February 2009

Amateur historian Stephen M. Astrachan, a longtime admirer of Abraham Lincoln, is one of the thousands of American Jews who will join in the commemoration of the 16^th President’s 200^th birthday on February 12^th. With that milestone fast approaching, there is once again interest in the possibility that Mr. Lincoln was, if not Jewish, then, perhaps of Jewish descent.

It is a notion that has been swirling around the American-Jewish community ever since Mr. Lincoln was murdered on April 14, 1865.

Historians like Mr. Astrachan do not think it’s true, but, they say, it is evidence of the strong bonds of affection Jews still feel for the 16^th President.

The evidence cited for his status as a Jew is, at best, flimsy. Some say just the fact that he was named "Abraham;" his sister, who died in childbirth at the age of 19, was named "Sarah;" and that they had a great-grandfather named Mordechai Lincoln is "proof" enough that Abraham Lincoln, if not halachically Jewish, must have had Jewish blood.

Fortunately, for those who enjoy this sort of historical scavenger hunt, there are additional clues as well.

His ancestors, at least on his father’s side, came to the New World from the town of Lincoln in eastern England. By 1150, thanks to the cloth and wool it produced which could be exported to Flanders, Lincoln was one of the wealthiest towns in England and home to one of the most important Jewish communities in the country.

St. Hugh, the Bishop of Lincoln, instructed his parishioners to love the Jews, which fostered a climate in which Jews could flourish. Rabbi Joseph of Lincoln was a scholar who is mentioned in the Talmud, and Aaron of Lincoln was a financier whose operations extended throughout England.

Antisemitic incidents were not unknown in Lincoln. In 1190, antisemitic Crusader riots, that began elsewhere in the country, spread to Lincoln, and the Jews took refuge with the Sheriff who granted them sanctuary. Most of the Jews’ homes were burned and their possessions plundered.

But this was not as bad as the crisis that struck the community in 1255, when prominent Jews of Lincoln were accused of the ritual murder of a Christian boy. In medieval folklore, the boy, who probably drowned accidently, is known as "Little Saint Hugh."

A local Jew named Jopin was arrested and after being threatened with torture, "confessed" not only to killing the boy but also to engaging, along with the entire Jewish community, in "the Jewish custom of annually crucifying a Christian child."

Jopin was executed, but, unfortunately for the community, it was in King Henry III’s interest not to let the matter rest. Six months earlier, he had sold his right to tax the Jews to his brother, Richard, Earl of Cornwall. Having lost this source of income, Henry bestowed upon himself the right to confiscate the property of any Jew found guilty of a crime.

The king, thus, demanded that the Jewish community of Lincoln be investigated, and 91 Jews were arrested and taken to the Tower of London on charges of involvement in the ritual murder. Eighteen of them were hanged. The rest were pardoned and freed, probably because Richard, who saw a potential threat to his own source of income, intervened on their behalf with his brother.

In 1290, all the Jews of England, including, of course, those in Lincoln, were expelled from the country.

While the vast majority of Lincoln’s Jews left, some historians suspect that, as in Spain, a few remained and practiced Judaism secretly.

Mr. Lincoln’s family undoubtedly took their surname from the town, a custom followed frequently by Jews.

There is no question that throughout his life he enjoyed Jewish friendships, and, as President, Mr. Astrachan says, "was a protector of and friend to the Jews."

As an example, Mr. Astrachan points to the official discrimination faced by the Jewish community at the beginning of the Civil War when legislation restricted chaplaincy in the army to clergy of the Christian faith.

"Members of the Jewish community energetically protested this exclusion. Petitions to change the law were submitted, including one in the US Senate presented by Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, later the author of the 13^th Amendment ending slavery," says Mr. Astrachan.

Mr. Lincoln responded to the chaplaincy issue in a letter dated December 14, 1861, addressed to Rabbi Dr Arnold Fischell, the spiritual leader of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York, who was one of those who had lobbied for a change in the law.

"I find that there are several particulars in which the present law in regard to Chaplains in supposed to be deficient, all of which I now design presently to the appropriate Committee of Congress. I shall try to have a new law broad enough to cover what is desired by you in behalf of the Israelites," wrote Mr. Lincoln.

"President Lincoln was as good as his word," says Mr. Astrachan.

On March 26, 1862, the Chaplaincy Act was amended to allow for brigade chaplains "one or more of which shall be of the Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish religion."

