Was a rabbinic sermon on the Fourth of July the inspiration for the famous beginning of Abraham Lincoln’s greatest address?
(Public Domain)
Independence Day in 1863 fell on a Saturday. Sabato Morais, born in Italy to a family of Sephardi Jews, was the religious leader of Mikveh Israel Congregation in Philadelphia, by then having served in the position for over a decade. Rabbi Morais was faced with a unique calendrical quandary that Shabbat morning, however. While most Americans would be happily celebrating the nation’s birthday, on the Hebrew calendar the date was the 17th of Tammuz, a tragic day that marks the beginning of the three-week period, culminating with Tisha b’Av, during which Jews mourn the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.
Additionally, that morning the outcome of the battle of Gettysburg was not yet clear. News of the North’s victory would only be printed in special-edition newspapers later that afternoon. As the historian Marc Saperstein has put it, “When he prepared the text of his sermon and when he delivered the words from the pulpit, it was still unclear to the preacher and his congregants whether the Confederate armies that had penetrated into Pennsylvania would break through the Union lines and threaten Philadelphia, Baltimore or Washington, D.C.” Morais, of course, hoped that he and his coreligionists would receive good news soon, as he sought to balance explication of the Jewish significance of the sad day with optimism for restored American peace and unity.
The Union League of Philadelphia, formed to support the policies of President Lincoln, had specifically requested from Morais to mention the Fourth of July in his speech. They had asked all local clergymen to center their remarks on the verse from Leviticus that adorns the Liberty Bell, “Proclaim liberty throughout the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
Morais, however, chose instead to focus his remarks on King Hezekiah’s words spoken during the Assyrian’s siege of Jerusalem: “This is a day of trouble, of rebuke and derision” (Isaiah 37:3), alluding to the fearful battle that was taking place some 90 miles away. He did, however, per the request, acknowledge that “I am not indifferent, my dear friends, to the event which, four score and seven years ago, brought to this new world light and joy.”
The strikingly archaic phrase was borrowed from the King James Bible, from which the rabbi had learned English. Its translation of Psalms 90:10 reads: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
Morais concluded by praying to God that He “Uplift us from the dust into which our sins have cast us. Raise the horn of our salvation. Encircle Pennsylvania with Thy mighty shield, protect the lives of her inhabitants … Then this day which has brought us trouble, rebuke and derision, will henceforth be celebrated with a joyful heart, with glory and national happiness.”
In Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered in November, he would begin with the immortal line “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” However, as Saperstein has noted, months prior, three days after Morais’ July 4th sermon, the president spoke to a small group, and according to the New York Times, said, “How long ago is it? — 80 odd years — since on the Fourth of July for the first time in the history of the world a nation by its representatives assembled and declared as a self-evident truth that ‘all men are created equal.’”
Morais’ sermon was subsequently printed in the newspapers, a common practice at the time. It is quite possible that Lincoln was struck by the usage of “four score” then, and adapted it for his address a few months later.
As the renowned American Jewish historian Jonathan Sarna has remarked, “We do know that some of Morais’ sermons were sent to Lincoln and that he read them. Good politicians are known for borrowing phrases that will resonate with the public. So it is possible.”
This July Fourth, then, while all Americans have good reason to celebrate, members of the Jewish faith can take particular pride in one of their rabbis likely inspiring America’s most beloved president’s famous phrase.
Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” which examines the Exodus story’s impact on the United States, “Esther in America,” “Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.”
