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Historian sheds new light on a famous story about Abraham Lincoln and a New York cantor
(New York Jewish Week) — A new book untangles one of the best known incidents involving Jews in the American Civil War — and suggests the real version is both more complicated and more interesting than the legend.
In “Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army,” historian Adam D. Mendelsohn recalls the story of Arnold Fischel, the Dutch-born hazan, or cantor, at New York’s Shearith Israel Congregation, and how he persuaded President Abraham Lincoln to support the idea of allowing Jews to serve as military chaplains.
That much is true, as Mendelsohn explained in an online talk Tuesday sponsored by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Under a congressional statute, only Christian ministers could be chaplains, so in December 1861 Fischel traveled to Washington to argue his case directly to the president. Lincoln agreed to see Fischel, and a few days later wrote the cantor saying he would “try to have a new law broad enough to cover what is desired by you in behalf of the Israelites.”
On July 17, 1862, Lincoln signed the law permitting Jews to serve as chaplains.
And yet, in research for his new book — which relied in large part on a vast database of Civil War soldiers known as the Shapell Roster — other parts of the story don’t hold together, Mendelsohn explained. According to a frequently retold version of the story, Fischel had been nominated to replace a Jewish layman named Michael Allen who had been forced out as chaplain of the Fifth Pennsylvania Cavalry, allegedly at the request of a visiting delegation from the YMCA. Horace Greeley’s crusading New-York Tribune and other papers picked up the story and made a hero of the Jewish officer who had mustered the cavalry, Colonel Max Friedman, supposedly for “leading the charge against the unjust law.”
In fact, writes Mendelsohn, Allen was not kicked out as chaplain but probably resigned because he wasn’t enjoying his army service far from home. As for the colonel, “There is no evidence of a coordinated campaign by Friedman and his fellow Jews to elect Arnold Fischel in place of Allen.” Instead, Fischel’s contract with Shearith Israel was about to expire, and he sought the cavalry job because was in “urgent need” of the army’s relatively generous pay for chaplains.
Friedman, meanwhile, vigorously denied press reports that his 700-man cavalry, which had fewer than 20 Jewish soldiers, needed a Jewish chaplain. Mendelsohn found evidence that Friedman shrank from the attention, in part because he was a bit of a scammer: Like many officers in his day, he charged the government for no-show recruits, sold commissions to officers and got a cut of the profits from government contractors, known as “sutlers.” Even Michael Allen — who sold liquor — might have been in on the grift.
“It is a much more tangled tale than originally thought, but the outcome is the same,” Mendelsohn, director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of History at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, said Tuesday. “In fact, the Jewish community does lobby Lincoln to change the law, and there is a considerable effort to do so.”
Mendelsohn said the story of Fischel and Lincoln underscores the need to dig more deeply into American Jewish history, and how the Shapell Roster helped him do just that. His book about the 1,700 Jewish soldiers who served in the Union Army is, he writes, “a story of ordinary men in extraordinary times, as fine and as flawed as their fellow soldiers, and Jewish too.”
As for Fischel, he served for a time as sort of a chaplain-at-large to the Army of the Potomac, but never got the lucrative appointment he sought. Lincoln appeared skeptical of his request that a Jewish clergyman was needed as a hospital chaplain in Washington, where Jews were but a tiny fraction of the dead and wounded. Denied that commission, a disappointed Fischel returned to Europe.
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IDF Strikes Hezbollah Weapons Sites in Lebanon After Army Denied Its Existence
Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah’s terror infrastructure. Photo: Via i23, Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law.
i24 News – The Israel Defense Forces carried out airstrikes on a site in southern Lebanon that the Lebanese Army had previously declared free of Hezbollah activity, Israeli officials said on Sunday, citing fresh intelligence that contradicted Beirut’s assessment.
According to Israeli sources, the targeted location in the Kfar Hatta area contained significant Hezbollah weapons infrastructure, despite earlier inspections by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) that concluded no military installations were present.
Lebanese officials had conveyed those findings to international monitoring mechanisms, and similar claims were reported in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.
Israeli intelligence assessments, however, determined that Hezbollah continued to operate from the site.
During a second wave of strikes carried out Sunday, the IDF attacked and destroyed the location.
Video footage released afterward showed secondary explosions, which Israeli officials said were consistent with stored weapons or munitions at the site.
