Lincoln and the trees

Lincoln and the trees

Franklin Lakes shul offers Tu B’Shevat seder, appreciation of Honest Abe

Olive trees flourish in Israel; Tu B’Shevat marks their new year.
Olive trees flourish in Israel; Tu B’Shevat marks their new year.

Given the straightforwardness of the Gregorian calendar and the more complicated mainly-lunar-but-also-solar quirks of the Jewish one, Tu B’Shevat and Abraham Lincoln’s birthday fall on the same day every 19 years.

This is one of those years, Rabbi Joseph Prouser of Temple Emanuel of North Jersey said.

He didn’t mark it in 2006, and he doesn’t want to wait until 2044, but there’s no time like the present, is there? So the shul, in Franklin Lakes, will offer a Tu B’Shevat seder that also will celebrate the nation’s 16th president. (See below.)

It’s a great opportunity for Rabbi Prouser, whose meticulous observance of Conservative halacha is matched by his enormous love for American history — a love not unexpected in someone who grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts, surrounded by that history — to consider the two together.

Tu B’Shevat, a minor holiday — its name means the 15th of the month of Shevat — is the new year of the trees. It’s become a sort of Jewish Earth Day, and it’s most often celebrated with a seder, like the one at Pesach but far simpler.

So when Rabbi Prouser began to think about what to do at his shul’s Tu B’Shevat seder this year, “I was inspired when I began accumulating connections between Lincoln and trees,” he said.

He’s assembled many of the quotes that follow in the booklet that he’ll hand out at the seder, called “The Noblest Work of God.”

He began with a quote of Lincoln’s: “Character is like a tree, and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

The Conservative movement’s connection with Lincoln goes back to the movement’s founder, Solomon Schechter, who gave a speech about the Great Emancipator at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan on February 11, 1909 — Lincoln’s centennial.

This is Abraham Lincoln as he looked in 1860, just before he spoke at Cooper Union, in a photograph by Mathew Brady.

He first heard about Lincoln when he was a student in Romania, Rabbi Schechter, who was born in 1847, said. He’d been described as a woodchopper — another way to say rail-splitter, Rabbi Schechter explained — and because that was what Hillel had done before he went on to less manual labor, and because both men were great moral heroes, he began to think of Lincoln as a second Hillel.

“No religious hero ever entered upon his mission to conquer the world for an idea or creed with more reverence and a deeper feeling of the need for divine assistance than did Lincoln….,” Rabbi Schechter said.

It’s true that Lincoln was not formally religious, “but I think that he was the most deeply naturally spiritual of all the presidents,” Rabbi Prouser said.

Or, to use Lincoln’s own words, “To believe in the things you can see and touch is no belief at all — but to believe in the unseen is a triumph and a blessing.”

“He said that when he finds a church that has two commandments hanging over the altar, the one about loving God with all your heart and all your soul, and the other about loving your neighbor as yourself — that’s the church I’ll join,” Rabbi Prouser explained.

Lincoln never did find that church, but when Rabbi Prouser first went to the congregation in Little Neck, Queens, that he led before moving to Franklin Lakes, “those two verses hung in the sanctuary.”

He hears echoes of Hillel and Shammai in Lincoln’s thought, Rabbi Prouser continued. “In his second inaugural address, he talks about how the Confederates and the Union ‘both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, but the prayers of both cannot be answered fully. The Almighty has his own purpose,’ Lincoln said.

“It’s the definition of a machlochet.” A disagreement that can be destructive or, if it’s for the sake of heaven, can be constructive.

“The seder also will examine the halacha of how you say brachot over fruit,” Rabbi Prouser said. “What blessing do you say first? Most modern Tu B’Shevat seders ignore that entirely; we will go over it briefly. And then we will look at some Lincoln texts about his philosophy of law.”

Rabbi Joseph Prouser

Lincoln offers “what I think is the single best definition of any legal system, and to me of Jewish law,” Rabbi Prouser said. That was in his speech at Cooper Union, given in 1860, and “many people think that speech propelled him to the presidency.”

“Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunderstood,” Lincoln began at the then-brand-new downtown experimental school, which took equality seriously.

“I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did,” he continued. “To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience — to reject all progress — all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we.”

(Strikingly, this quote describes not only Lincoln’s philosophy of law, but the Conservative movement’s approach to halacha.)

“It is a small-c conservative approach to law,” Rabbi Prouser said. “We are the current custodians of the legal system, but that doesn’t mean that we are free to throw out the law at will. We can generally progress, but we do so with trepidation and reverence.”

Lincoln thought seriously about serious issues, but instead of pontificating about smaller ones, he discussed them clearly.

“Rules of living: Don’t worry, eat three square meals a day, say your prayers, be courteous to your creditors, keep your digestion good, steer clear of biliousness, exercise, go slow and go easy,” Rabbi Prouser reported that Lincoln said. “May be there are other things that your special case requires to make you happy, but my friend, these, I reckon, will give you a good life.”

Taking the advice about the three square meals to heart, Rabbi Prouser also provides recipes for some of the treats he plans for the seder. They include Mary Todd Lincoln’s White Almond Cake — which, he reports, her husband called “the best cake I ever ate” and the Lincoln Inaugural Luncheon Blackberry Pie.

And there also will be wine. Israeli wine. How does this fit in? Well, the wine will be there despite Lincoln being a reported nondrinker — everyone else drank, so that works. And Israeli? That’s because “Mary Todd Lincoln reported that his last words at Ford’s Theatre were about his desire to travel to Jerusalem.” (Yes, some of the connections are stronger than others.)

“This will be a historically informative but lighthearted observance,” Rabbi Prouser said.

Everyone is invited — including children — and “it will be an opportunity to celebrate Tu B’Shevat and learn more about Lincoln. Each will cast valuable light on the other.”


What: Tu B’Shevat seder

When: On Wednesday, February 12, at 7 p.m.

Where: At Temple Emanuel of North Jersey

How much: It’s free!

For whom: The whole family

Reservations: Are requested by February 9; call (201) 560-0200 or email office@tenjfl.org

Information: At (201) 560-0200 or office@tenfjl.org.

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