Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, holds a special place in the hearts of many Jews. It was he who canceled General Grant’s infamous order, Number 11, expelling Jewish traders from several states. And it was Lincoln who first enabled rabbis to serve as chaplains in the Union army.
Beyond that, Lincoln himself — whose birthday Americans celebrate on Saturday, Feb. 12 — is perceived as a true humanitarian, helping to free the United States of the scourge of slavery, just as the Jews in ancient Israel had been freed from slavery by Moses.
According to The Jewish Virtual Library, “American Jews have felt especially attracted to Lincoln as the emancipator of the black slave, as a victim of violence, as a dreamer of peace, and as the spokesman of a way of life ‘with malice towards none, with charity for all,’ which matches the idealism of the prophets.”
During the Civil War, Maj.-Gen. U.S. Grant, on Dec. 17, 1862, issued an order — Order No. 11 — calling for the expulsion of all Jews in his military district (parts of Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee).
At the time, there was a black market in southern cotton, and Grant believed that this illegal market was being conducted “mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders.”
President Lincoln revoked the order a few weeks later after protests from not only Jewish leaders, but from Congress and the press. The New York Times described the order as “humiliating” and a “revival of the spirit of the medieval ages.”
When the Civil War started, in 1861, Jews were not allowed to serve as chaplains in the army or in military hospitals. Yet they fought on both sides during the war.
The House of Representatives had adopted a bill permitting each regiment’s commander to appoint a chaplain — so long as he was “a regularly ordained minister of some Christian denomination.”
There were two terrific reasons why Sandra O. Gold got the idea of establishing a music school at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades lo these many years ago.
For one thing, she had to drive from Englewood to New York City once a week to schlep her kids to the Manhattan School of Music. First one kid, then another, then another. For 17 years. Why wasn’t there an excellent community music school right here in New Jersey?
The other reason was: The leading New York City music schools had classes for very young students only on Saturdays. So Gold had to drive in on Shabbat. And daughter Amelia expressed the wish at age 11 that she would become observant when she was an adult and would never drag her own future kids to Manhattan for music lessons on Saturdays. (Amelia went on to Juilliard and is now a violin teacher and music director of the Summer String Festival at the Elisabeth Morrow School in Englewood. Amelia Gold’s own children now attend the Thurnauer school.)
