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.

On the same day the cease-fire went into effect along the Israel-Lebanon border, rebel forces launched an unexpected offensive, and within a few days captured much of Aleppo. This lightening advance originated in the northwestern part of the country, which has been relatively quiet over the past four years, since Bashar al-Assad effectively gave up on restoring control over the remaining rebel enclaves in the area. The fighting comes at an inopportune moment for the powers that Damascus has called on for help in the past: Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and Hizballah has been shattered.

But the situation is extremely complex. David Wurmser points to the dangers that lie ahead:

The desolation wrought on Hizballah by Israel, and the humiliation inflicted on Iran, has not only left the Iranian axis exposed to Israeli power and further withering. It has altered the strategic tectonics of the Middle East. The story is not just Iran anymore. The region is showing the first signs of tremendous geopolitical change. And the plates are beginning to move.

The removal of the religious-totalitarian tyranny of the Iranian regime remains the greatest strategic imperative in the region for the United States and its allies, foremost among whom stands Israel. . . . However, as Iran’s regime descends into the graveyard of history, it is important not to neglect the emergence of other, new threats. navigating the new reality taking shape.

The retreat of the Syrian Assad regime from Aleppo in the face of Turkish-backed, partly Islamist rebels made from remnants of Islamic State is an early skirmish in this new strategic reality. Aleppo is falling to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS—a descendant of Nusra Front led by Abu Mohammed al-Julani, himself a graduate of al-Qaeda’s system and cobbled together of IS elements. Behind this force is the power of nearby Turkey.