The IDF stated that the strike was conducted in response to what it described as Hezbollah’s ongoing violations of ceasefire understandings between Israel and Lebanon. Military officials said the targeted structure included underground facilities used for weapons storage.
According to the IDF, the same site had been struck roughly a week earlier after Israel alerted the Lebanese Army to what it described as active terrorist infrastructure in the area. While the LAF conducted an inspection following the warning, Israeli officials said the weapons facilities were not fully dismantled, prompting Sunday’s follow-up strike.
The IDF said it took measures ahead of the attack to reduce the risk to civilians, including issuing advance warnings to residents in the surrounding area.
“Hezbollah’s activity at these sites constitutes a clear violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon and poses a direct threat to the State of Israel,” the military said in a statement.
Israeli officials emphasized that operations against Hezbollah infrastructure would continue as long as such threats persist, underscoring that Israel retains the right to act independently based on its own intelligence assessments.
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Some US Senators Skeptical About Military Options for Iran
Demonstrators and activists rally in support of nationwide protests in Iran, outside the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 10, 2026. REUTERS/Tom Brenner
Some US lawmakers in both major parties on Sunday questioned whether military action against Iran is the best approach for the United States as Iranian authorities face growing turmoil.
US President Donald Trump in recent days has left open the possibility of American intervention in Iran, where the biggest anti-government protests in years have led to the Revolutionary Guards blaming unrest on terrorists and vowing to safeguard the governing system.
But at least two US senators sounded notes of caution during interviews on TV networks’ Sunday morning programs.
“I don’t know that bombing Iran will have the effect that is intended,” Republican Senator Rand Paul said on ABC News’ “This Week” show.
Rather than undermining the regime, a military attack on Iran could rally the people against an outside enemy, Paul and Democratic Senator Mark Warner said.
Warner, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” warned that a military strike against Iran could risk uniting Iranians against the United States “in a way that the regime has not been able to.” History shows the dangers of US intervention, said Warner, who argued that the US-backed 1953 overthrow of Iran’s government set in motion a chain of events that gradually led to the rise of the country’s Islamic regime in the late 1970s.
The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported that US military and diplomatic officials will brief Trump on Tuesday about options for Iran, including cyberattacks and potential military action.
Iran has said it will target US military bases if the United States launches an attack. But Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who has often touted a muscular approach to foreign policy, said Trump “needs to embolden the protesters and scare the hell out of the [Iranian] regime.”
“If I were you, Mr. President, I would kill the leadership that are killing the people,” Graham said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” show. “You’ve got to end this.”
Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of the Iranian shah who was ousted in 1979, said on Sunday he is prepared to return to Iran to lead a shift to a democratic government.
“I’m already planning on that,” Pahlavi said on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “My job is to lead this transition to make sure that no stone is left unturned, that in full transparency, people have an opportunity to elect their leaders freely and to decide their own future.”
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Bob Weir, Grateful Dead Co-Founder and Rhythm Guitarist, Dead at 78
Bob Weir poses at the red carpet during the 67th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, California, U.S., February 2, 2025. REUTERS/Daniel Cole
Veteran rock musician Bob Weir, the Grateful Dead’s rhythm guitarist who helped guide the legendary psychedelic jam band through decades of change and success, has died at age 78, his family said in a statement on Saturday.
He was diagnosed with cancer in July and “succumbed to underlying lung issues” surrounded by loved ones, according to the statement, posted on Weir‘s verified Instagram account. It did not mention when or where he died.
Just weeks after starting cancer treatment last summer, Weir had returned to his “hometown stage” at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco to play in a three-night celebration of his 60 years in music, his family recalled. Those shows turned out to be his final live public performances, according to Rolling Stone magazine.
Along with his late fellow Grateful Dead co-founder and lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, who was at the center of the universe for “Deadheads,” as diehard Dead fans are known, Weir was one of the group’s two frontmen and main vocalists for most of the band’s history.
It was Weir who sang the verses on the band’s trademark boogie anthem, “Truckin’,” and who wrote such key songs as “Sugar Magnolia,” “Playing in the Band” and “Jack Straw.”