Just a few months later, in early December, Mr. Lincoln received a letter from Bernhard Behrend, a Jewish resident of Narrowsburg, New York. Although his son, Adajah, was still a minor, Mr. Behrend had given him permission to enlist in the Union Army.

"I thought it was his duty, and I gave him my advice to fulfill his duty as a good citizen, and he has done so. At the same time, I taught him also to observe the Sabbath on Saturday, when it would not hinder him from fulfilling his duty in the army," wrote Mr. Behrend.

The problem was, just two weeks earlier, Mr. Lincoln had recommended that his officers and troops be allowed to observe the Sabbath on Sunday "because we are a Christian people."

Mr. Behrend reminded the President that, according to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the people of the United States are "not a Christian people, but a free, sovereign people with equal rights," especially "the right and liberty to live according to his own consciousness in religious matters."

In his letter, Mr. Behrend made the case for all soldiers who did not, for whatever reasons, observe Sunday as the Sabbath. Jews and Seventh-Day Baptists, he wrote, should enjoy the Sabbath on Saturday, while "the heathen or the so-called infidels, who do not want to celebrate either Sunday or Saturday as a Sabbath, but choose perhaps some other day as a day of rest" should have that privilege, too.

"Now I stand before you as your namesake Abraham stood before G-d Almighty in days of yore, and asked, ‘Shall not the Judge of all earth do justice?’ So I ask your Excellency, the first man and President of all the United States, shall you not do justice? Shall you not give the same privilege to a minority of the army that you give to the majority of it? I beseech you to make provision, and to proclaim in another order, that also all those in the army who celebrate another day as the Sunday may be allowed to celebrate that day which they think is the right day according to their own conscience; and this will be exactly lawful, as the Constitution of the United States ordains it, and at the same time it will be exactly according to the teaching of the Bible, as recorded in Leviticus: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,’" wrote Mr. Behrend, who, for some reason, closed his letter with an apology for his poor English and assurances that " I love my country, the Constitution, and the Union, and I try to be always a loyal citizen."

According to Dr. Gary Behrend of Raleigh, NC, a descendant of Mr. Behrend, the son, Adajah Behrend, served as a hospital steward and an officer in the field. He later became "a legendary physician" in Washington, DC, and died in 1932 at the age of 91.

According to Mr. Astrachan, the Jewish community’s reaction and obvious comfort level with Mr. Lincoln, coupled with his responsiveness "set an important precedent for the far more dangerous threat that was to follow."

On December 17, 1862, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant issued his infamous General Order No. 11, which, among its other provisions, barred Jews "as a class" from residence in the large territory under his command.

According to Mr. Astrachan, Mr. Grant’s motivations ranged from his objections to the "considerable trade" between Jewish businessmen in Union territory and the Confederate population to his suspicions that some Jewish suppliers were overcharging the army.

Some say it was blatant antisemitism in the ranks of the Union Army that led to the order.

In any case, Mr. Grant, who was heavily engaged in prosecuting the war campaign to capture the heavily defended Confederate-held city of Vicksburg, was also responsible for issuing trade licenses in the Western territories of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. He evidently resented having to deal with the distraction of trade and he was easily convinced that Jews were mostly responsible for the black market in cotton.

"As has happened so often in Jewish history, all were blamed for the misdeeds, real or imagined, of the few," says Mr. Astrachan.

Under General Order No. 11, the US Army actually began the forcible expulsion of Jewish families, most of whom had nothing to do with the cotton trade, from their homes in many of the Western territories of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.

Once again, the Jews fought back with organized protests. Ceasor Kaskel, representing the Jewish community of Paducah, KY, dispatched a telegram to Mr. Lincoln, condemning Mr. Grant’s order as "the grossest violation of the Constitution and our rights as good citizens under it."

The telegram noted that if the Order were enforced, it would "place us as outlaws before the world."

"We respectfully ask your immediate attention to this enormous outrage on all law and humanity," Mr. Kaskel said in closing.

Throughout the Union, Jewish groups protested and sent telegrams to Washington, attracting significant attention to the issue in Congress and from the press.

Some newspapers supported Mr. Grant’s action. The Washington Chronicle, for example, criticized Jews as "scavengers of commerce." But most were strongly opposed. The New York Times denounced the Order as "humiliating" and a "revival of the spirit of the medieval ages."

On January 3, 1863, Mr. Kaskel arrived with a Jewish delegation in Washington. After a brief meeting with Cincinnati Congressman John A Gurley, he went, without an appointment, directly to the White House, where Mr. Lincoln received the delegation and studied Mr. Kaskel’s copies of General Order No. 11 and the specific order expelling Mr. Kaskel and his family from Paducah.

