December 2008 Archives
By Shelomo Alfassa
Background
In the last few years, many rumors have circulated on the Internet, the one I am focusing on concerns the issue of whether or not President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was of Jewish extraction.
Introduction
The subject was injected back into the media and popular Internet culture in December 2008 when an article published in an old synagogue bulletin by Rabbi Jeff Kahn,1 began to circulate again. The article was entitled "Was Lincoln Jewish?", and mentioned that when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, rabbis across the USA eulogized the murdered President and Jewish communities observed the shivah (the formal Jewish period of mourning) in his honor. This of course is nothing exceptional, as it was not (and is not), unusual for rabbinical leaders to call on their congregations to pray for the welfare of their leaders or their country during times of crisis.
Examination of the Myths
When Lincoln was murdered, New York's Congregation Shearith Israel, then the largest Jewish congregation in America, was grief-stricken, as was the entire country.2 One of the most established catalysts to the myth that Abraham Lincoln was Jewish may be found in a eulogy of him, spoken on April 28, 1865 by Rabbi Isaac M. Wise (founder of the Reform movement) which was subsequently published in The Israelite of Cincinnati, Ohio. The newspaper transcription reads "...The lamented Abraham Lincoln, believed to be bone from our bone and flesh from our flesh. He supposed to be a descendant of Hebrew parentage. He said so in my presence."3 Yet, even if Lincoln may have mentioned at one time that he was descendant of Hebrew parentage, this would be nothing extraordinary. Many Christians feel they were descendants of the Jews. Further, historian Bertram W. Korn,4 author of American Jewry and the Civil War, declared, and "Lincoln is not known to have said anything resembling this [to Isaac Wise] to any of his other Jewish acquaintances."5
We do not have a speech or any other sort of transcript from Lincoln himself indicating any connection to Judaism. Additionally, if we did find anything to indicate Lincoln stated he was "descendant of Hebrew parentage," we still would never know if Lincoln stated it as a respectful nicety to Jews in his presence, or if he stated it because he truly believed his ancestors were Jews-something a multitude of Christians can claim-as it's well established that Christianity developed as a split from Judaism.
Jewish Prayer & Jewish Patriotism
In May 1762, during the height of the French and Indian War, the Jews of New York engaged in a service of "solemn humiliation before the Almighty." As they also did on May 17, 1776, as Rabbi Gershom Mendes Seixas prayed that "God soften the heart of the [British] oppressor."6 During the War of Independence (Revolutionary War), Jews from New York City; Richmond, Virginia; Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, fled to Philadelphia seeking refuge from the British. There, they engaged in prayers led by their rabbi, praying for the new nation to be safe and free. In 1789, General George Washington proclaimed November 26 as a national Thanksgiving to God for protecting the colonies and its people from the British war machine. Jewish congregants heralded this call from Washington and institute many prayers, including a Prayer for the Government and the reading of special Psalms on the occasion.7 During the War of 1812, President Madison called upon all Americans to pray and fast, and the Jews in the young United States did; they prayed not only for peace, but for the safety of the President himself.
When President William Harrison died in office, Congregation Shearith Israel of New York draped their synagogue furniture in black as a sign of mourning 8 and respect for a man who was a known devoted Christian. On January 4, 1861, when Abraham Lincoln appealed for fasting and prayer so that the calamity of disunion did not occur,9 Jews issued poignant prayers in observance of the President's call.10 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.
In Judaism, one does not have to be Jewish to be mourned over. Many Jews wept and prayed after Presidents James Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901) and later John F. Kennedy (1963) were assassinated. In modern times, Jews have mourned as a community for their government leaders and their country, such as when the Space Shuttles exploded and when other tragedies shook their lives, such as the attacks by Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001.
