Akedah for what it is to our day, to us, it becomes much more understandable. Those rabbis who won’t even allow the Akedah to be part of their Rosh Hashanah story may be missing a wonderful teaching lesson for the sake of political correctness.