The youthful, ponytailed “Bobby” grew into an eclectic songwriter whose handsome appearance and diverse musical influences helped broaden the band’s appeal. British newspaper the Independent called Weir “arguably rock’s greatest, if most eccentric, rhythm guitarist.”
After Garcia’s death at age 53 in 1995, Weir carved out an interesting if somewhat neglected solo career – much of it with his band, RatDog – and participated in reunions of surviving Dead members in different configurations.
LONG STRANGE TRIP
“As the one good-looking guy in the Dead, baby-faced Weir was always what passed for the band’s sex symbol,” the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Joel Selvin wrote in 2004. “He didn’t care about that, either. In fact, he always seemed to secretly relish subverting that image.”
Weir was the subject of the 2014 documentary “The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir,” which made a case for the Dead’s “other” guitarist as a musical force. Though some Deadheads adopted the trappings of tie-dyed psychedelia, the group itself was deeply attached to American roots music and was credited with bringing experimental improvisation to rock music.
Weir‘s own musical tastes ranged from Chuck Berry to cowboy songs to R&B and reggae.
Thanks to relentless touring, constant musical evolution and a passionate fan base, the Grateful Dead – who existed from 1965 to 1995 – did not have to rely on producing hit records.
“Bob was the wild one,” journalist Blair Jackson wrote in 2012. “He was the rock ‘n’ roller, but also the confident, smooth-voiced narrator on all those dramatic country-rock numbers about desperadoes and fugitives; a perfect fit for those tunes. He was the guy who would screech and scream himself hoarse at the end of the show, whipping us into a dancing frenzy.”
Weir, whose birth name was Robert Hall Parber, was born on October 16, 1947, and raised by adoptive parents in Atherton, California. He did not excel in school, due in part to his undiagnosed dyslexia. In 1964 at age 16, he met Bay Area folk musician Garcia, with whom he formed the Warlocks, who soon morphed into the Grateful Dead.
THE KID
The athletic Weir, who enjoyed football, was the youngest member of the original band and was sometimes referred to as “the kid.”
He was still in high school when he joined up with Garcia, bass guitarist Phil Lesh, organist-vocalist-harmonica player Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and drummer Bill Kreutzmann.
Lesh recalled in his 2005 autobiography that he and Garcia had to make a promise to young Bob‘s mother. “The long and short of it was that if Jerry and I promised to make sure that Bob got to school every day, and that he got home all right after the gigs, she would allow him to remain in the band,” wrote Lesh, who died in October 2024 at age 84. “We somehow convinced her that we would indeed see that he got to school every day. In San Francisco. At 8:00 a.m.”
Eventually Weir moved in to the communal Dead house at 710 Ashbury Street in San Francisco. The group’s first album, “The Grateful Dead,” was released in March 1967.
According to some accounts, Weir was briefly fired from the band in 1968 because his guitar skills were deemed lacking. But he either redoubled his efforts or the others had second thoughts, because he was soon back in. By the time of the band’s two famous 1970 albums, “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty,” Weir was a key contributor.
His 1972 solo album, “Ace,” was a de facto Grateful Dead album that featured Garcia and the others and included well-regarded Weir songs including “Cassidy,” “Black-Throated Wind,” “Mexicali Blues” and “Looks Like Rain.” Many of his best-known songs were co-written with his old school friend, John Perry Barlow, who died in 2018.
As the band’s rhythm guitarist, Weir often played little fills, riffs and figures instead of straight chords. “I derived a lot of what I do on guitar from listening to piano players,” he told GQ magazine in 2019, citing McCoy Tyner’s work with saxophonist John Coltrane. “He would constantly nudge and coax amazing stuff out of Coltrane.”
Even decades after Garcia’s death, Weir never forgot the influence of his old friend. He told GQ that Garcia was still present when Weir played guitar. “I can hear him: ‘Don’t go there. Don’t go there,’ or ‘Go here. Go here,’” Weir said. “And either I listen or I don’t, depending on how I’m feeling. But it’s always ‘How’s old Jerry going to feel about this riff?’ Sometimes I know he’d hate it. But he’d adjust.”
In 2017, Weir was appointed as a United Nations Development Program goodwill ambassador to support the agency’s work to end poverty while fighting climate change.
Weir married Natascha Muenter in 1999. They had two daughters.
“Looking back,” Weir once said, “I guess I have lived an unusual life.”