Lincoln and His Christianity
Abraham Lincoln was not a typical Christian of the period. One biographer even reports that there were claims the young Lincoln wrote an essay "against Christianity, Jesus Christ, and the Bible," which was read and discussed until his friend tore it up and burned it;11 still, there is no evidence indicating that this is even true. It was reported that Lincoln originally rejected the New Testament as a book of divine authority12 and on many occasions that he denied Jesus was the Son of God as Christianity dictates.13 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. Even so, on some occasions he was known to have used the phrase "Our Lord" which referred to the Christian leader.14 We also know that Lincoln was a "constant reader of the Bible" according to a biography. Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President says that in adult life, Lincoln suffered too many doubts to be a member of a church, despite the political gains to be made by doing so. Lincoln had little religion as a young man, but demonstrated he was (or became) a devout Christian in his later years. Journals of visiting Swedenborgian missionaries record and confirm that Lincoln was an interested student:
He was a religious man, a very conscientious man, and his conscience was formed by the Ten Commandments and the Word of God, which, in private, he read much. His views concerning the Lord Jesus Christ as God manifest, concerning the moral government of the universe, and the civil government of nations, the humanity of man, the duty of rulers to protect and preserve the principles of humanity wherever found...15
Discussion
While many people throw around theories on the Internet, there is nothing but what could be called "junk research" that exists on the subject. Anything that claims to prove Abraham Lincoln was Jewish is based upon that petty and unrelated fact he had a Jewish first name or that even a town in England named Lincoln had many Jews living there. The President's obituary and family never mentioned he was Jewish, and nothing that exists today indicates so.
What we do know is that unmistakably Lincoln had many Jewish friends and colleagues. And while Abraham Lincoln was obviously esteemed by the Jewish population, there is absolutely nothing to prove that he was of Jewish extraction himself. There may be a great deal of interesting speculation, but that's all there is-speculation.
#
The author is the US Director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries
located at the American Sephardi Federation, based at the Center for Jewish
History in New York City. He is also a writer and author who focuses on
Sephardic Jewry.
1.
Kahn was formerly with Temple Har Shalom (reform)
in Warren, NJ; he is no longer affiliated with that
institution and today lives outside the United States.
2. de Sola Pool, David and Tamar. An Old Faith in
the New World: Portrait of Shearith Israel 1654-1954.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1956. 130-134
3. Many thanks to Jennifer M. Cole, Associate Archivist
of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of The American
Jewish Archives who provided me with a copy of The
Israelite on December 8, 2008.
4. Reform rabbi and historian who served as a Marine
chaplain and later in a congregation in Mobile, Alabama.
5. American Jewry and the Civil War. Philadelphia,
1951.
6. Old Faith in the New World 130
7. Old Faith in the New World 126-127
8. Old Faith in the New World 134
9. Shearith Israel Minutes: Dec 30, 1860 p432
qtd. in Old Faith in the New World 131-132
10. Johnstone, William Jackson. Abraham Lincoln,
the Christian. New York: Abington Press. 1920. 108
11. Abraham Lincoln, the Christian. 31
12. Lamon, Ward Hill; Black, Chauncey F. The Life
of Abraham Lincoln. Boston: Osgood and Co. 1872.
502
13. The Life of Abraham Lincoln. 489
14. Abraham Lincoln, the Christian. 62
15. Smith, Eldon. "The Swedenborgian Church of
North America "Abraham Lincoln's Religious Beliefs"
February 11, 1996
by Shelomo Alfassa
(December 14, 2008) - On this very day, just 40 years ago (December 14, 1968), The New York Times reported on how Spain made a small step on the long road to redress toward the Jewish people, when the Spanish Minister of Justice publicly annulled the 'Edict of Expulsion.' The Edict had been issued by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella on March 30, 1492. It declared that Jews were mandated to be displaced from Spain, a country Jews were settled in long before Catholicism even had arrived on the Iberian Peninsula. The Edict explicitly charged the Jews were destroying Christianity in Spain by socially intermingling with Christians. The document declared in part:
"[We] banish them from all our kingdoms, we desired to content ourselves by commanding them to leave all cities, towns, and villages of Andalusia where it appears that they have done the greatest injury...Jews who have been most guilty of ... crimes and delicts against our holy Catholic faith have been sufficient as a complete remedy to obviate and correct so great an opprobrium and offense to the faith and the Christian religion, because every day it is found and appears that the said Jews increase in continuing their evil and wicked purpose wherever they live and congregate... [thus we] resolve to order the said Jews and Jewesses of our kingdoms to depart and never to return or come back."
