On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous speech at the dedication of the military cemetery at Gettysburg; a few months later, at the request of the historian George Bancroft, he wrote down the text of the speech so that Bancroft could consult it in composing his history of the United States. Archivists have recently determined that the paper the president used was produced by Philp & Solomons, a Washington-based stationery company. But this is not the only connection between the company’s co-founder Adolphus Simeon Solomons and President Lincoln. Rachel Delia Benaim writes:

Solomons was one of the handful of Jews in Lincoln’s circle of friends and colleagues. (He also had good relationships with Ulysses S. Grant and Chester Arthur.) A practicing Jew from New York City, Solomons was born in 1826 to a British-immigrant father and an American-born mother. In his youth, he served in the New York State National Guard, and he grew up to be a prominent Jewish Republican.

It is believed that Lincoln was the first non-Jewish public figure for whom kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, was recited. In eulogizing Lincoln, Solomons is credited with saying “it was the Israelites’ privilege here, as well as elsewhere, to be the first to offer in their places of worship prayers for the repose of the soul of Mr. Lincoln.”

[Several years after Lincoln’s death], President Grant, who had attempted to expel the Jews from [the area occupied by his army] in 1862 but later expressed remorse for doing so, tried to appoint Solomons as governor of Washington, D.C., [but Solomons declined]. In 1881, Solomons co-founded the American Red Cross with Clara Barton and was appointed by President Arthur to represent the United States at the International Congress of the Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”