"Once Mr. Lincoln understood what was at issue, a remarkable and historic exchange took place," says Mr. Astrachan.

Lincoln: "And so the children of Israel were driven from the happy land of Canaan?"

Kaskel: "Yes, and that is why we have come unto Father Abraham’s bosom, asking for protection."

Lincoln: "And this protection they shall have at once."

"Thus, President Lincoln overruled the order of his popular and successful general in a war that, in January 1863, he was very far from winning," says Mr. Astrachan, adding that he wishes President Franklin Delano Roosevelt "had taken a similar stance towards Japanese-Americans in California in 1942."

Mr. Lincoln left it to General-in-Chief Henry Wager Halleck to break the news to the volatile Mr. Grant, which he did. But one of Mr. Halleck’s staff officers softened the blow by telling Mr. Grant that the problem lay with the "excessive scope" of General Order No. 11. "Had the word ‘peddler’ been inserted after ‘Jew,’ I do not suppose any exception would have been taken to the order," said the officer.

According to Mr. Halleck, Mr. Lincoln had "no objection to expelling traitors and Jew peddlers, which, I suppose, was the object of your order, but as in terms proscribing an entire religious class, some of whom are fighting in our ranks, the President deemed it necessary to revoke it."

In fact, many of Mr. Grant’s subordinates expressed concern at General Order No. 11 for just that reason. One Jewish officer resigned in protest.

After the Civil War, General Order No. 11 became an issue in the Presidential election of 1868 in which Mr. Grant ran as the Republican. The Democrats raised the issue, hoping the memory of Order No. 11 would prompt Jewish voters to turn against the Republicans, the party to which most of them gave their allegiance, in so small measure because of the closeness of the ties between their community and Mr. Lincoln.

Feeling the pressure, Mr. Grant repudiated the controversial order, claiming it had been drafted by subordinate and that he had signed the document without reading it. This seemed to satisfy the Jewish community, most of whom voted for Mr. Grant, who won the election.

Mr. Ashrachan points out that Mr. Lincoln’s kindness and protection toward the Jewish community were not limited to acts of state, "but reached to the most human and personal level."

For example, one of his closest friends was Abraham Jonas of Quincy, Illinois. The Jewish Mr. Jonas, an attorney, seems to have been the first person to suggest Mr. Lincoln for the Presidency. Mr. Jonas served the President not only as a confidante, but also as a close and trusted advisor.

In 1860, in a letter marked "private," Mr. Jonas, who had personal ties with his extended family throughout the South and especially in Louisiana, where his six children resided, warned Mr. Lincoln that he had been informed by a relative in New Orleans that "large numbers of desperate characters will be in Washington...and it is their determination to prevent the inauguration, and if by no other means, by using violence on the person of Lincoln."

In 1864, when Mr. Jonas lay dying, Mr. Lincoln was able to repay the man he had called "one of my most valued friends."

Like many families, the Jonases were divided during the war. Abraham Jonas’s son, Charles, was unable to be at his father’s side because, as a Confederate soldier, he had been taken prisoner of war and was incarcerated on Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie.

In a 1908 letter to author and researcher Isaac Markens, Charles Jonas, then 77, explained that his mother and sister asked Mr. Lincoln to allow Charles to see his father before his death.

"President Lincoln granted the request without hesitation and issued an order to the Commandant at the prison to liberate me on parole to visit my dying father. This was done at once, and I reached Quincy on the day of my father’s death, but in time to be recognized and welcomed by him," wrote Mr. Jonas.

Mr. Astrachan pointed out that President Lincoln’s action, taken during a time of national crisis "as serious and threatening as any this country has faced," makes his kindness to the Jonas family all the more laudatory.

Another prominent Jew who had reason to thank Mr. Lincoln for assisting with a family matter was the spiritual leader of New York’s Congregation Bnai Jeshurun, Rev Dr. Morris J. Raphall, whose renown as an orator landed him the distinction of being the first rabbi ever to open a session of the House of Representatives with a prayer.

With the help of book publisher Adolphus Solomons, Rabbi Raphall first met with Mr. Lincoln to request that his son be promoted from second lieutenant to first. After Mr. Lincoln was assassinated, Rabbi Raphall told his congregation that he had asked a favor of the President and that it was "granted lovingly, because he knew the speaker to be a Jew, because he knew him to be a true servant of the Lord."

