COMMUNITY READ AND BOOK TALK BY JONATHAN D. SARNA

“In central Jerusalem, close by streets named for the medieval Jewish luminary Moses Maimonides and the modern Hebrew writer Peretz Smolenskin, and abutting the American consulate, lies a crooked street named for Abraham Lincoln. When questioned by what he did for the Jewish people to merit a street be named for him in Jerusalem, even those Jerusalemites familiar with Lincoln’s biography shake their heads and shrug. Lincoln and the Jews provides the first full-scale answer to that question, based on newly discovered documents and years of painstaking research. It shows that Lincoln consorted with a wide range of Jewish friends and acquaintances, some of whom, like Abraham Jonas and Issachar Zacharie, he came to know well. It is impossible to point to any previous American president about whom like claims might have been pressed.”

From the Introduction to Lincoln and the Jews, A History, by Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell

The Conservative Synagogue is honored to host Professor Jonathan Sarna to share his thoughts and insights into the historical relationships between Abraham Lincoln and American Jews of the Civil War era. This event will be open and free to the general public.

Dr. Jonathan Sarna is the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History and Chair of the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program at Brandeis University. He is also the president of the Association for Jewish studies and Chief Historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.

Generously sponsored by the Wainshal Family in memory of Harouzi Wainshal z”l and Shirley Weitzen z”l.

A community partnership with The Westport Library, Jewish Book Council, and Federation of Jewish Philanthropy of Fairfield County.