Transcript
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Rora Roussi (0:28)
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Professor Jonathan Sarna (0:31)
welcome to the New Books Network.
Rora Roussi (0:35)
Hello and welcome to the New Books Network Jewish Studies Channel. I'm your host, Rora Roussi, executive director of Jewish Unity through Diversity Institute, where we explore the future of our heritage. Today. We're really delighted and it's a personal honor to speak with Professor Jonathan Sarna about his book Lincoln and the Jews, published by New York University Press in 2025. I have to say, yeah, we have matching copies. I have to say that this is sometimes you hear about somebody for so long and then you get to meet them. And so this is very exciting for me because your name has been out there for, for all of my career. So I'm very excited to meet you and thank you for taking the time to speak with me and it should be an interesting talk. So again, thank you for joining us. And with that introduction, I'm going to let you introduce yourself, actually, who you are.
Professor Jonathan Sarna (1:29)
Well, it's really a pleasure to be with you, Drora. And I am Jonathan Sarna. I'm the university professor and the Joseph H. And Bella Braun Professor Emeritus at Brandeis University and chief historian of the Weizman National Museum of American Jewish History.
Rora Roussi (1:49)
Right. And that's like, you know, you say it's a little of who you are. We're going to leave it at that for now because I think we're going to get into some more as we go through it. But let's first start with your co author so that we understand it. You have a you're listed as a co author with Benjamin Chappelle and who owns much of the collection that you are using from.
Professor Jonathan Sarna (2:12)
So let's so Benjamin Chappelle is indeed a collector and really deeply knowledgeable about Abraham Lincoln and someone who is collected not just about Lincoln, but is especially known for his Civil War collections, has a very significant website, really connected in some ways to Jews and the history of the United States and in Israel. He's also supported important exhibits at the National Library of Israel, about America and Israel. I didn't know any of that until I did an earlier book called When General Grant Expelled the Jews. That was my own. And as one does, I went around and gave lectures and I gave a talk in New York on the book. And afterwards a man came up to me and said, oh, I wanted to meet you and I need to talk to you. And I said, I'd love to talk to you, but I have a plane to catch. So he said, no problem. I'll come and see you at Brandeis. Which he did very soon afterwards. And that's when I learned who he was and what he had collected. And the most important thing was that he realized that there was a whole story about Lincoln and Jews which nobody really knew. One might. Certainly one knew a few episodes. The episode of General orders number 11, and the episode connected with making sure the Jews could be chaplains in the Union Army. But it turned out that although those are indeed very important, there were also other episodes. And I would have to say that Ben really persuaded me that we should join together. He had, as you say, these fine documents and also had, I think, a conception of the kind of book. Originally, this was a coffee table book. It really, really highlights the Hardvack edition, which, by the way, is translated into Hebrew as well. Really highlights the beauty of some of these texts. But subsequently, there was a sense people might teach it. People complained, I wanted to read the book, but how can you take such a huge album on a plane? And so NYU Press, which has a very significant group of Civil Jews in Civil War volumes, agreed to bring it out as a paperback with more emphasis on the text, but also with significant illustrative material. And, you know, it's now preserved in that manner as well.
