How the Jewish Bible Shaped Abraham Lincoln, and Lincoln Shaped American Jewry

According to his widow, Abraham Lincoln’s last words were “How I should like to visit Jerusalem sometime.” Although some historians contest her account, the leading scholar of American Jewish history, Jonathan Sarna, finds it entirely credible, as the sixteenth president was both a friend of the Jews and a devoted and careful reader of the Bible. Sarna, in conversation with Ari Lamm, discusses both aspects of Lincoln’s legacy. The conversation concludes with an anecdote about how a prominent U.S. rabbi was dubbed “the ayatollah of the Jews.”

Read more at Good Faith Effort

More about: Abraham Lincoln, American Jewish History, Bible, Norman Lamm

Isaac Bashevis Singer and the 20th-Century Novel

April 30 2025

Reviewing Stranger Than Fiction, a new history of the 20th-century novel, Joseph Epstein draws attention to what’s missing:

A novelist and short-story writer who gets no mention whatsoever in Stranger Than Fiction is Isaac Bashevis Singer. When from time to time I am asked who among the writers of the past half century is likely to be read 50 years from now, Singer’s is the first name that comes to mind. His novels and stories can be sexy, but sex, unlike in many of the novels of Norman Mailer, William Styron, or Philip Roth, is never chiefly about sex. His stories are about that much larger subject, the argument of human beings with God. What Willa Cather and Isaac Bashevis Singer have that too few of the other novelists discussed in Stranger Than Fiction possess are central, important, great subjects.

Read more at The Lamp

More about: Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jewish literature, Literature