But Mr. Lincoln proved much more important to the family when he intervened on behalf of Rabbi Raphall’s son-in-law, Captain C.M. Levy. As an officer with the Quartermaster Department, Mr. Levy was discovered distributing special food and clothing to Jewish soldiers in Washington’s hospitals, and, as a result, was court-martialed and dismissed from service.

While it is unclear exactly what the President did, from the grateful letter sent by Rabbi Raphall, it is assumed he responded with his fabled compassion.

Rabbi Raphall thanked him "for the generosity and justice with which you have treated my son-in-law."

"My whole family unites with me in feeling that you are his true benefactor. Happy shall we be that anything you may at any time require of me or them, is thankfully obeyed by all of us," he wrote, sending his "sincere prayers for your continued health and prosperity."

Another close Jewish friend of Mr. Lincoln was Dr. Isachar Zacharie, an English-born chiropodist who first met the President in 1862 on a professional call. According to Mr. Lincoln, "Dr. Zacharie…operated on my feet with great success and considerable attention to my comfort."

But their relationship grew very close quite quickly. Within a few months of their first meeting, Dr. Zacharie was being sent on missions as Mr. Lincoln’s special emissary.

In 1864, the New York World wrote that Dr. Zacharie "enjoyed Mr. Lincoln’s confidence perhaps more than any other private individual."

Dr. Zacharie was also heavily involved in politics on behalf of Mr. Lincoln. He actively solicited the "Jewish vote" during the President’s 1864 re-election campaign.

As important as these interpersonal relationships with Mr. Lincoln were to the Jewish community, Mr. Astrachan says attention should also be paid to the "Jewish" way the 16^th President looked at the whole issue of war. According to Mr. Astrachan, Jewish concepts and laws regarding how war should be waged "may have contributed to his controversial Civil War policy on pardons."

For example, in Deuteronomy, Israelites are commanded by G-d to allow men who have built a home but not yet dedicated it, or planted a vineyard but not yet used the fruit, or became betrothed but not yet married, to leave the battlefield and return home.

Even the soldier who finds himself "fearful and faint-hearted" must be excused from the war.

These conditions are generally seen as the Torah’s way of emphasizing the primacy of peaceful, constructive everyday life even in the chaos and destruction of war, however necessary and just.

"President Lincoln may well have relied on his deep understanding of these laws to formulate his very controversial Civil War policy of liberally pardoning deserters and others sentenced to death by military tribunals. His many pardons were generally approved by the soldiers and the public, but an anathema to the generals, the Secretary of War, and the Attorney General," says Mr. Astrachan.

He notes that many historians consider Mr. Lincoln’s policy to be a sign of his deep humanity and astute political instincts.

"Their origin, however, may lie in the earliest period of his development and growth," says Mr. Astrachan.

Although Mr. Lincoln was born into poverty in a backwater section of the Kentucky frontier, his ambition to better himself was not discouraged. In a place where books were rare, he found and digested the complete works of William Shakespeare and, of course, the Bible.

"He read them again and again, until they became part of him," says Mr. Astrachan, pointing out that, during the Civil War, the President sometimes entertained his staff with long extemporaneous recitations of Shakespeare.

"While he never had any formal religious affiliation, he showed his deeply spiritual and Biblical foundation in many of his major speeches," says Mr. Astrachan.

Mr. Lincoln’s own references regarding his pardon policy are telling. Discussing courage and cowardice, he said, "If Almighty G-d gives a man a cowardly pair of legs, how can he help their running away with him?"

"Do we hear an understanding of the Torah’s release of the ‘fearful and faint at heart?’" says Mr. Astrachan.

Similarly, Mr. Astrachan says, the Bible also lies at the root of the President’s efforts to limit the destructive effects of war.

Foe example, he maintained that "when neither incompetency nor intentional wrong nor real injury to the service" was committed, it would be "cruel and impolitic to crush the man and make him and his friends permanent enemies of the administration, if not the government itself."

He refused to allow the government to seek revenge or "to punish merely for punishment’s sake."

"While we must, by all available means, prevent the overthrow of the government, we should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society," he said.

Mr. Astrachan suggests that Mr. Lincoln was unconsciously agreeing with the classical Jewish scholar, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, who believed the Torah stressed "the peace-time tasks of life."