Some 150,000 Jews became refugees overnight, forced out of Spain, the country they loved. These Jewish families lost all they owned. The entire incident of departure and forced relocation tore apart families in a most horrendous manner. Women and children were violated, men were taken from their wives, women from their mothers, people perished on land and on the sea in transit.
The greater preponderance of these Jewish refugees relocated to the Ottoman Empire. They were welcomed there by the Turkish Sultan who looked upon the Jewish refugees as potential assets to his country. In the end, this rang true, for during the period when the Jews were in Turkey, the Empire reached its pinnacle, while at the same time, Spain fell from grace, morphing from the world's military and monetary leader to a country existent upon suspicion and economic woe for many dim centuries afterward.
Today, 40 years after the Edict was annulled, a 2008 Pew Foundation study demonstrates that 46% of the Spanish population still rate Jews unfavorably, this is the highest level in all of Europe -- this, while it was just determined by DNA analysis that 20% of modern Spaniards are of Jewish ancestry! (ironic?)
While there have been many events clad in pomp and circumstance between Jews and modern Spaniards over the last several decades, it's interesting to note that there never have been formal hearings held on the discussion of the return of Jewish private or communal property, reparations, or merely direct open apologies from Spain and/or the Vatican, the mother church of Spain. Of course there remains no statute of limitations on any of these potential remedies that are yet to be discussed.
Why
Jewish Blood Runs in Modern Spaniards
By
Shelomo Alfassa
On December 5, 2008, the New York Times reported that 20% of the
population of the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal) had Sephardic
Jewish ancestry and 11% had DNA markers reflecting Islamic ancestors. To those
familiar with the long and dark history of the Jews of Spain and Portugal, this
is not of tremendous surprise. To understand the history of the Sephardic Jews
is to understand why the genetic testing returned such results.
Jews most likely arrived in what is today Spain, sailing from the holy
land with both the Phoenician sea traders and later with the Greeks. Prior to the Phoenicians arriving on the
shores of Iberia, many different groups inhabited the peninsula. The Greeks
took up sea going trade, much like the Phoenicians, sometime between 500 and
800 BCE. The potential for the Greeks, much like the Phoenicians, to have
carried along Ioudaios (Jews) on their sailing vessels is quite
plausible. The Greeks set up emporiums (trade centers) in Iberia and
traditional Greek-style colonies in at least one city as early as 800-700 BCE.
Among these Hellenistic city-states, it is known Jews made up a considerable
portion of the population.
Long before the Spanish language came into being or before the Catholic
religion ever came to the Iberian Peninsula, Jews existed there. Jews lived
under oppressive and successive dominant societies, including the Romans, the
Germanic tribes (Vandals, Visigoths and others), the Islamic tribes consisting
of Arabs and Berbers, and eventually under the Catholic Kings, the ancestors of
the modern monarchy of Spain.
The Jews in Spain, prior to the Expulsion of 1492, were a successful
people, many were part of the aristocracy of the country. If we look at a
comparison, the Spanish Jews of 1340, were no less influential and vital to
cities in Spain as were the Jews to New York City in 1940; the same can be said
of the Jews of Baghdad of the same year. They were judicial and political leaders,
heads of government, they held legislative power, and they either controlled or
could at least influence those, which were in charge of communal infrastructure.
Like the Jews of Baghdad and New York City of 1940, the Jewish community in Spain
some 600 years earlier possessed many wealthy and powerful individuals, both
serving in the private sector as well as for the government.
