Abraham Lincoln in Jerusalem

A new famous quote by Abe:  “Next year in Jerusalem!”

In a bittersweet scene near the end of the new Stephen Spielberg movie, Lincoln, Abe and Molly Lincoln (he calls his wife Mary “Molly”) take a quiet carriage ride away from the White House.  Sitting close and affectionate, he says to her, “When this term is over, before we go back to Illinois, let’s travel.  I want to see Jerusalem and the Holy Land.” 

It’s Good Friday afternoon, April 14, 1865, and they have a date that night at the Ford’s Theater.  They never made it to Jerusalem.

“God created war so Americans could learn geography,” Mark Twain quipped.  Maybe God created Stephen Spielberg so Americans could learn history, of which we are as ignorant as geography.  His movies have taught us a lot we didn’t know about the slave rebellion aboard the Amistad, and about WWII, from Schindler to D-Day (Saving Private Ryan).  Now it’s Lincoln.

Everywhere you look in American TV, papers, magazines, people are talking about Lincoln the man and the movie.  Screenwriter Tony Kushner did the media rounds, as did historian Doris Kerns Goodwin, whose bestseller Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln inspired the movie. President Obama read that book also, and got the idea to emulate Lincoln by putting some rivals on his cabinet also, like Hillary Rodham Clinton.  He even has a favorable plug on the book cover; “A remarkable study in leadership,” he says.

Obama is sometimes compared to Lincoln, in circumstance and in leadership style. Skinny lawyers from Illinois.  Introverts.  Not afraid to work with rivals.  Willing to compromise.  Elected President without much previous legislative experience.  Memorable orators.  Trying to unite a divided nation in the midst of war.  A house divided against itself cannot stand.  There are no red states, no blue states, only the United States of America.

A good movie, like a good art museum (see last week’s column), succeeds when it gets people talking and thinking in new ways.  I don’t actually go to a lot of movies for that very reason; they don’t make me think anything new.  But all the talk from friends and in the media about Lincoln – I felt I almost HAD to go, it was my citizen duty.  I’m glad I did.

It covers only two weeks in his life and one huge legislative victory, the passing of the 13^th Amendment outlawing slavery – that’s the whole movie.  No log cabin or railsplitting or Gettysburg or even the Ford Theater.  One reviewer said, “ “Lincoln”—I can’t believe I’m writing these words—is a legislative thriller. It’s an exciting, suspenseful movie about cajolery, persuasion, ideology. It’s a great movie about…counting votes.” 

But what stuck with me was that last dream Lincoln had to go to Jerusalem.  It is apparently a documented comment he made on that Friday.   Mary Lincoln later told a minister that he said it to her in the box at the Ford’s Theater.  He had never traveled outside the US.  He was not much of a Christian, more a theist, but he knew his Bible, often quoted the Old Testament.  It makes for a great cinematic meme – the gaunt savior martyred on Good Friday hoping to visit Calvary, maybe the empty tomb. (The movie does end with a sappy sort of angels in the clouds vision, unnecessary.)

But did you know that Lincoln actually was an advocate for the Jews?  And benefited from their support?  This thought provoking movie and the line about Jerusalem got me curious.  Thank you Google, where “Abraham Lincoln Jerusalem” gave me these tidbits:

 - He wrote his friend and fellow Illinois State legislator Abraham Jonas complaining about another legislator whom he called a “stupid, classic anti-Semite.”

 - He befriended a NY Jewish publisher of a German language newspaper who helped Lincoln get most of the liberal German immigrant vote in 1860.

- He was the first President to appoint a Jew to a European post, as US Consul in Zurich. 

- He revoked Ulysses S. Grant’s order that all Jewish peddlers be forbidden from selling to Union troops after some of the peddlers were found to be selling to the Confederates also.  Lincoln wrote, “To condemn a class (of people) is to condemn the good with the bad.  I do not like to hear an entire class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners.”

(This info from web zine Our Jerusalem.)

And my favorite Abraham Lincoln Jerusalem tidbit – there is a street in Jerusalem named Abrakham Lincoln Rd.  It’s in a nice neighborhood near the King David Hotel.

And the Jerusalem YMCA.

Maybe he and Molly could have stayed there.

Copyright © 2012 Deborah Streeter