In his determination to spare deserters—men who found themselves, in the Torah’s words, "fearful and faint-hearted"—from the gallows, Mr. Lincoln recognized that, sometimes, when given a second chance, these soldiers redeemed themselves on the battlefield. According to Mr. Astrachan, many of the men Mr. Lincoln pardoned returned to the ranks of the Union Army, "contributing both to its military victory and to the principles of freedom and human dignity that victory represented in the world at that time."

"Challenged with overcoming the greatest crisis in the history of the nation, Abraham Lincoln had to rely upon the strength in every fiber of his soul, on the power of a spirit nurtured from the earliest days on the Bible. He knew Deuteronomy XX. His deeds and words reflected it. His early study of the Bible, including our Torah, contributed to his becoming the man he was," he says.

But does any of this speak to whether or not he was Jewish?

Mr. Astrachan says he is confident that Mr. Lincoln "was clearly not a Christian," basing himself on the biography of the President written after the assassination by Mr. Lincoln’s former law partner, William Herndon.

According to Shelomo Alfassa, US director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, based at the Sephardi Federation at the Center for Jewish History in New York City, there is some evidence that, when he was quite young, Mr. Lincoln wrote an essay against Christianity, Jesus’s role, and the veracity of the Christian Bible.

"On many occasions, he denied that Jesus was the Son of G-d, as Christianity dictates. We also know that Lincoln did not use the word ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ’ as often as most Christians of the period did, as a matter of demonstrating their allegiance to that faith," says Mr. Alfassa, who became interested in Mr. Lincoln based on the tantalizing possibility that his family’s roots in Lincoln, England, may include a Marrano or two..

Instead, Mr. Lincoln used the term "our Lord," which was acceptable to Christians and Jews.

Perhaps most tellingly, he did not belong to a church, despite the fact that it would have helped him, at least politically.

The President’s widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, responded to challenges to her husband’s religious life by pointing out that he was "spiritual in his own way."

Neither Mr. Herndon nor Mrs. Lincoln implied that he was Jewish. But, in Cincinnati, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the founder of Reform Judaism in America, began his eulogy for the President after the assassination by insisting, "Brethren, the lamented Abraham Lincoln believed himself to be bone from our bone and flesh from our flesh. He supposed himself to be a descendant of Hebrew parentage. He said so in my presence."

In his 1951 scholarly study of American Jewry and the Civil War, Bertram Korn implied that Rabbi Wise was engaging in some wish wishful thinking coupled with self-aggrandizement. According to Mr. Korn, there is not "a shred of evidence" to substantiate Rabbi Wise’s assertion.

"Lincoln is not known to have said anything resembling this to any of his other Jewish acquaintances," he said.

Mr. Lincoln’s son, Todd also said he had no recollection of ever having heard his father say such a thing.

Mr. Lincoln’s supposed Jewish background is also refuted by Isaac Markens in his 1909 volume, "Lincoln and the Jews," which was published in commemoration of the President’s 100^th birthday.

"Markens points out that Mr. Lincoln often tried to establish a common bond with people," says Mr. Astrachan.

And, in that, the 16^th President was undeniably successful, especially in the Jewish community. After the assassination, rabbis throughout the country eulogized the murdered President and countless Jewish communities observed shiva, the formal Jewish period of intense mourning, in his honor.

They had good reason to grieve at his passing. It was clear, even at the time, that he found antisemitism offensive.

"Lincoln’s desire to stamp out government-sponsored antisemitism led to Jews giving their total love, calling him Father Abraham Lincoln, and naming their children after him," said Eileen Mackvich, executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

But this does not mean he was Jewish.

According to Mr. Alfassa, even if Rabbi Wise were telling the truth, "this would be nothing extraordinary."

"Many Christians feel they were descendants of Jews," he says, adding that the President may have expressed himself "as a respectful nicety to Jews in his presence."

"In Judaism, one does not have to be Jewish to be mourned over," says Mr. Alfassa.

Four years earlier, on Jan 4, 1861, when Mr. Lincoln appealed to the nation for fasting and prayer to thwart the dissolution of the country, Jews issued poignant prayers in observance of the President’s call.

"It’s only natural that Jews, who also were fighting and suffering during the bloody Civil War, would observe Lincoln’s call for humility and repentance," says Mr. Alfassa.

According to many reports, Mr. Lincoln was often questioned about his religious beliefs. The response he gave most often was to cite the passage from Scripture that, he said, summed up his theology. He recommended that every American study, learn, and follow the 20^th chapter of the Book of Exodus, better known as The Ten Commandments.

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