The events leading up to the final Expulsion of the Jews from Iberia
between 1492-1497 are written in the book of the darkest days of the Jewish people;
this period was the worst period for the Jewish people since the destruction of
ancient Jerusalem and prior to the Holocaust. If they did not leave by threat
of expulsion, those Jews which did not straightforwardly welcome Christianity
into their lives (and those that were accused by the Catholic Church of being
heretics) were often sentenced to lifelong punishment and occasionally sentenced
to death by burning or asphyxiation. Burning and looting Jewish homes, property,
stores, community buildings and houses of prayer were common place for hundreds
of years. These attacks were often brought about by Catholic clergyman which
preached fire and brimstone against the Jewish communities. Not being able to observe
their religion, scores of Jews fled, many others converted to Christianity, ahead
of and during the Spanish and Portuguese Inquistions. Near 50,000 or more were
said to have outright converted in Barcelona alone during the pogroms of 1391--this--in
a city which a couple hundred years earlier was the Western center of all Diaspora
Jewry!
The late editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia
Judaica, the Oxford historian Prof. Cecil Roth, said that in Spain, on some
occasions, entire Jewish communities led by their rabbis, converted to
Christianity instead of facing punishment and surrendering everything they possessed.
In Portugal, Roth indicated that Jews made up such a large population, that to
be called a "Portuguese" meant that you were a Jew. Roth made a proclamation in
the 1930's indicating that there was probably no one in present Spanish society
of which a tincture of Jewish blood did not run.
In addition of conversion of Jews (and Muslims) to Christianity, centuries
of rape and intermarriage certainly have clouded the gene pool of those living
on Iberia. Genetic
research technology is evolving at an exponential rate. The science of genetics
remains a subject which continues to develop rapidly in both scientific terms
as well as societal. In this branch of biology that deals with heredity,
especially the mechanisms of hereditary transmission and the variation of
inherited characteristics among similar or related organisms, the genetic
constitution of an individual, class, or group (in this case the Sephardim) is being
increasingly explored. The report that 20% of the population of the Iberian Peninsula has
Sephardic Jewish ancestry is not surprising. Sephardic and Ashkenazic
Jews were geographically and religiously separate populations, these two
populations often display significant differences in the incidence of genetic diseases
and medical conditions, as well as markers which can be isolated through
testing of their blood groups, chromosomal testing and through the examination
of maternal mitochondrial DNA.
The Sephardic Jews make up the second largest division of the Jewish
population; they have their historic roots in Spain, Portugal, as well as due
to migrations, in North Africa. Sephardic Jews comprise the second largest
group in the worldwide Jewish population after Ashkenazic Jews that stem from Central
and Eastern Europe. They have developed and possess a shared relationship based
upon unique religious traditions, collective ideals, customs and ethnicity.
Today, Sephardic Jews inhabit all corners of the earth, with large populations
living in North and South America as well as France, Turkey and Israel. Smaller
populations exist in The Netherlands, Britain and the Balkans.
Shelomo
Alfassa is a historian and writer concentrating on Sephardic Jewry. He has
written several books, including: "Ethnic Sephardic Jews in the Medical
Literature." www.alfassa.com
Media suppresses word 'murder' and overlooks 'torture' by Islamic terrorists
By Shelomo Alfassa
NEW YORK (December 1, 2008) - On Thanksgiving Day 2008, gunshots rang out startling the family of Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and others inside the Chabad center in Mumbai, India. A maid at the Chabad center thought it was firecrackers--then an Islamic gunman came up the stairs. Explosions and gunshots rattled the building and continued through the night. At the same time the Chabad center is attacked, Islamic terrorists were attacking a police station and a few minutes later they opened fire at a hospital. They also opened fire in restaurants and at hotels, all together, at over 10 locations, the Islamic terrorists murdered over 190 people.
