Lincoln and the Jews, by Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell, is an important book on many levels. First, it is a beautiful book, and very very classy. The illustrations, while not rivaling Michelangelo, are copies of historical ephemera: letters, photographs, newspaper articles and related items. Many are priceless because they are written in Abraham Lincoln’s own hand. The others are important because they are personal connections to Abraham Lincoln.
While much of the illustrated ephemera comes from the Library of Congress or similar Lincoln archives, the bulk of it is from the world-renowned private collection of Benjamin Shapell, lovingly assembled, preserved, protected, and now available to all.
It is not leather-bound and gold-tooled, but it is a book that looks wonderful on the coffee table or the shelf. Or read in entirety. The publishers should be proud.
Writing about any aspect of the Jewish-Arab conflict inevitably exposes the writer to charges of political leanings. While historians strive for objectivity, the readers of a blog typically are also interested in the blogger’s personal perspective. I hope that this post, and others I write, will inspire you to go learn more about a topic; to challenge my ideas, and be challenged by them in turn.
***
Where should a discussion of the 1929 Hebron attack against the Jews begin? I find it often useful to focus on individuals who trigger change and shape events.
Amin al Husseini, 1929.
In 1921, Haj Amin al-Husseini was appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and he rallied Arab nationalism against nascent Zionism. In 1924, the Moslem Wakf began shedding doubt on the Jewish connection to the Western Wall, and in 1928 the Mufti claimed that the Jews were trying to take control of the mosques on the Temple Mount.
Amin Al Husseini and Adolf Hitler, 1941. Courtesy: German Federal Archives_Bundesarchiv_Bild 146-1987-004-09A_Heinrich Hoffmann_CC-BY-SA
Amin al Husseini with SS Volunteers 1943. Courtesy German Federal Archives: Bundesarchiv_Bild 146-1978-070-04A _Mielke_CC-BY-SA
One week before the Hebron Massacre in August, 1929, a demonstration was held by the Jews to affirm their connection to the Western Wall. On Friday, August 23, inflamed by rumors that Jews were planning to attack al-Aqsa Mosque, Arabs attacked Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem. Rioting spread to the cities of Safed and Hebron, which both had a small Jewish minority.
Jewish residents fleeing the Old City of Jerusalem during the 1929 Riots.The Jewish Ghetto in Hebron, 1921.
On August 24, Arabs mobs attacked the Jews of Hebron. Armed with axes, knives and iron bars, they screamed “Kill the Jews!” They broke into homes and stabbed and mutilated the Jews they found. The mob included respected Arab merchants who killed their friends, clients, and business associates. Torah scrolls were burned. And while it is often stressed that many Arabs hid their Jewish neighbors, reliable accounts placed the number of such cases at 19.
Sixty-eight Jews were killed, including a dozen yeshiva students from New York and Chicago; scores were wounded or maimed. Soon after, all of Hebron’s Jews were evacuated by the British authorities. Both Jews and non-Jews across the world were horrified by the massacre. The Shaw Commission was a British enquiry that investigated the riots; here is their description:
“About 9 o’clock on the morning of the 24th of August, Arabs in Hebron made a most ferocious attack on the Jewish ghetto and on isolated Jewish houses lying outside the crowded quarters of the town. More than 60 Jews – including many women and children – were murdered and more than 50 were wounded. This savage attack, of which no condemnation could be too severe, was accompanied by wanton destruction and looting. Jewish synagogues were desecrated, a Jewish hospital, which had provided treatment for Arabs, was attacked and ransacked, and only the exceptional personal courage displayed by Mr. Cafferata – the one British Police Officer in the town – prevented the outbreak from developing into a general massacre of the Jews in Hebron.”
“I wish to thank you,” he writes, “for sending your very interesting observations on the situation in Palestine.”
I could end with observations on the shock of Hebron’s Jews who had maintained close relations with their neighbors for many years; on the fallacy of treating the Arab-Israel conflict as political and not theological, or on the obvious falsehood that the root of the conflict is in Israel’s occupation of Arab lands. Yet I prefer to leave you, the reader, to explore this topic, and draw your own conclusions.
Every so often I’ll meet someone who asks me what I do; this draws the response “I’m a natural history curator”*. Sometimes I will then be faced with the dreaded follow-up question “what does that mean?”
I hate it when this happens, because the curatorial role involves lots of different things and it can be hard to summarise them in any kind of concise and intelligible way. Different museums expect different things from curators, which will usually depend on the rest of the staffing structure. So when I answer I can only really answer for myself and what I think MY curatorial role entails.
The most obvious responsibility is “curating collections”, which is not actually an explanation in any meaningful way. To curate more or less means to “take care of”, but these days the museum sector has become professionalised and there are other specialists who take…
Until reading Umi’s post below, I wasn’t aware of how well traveled author Herman Melville was. He tells how Melville traveled to Hawaii, and wrote of his exotic – and erotic – experiences there. Melville also traveled to the Ottoman Empire and throughout the holy land – hence Clarel. He was extremely let down by his experience there, and a year later his friends in the American Colony there were attacked and murdered. They were relatives of John Steinbeck. Small world.
When E.L. Doctrow said on the Charlie Rose show that Moby Dick was the greatest American novel and that Melville had accomplished something truly monumental (which, of course, was not recognized in his time), I resolved to finally read the book. Along the way I developed something of an obsession with this introverted and under appreciated writer. I visited his home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts – the town next to the one my wife is from, and the one she was born in. I stood in the room where he had written the Great Book, and on the piazza where he had written The Piazza Tales. I stood in the house at Tanglewood – summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Lenox and Stockbridge – which was rented by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a friend and supporter of Melville’s literary career, whom Melville would have visited around 1850.
Lincoln and the Jews, by Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell, is an important book on many levels. First, it is a beautiful book, and very very classy. The illustrations, while not rivaling Michelangelo, are copies of historical ephemera: letters, photographs, newspaper articles and related items. Many are priceless because they are written in Abraham Lincoln’s own hand. The others are important because they are personal connections to Abraham Lincoln.
Herman Melville, ca. 1860 
History Source 