A classic Jewish joke describes aspiring zoologists writing term papers about elephants. The French student writes about the elephant’s love life, the Canadian writes about elephants being so nice, and the Jew writes about “The Elephant and the Jewish Problem.” 

I thought of this gibe, satirizing Jews’ gloomy self-involvement, when reading Lincoln and the Jews: A History, especially with a Canadian audience in mind. But this magnificent volume’s magic comes from the way the two co-authors, Prof. Jonathan Sarna and Benjamin Shapell, use the story of “Rabbi Abraham” and his Jewish countrymen to illuminate 19th-century history, teaching about the growing American Jewish community, about the United States during the Civil War, and about the unique bond between Jews and non-Jews in North America, the greatest, most welcoming, most Jew-friendly landmass of freedom outside of Israel ever.

The work comes alive thanks to extraordinary primary sources, especially handwritten documents, many of which Shapell has lovingly collected over the decades for the Shapell Manuscript Collection, and has graciously exhibited widely. We who love history not only appreciate the power of yesterday’s ideas but the texture of the past, which is rendered powerfully here thanks to dozens of colour photographs allowing readers to revel in these living links to history, to our story.

The Lincoln who emerges in this beautifully written and beautifully produced work is a mensch. Consider this defining exchange with the Canadian mystic and Christian Zionist, Henry Wentworth Monk, whose wild, bearded, Old Testament look captured Father Abraham’s attention – and yes, Lincoln enjoyed his first name’s biblical power. On discovering that his messianic visitor hailed from Ontario, Lincoln asked what Canadians thought of the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves – demonstrating a respect for America’s northern neighbour Canadians still crave. Monk complimented the president, then proposed following up with the more “urgent…. emancipation of the Jew.” 

Thinking of his growing circle of Jewish friends and acquaintances, whom the authors have catalogued diligently, Lincoln was surprised, asking “Are they not free already?” Jews were free in America, but not in Europe, Monk said, expressing his hope the civilized world would “atone for what they have done to the Jews – for their 2,000 years of persecution – by restoring them to their national home in Palestine.” 

Lincoln, in words that remain true today and bear repeating in the Age of the ever more bitter Bibi-Barack battle, said, “That is a noble dream, Mr. Monk, and one shared by many Americans. I myself have a regard for the Jews. My chiropodist is a Jew, and he has so many times ‘put me on my feet’ that I would have no objection to giving his countrymen ‘a leg up.’”

This short, spontaneous, interaction – blessed with Canadian content – shows Lincoln’s wit, humanity, and generosity. Even ardent anti-slavery abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison could be horrifically anti-Semitic, calling Jews “descendant[s] of the monsters who nailed Jesus to the cross.” 

The exchange reveals Lincoln’s proto-Zionism and testifies to the increasingly casual contact he – and millions of other Americans – had with Jews, as the North American community flourished.

Jewish history most honours Lincoln for overriding Ulysses S. Grant’s anti-Semitic order expelling Jewish peddlers from conquered territory. This book shows that Lincoln’s gift to the Jews was not only to protect them when harassed, but to accept them in everyday life.

The great historian Sarna is a friend, while the publisher Thomas Dunne is publishing my next book. But these connections should not prevent me from saluting a work that teaches so much, in the most compelling and entertaining way, about who we once were, as a fledgling, more insecure community, and who we can be, thanks to the “noble dreams” of North America – and of Israel – realized by Lincoln and other heroes.