The Chabad center maid told the media that the gunmen destroyed the elevator, dining room and "everything" else. The rabbi ran to the telephone to call the Israeli Consulate. He got them on the line, told them there were men with guns in the house, but in the middle of the conversation, the line went dead after the rabbi said, "something's wrong" and the rabbi's wife was heard screaming "SEND HELP IMMEDIATLY."
The rabbi was grabbed by the Muslim terrorists, held down and had a belt secured around his legs to prevent him from walking. Several other Jews in the center had their hands and feet bound with telephone cords or nylon rope. The Indian Express reported that, Rabbi Holtzberg, his wife Rivka and their three friends died in a "brutal manner..." The paper horrifically reported that there was "brutality unleashed on the Holtzberg." The paper reported that police photos inside the Chabad center spoke, "volumes of the nightmare the family and their friends must have gone through before they died." The Rabbi's body was found in a room on the second floor, with his legs under the mezuzah, stretching into the hall where his wife's body was found. Rivka's body was found near the legs of Rabbi Holtzberg, the floor was covered red in blood. The rabbi's 2-year-old son Moshe was found drenched in blood, crying in the silence, beside his parents who lay dead on the floor. The dead bodies of the murdered Jews were then booby-trapped with live hand grenades and other explosives. Indian security forces indicated the Jewish women were murdered first, as the Jewish men were first tortured before being murdered.
In the United States, where the news media like to cover up all things which may make Muslims look bad, they never mentioned that the Israelis were mutilated beyond belief. In the Digital Journal news, it was also reported that the victims of the terrorist attacks had been tortured. In the words of one doctor, "It was shocking and disturbing." A doctor who conducted the post-mortems on the victims added: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again."
When someone is "killed" they may have been hit by a car, drowned at sea or struck by lightning. In contrast, when someone is "murdered," this speaks of a victim who was targeted with premeditated malice. It is someone who inhumanly had their life taken from them, it is someone who was a victim of severe mutilation, targeted brutality, a person who had their life taken by another person who sought them dead. This begs the question, why did the media avoid using the word "murdered" ?
- The Wall Street Journal reported: "The dead also included a young New York rabbi and his wife..."
- The Boston Globe reported: "the New York rabbi and his wife were among the foreigners killed..."
- The International Herald Tribune reported: "Two of the victims, a rabbi and his wife..."
- The Sun-Sentinel reported: "killed were Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, 29, and his wife, Rivkah, 28, who died in the attack..."
- The Associated Press reported: "The bodies of New York Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, were found at the Jewish center..."
- National Public Radio reported: "Among the dead are Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka..."
- The New York Times reported: "six of the hostages were killed, including the Brooklyn couple who operated the center..."
- The Los Angeles Times reported: "the Chabad Lubavitch members who were killed by militants"
The stupidity of the Western media is blatant. What is not being made clear in prominent Western media is that this was a meticulously planned and well-organized attack. What is the motivation of journalists in trying to downplay these heinous atrocities? Do they wish to express some sympathy for these murderers? The mainstream media remains a giant bureaucracy with no feeling, soul, or intelligence. They make it too easy for blatant evil to be excused or explained away.
The Muslim murderers had a well coordinated well thought out plan. They had been in the country for months, obtained jobs in the area, stockpiled food for the siege, and stockpiled ammunition enough to kill thousands. Some of the Muslim murderers had even rented rooms in the Chabad center! They utilized BlackBerry email devices to stay in touch with each other and outsiders, to exchange intelligence information in different locations during the attacks. An Indian Marine commando told the media that it was obvious the terrorists were well trained. The Marine said the attackers were "very determined and remorseless." The Times of India reported that the sole surviving murderer told Indian police that the terrorists were sent with a specific mission of targeting Israelis at Chabad House in order to avenge "atrocities committed against the Palestinians."
The Chabad rabbi and his wife (as well as the other 190+ victims) were not killed, they were murdered, there is a difference, and one that needs to be differentiated at every opportunity.
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www.alfassa.com
