We Called Him Rabbi Abraham: Lincoln and American Jewry, a Documentary History

Epilogue

392 Epilogue Toward the end of Philip Roth’s blockbuster novel Portnoy’s Complaint, Alexander Portnoy is reminiscing about a field trip he had taken to the courthouse in Newark, New Jersey, when he was in eighth grade. He recalls that there were two statues near the courthouse, one of George Washington and the other of Abraham Lincoln. Portnoy then offers his thoughts on these two great American presidents: “Washington, I must confess, leaves me cold. Maybe it’s the horse, that he’s leaning on a horse. At any rate, he is so obviously a goy. But Lincoln! I could cry. Look at him sitting there, so oysgemitchet [exhausted]. How he labored for the downtrodden—as will I!”1 Portnoy’s comments about Washington and Lincoln not only are humorous but also possess an element of truth for the American Jew at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. It is true that Jews respect George Washington—they may also regard Thomas Jefferson highly and admire Theodore Roosevelt’s forceful personality and so forth. Yet Portnoy’s observation is indeed a reflection of reality. As Stanley Jerome, the lead character in Neil Simon’s play Brighton Beach Memoirs, tells his cousin Nora as they plan their dinner conversation: “I’ll mention someone like Abraham Lincoln and you look up and say, ‘Now there’s a man who really stood up for his principles.’”2 For many American Jews, Lincoln became an American Jewish icon. They related so profoundly to Lincoln and his image that it seemed as though he actually was their relative! On Friday, November 16, 2012, Steven Spielberg’s much anticipated film Lincoln began playing in theaters all across North America. Spielberg engaged the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner to produce a screenplay for the film, which was based, in part, on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s best-selling volume Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Many critics called the film a cinematic triumph. A New York Times reviewer, for instance, described Lincoln as a “splendid” film and a “noble democratic masterpiece.” Another reviewer exclaimed, “‘Lincoln’ makes politics exciting again,” and NBCNews.com insisted that Spielberg’s Lincoln will “live on long after it leaves theaters.”3 Even before the film’s national release, some commentators took note of the fact that Lincoln was written and directed by American Jews. According to one critic, “as imagined by Spielberg and Kushner, Lincoln’s Lincoln is the ultimate mensch.”4 Another reviewer wondered whether Spielberg, Kushner, and even Daniel Day-Lewis (who, 393 Epilogue according to the reviewer, is the son of a Jewish mother) had subconsciously created a movie that offered audiences “a Jewish version of history” by focusing the movie on Lincoln’s efforts to persuade the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, which would render the institution of slavery unconstitutional. As the reviewer observed, the story of Lincoln’s determination to persuade the House of Representatives to pass the amendment was a story of “compassion, charity and the pursuit of justice—these values, which we identify as Jewish values.”5 “Has Spielberg given us a Jewish Lincoln? Or is it that Lincoln was ‘Jewish’ in his temperament, values and actions: consumed by social justice in his fighting a war to abolish slavery; Moses-like in leading a people to freedom; talmudic in his use of disputation among a ‘team of rivals’ to lead the nation; alternately morose and jovial . . . ?”6 In spite of the thematic focus of this particular documentary history, some may consider it ironic that not a single Jewish character appears in Spielberg’s film. That very fact has led some writers to postulate that in this respect, Lincoln is “a throwback to the days when Hollywood’s moguls, themselves Jewish-Americans, made movies about a seemingly non-Jewish America through the filter of their own very Jewish perspective.” Critics will undoubtedly continue to debate whether or not Spielberg’s and Kushner’s Jewishness pushed them to focus on the story of Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment. Yet one fact cannot be disputed: to the present day, there are American Jews who insist that even if he was not a Jew according to halakhah (Jewish law), Abraham Lincoln was “most certainly a man with whom we share a common heritage.”7 In his entertaining and touching book Land of Lincoln, Andrew Ferguson takes readers on a trip through contemporary...