Genack Op-Ed: In the presence of another man from Illinois

Aaron Keyak — January 23, 2009 – 4:47 pm | Obama Comments (0) Add a comment

Rabbi Menachem Genack wrote a great op-ed in The New Jersey Record titled, “In the presence of another man from Illinois,” that is well worth reading. Below is an excerpt, but please click here to read the entire piece.

Abraham Lincoln, in a sense, will be standing alongside President Obama.

WHEN BARACK OBAMA takes the oath of office today, the spirit of the 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, will hover over the ceremonies. Lincoln, in a sense, will be standing alongside Obama, reflecting that another man from Illinois has fulfilled the destiny that he himself set in motion with the Emancipation Proclamation.

Keenly aware of the monumental significance of his election, Obama has chosen to evoke Lincoln’s accession to the office in a variety of ways.

Obama hopped on a train in Philadelphia that retraced part of Lincoln’s route to his inaugural. During the ceremonies, he will take the oath of office on Lincoln’s own family Bible.

The theme of the inaugural is the “rebirth of freedom,” echoing the Gettysburg Address.

Serendipitously, Obama will be inaugurated only weeks before the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.

Like Lincoln, Obama takes office at time of great peril for the United States.

Perhaps as he looks out at the enormous crowd gathered in his honor, Obama will sense the presence of Frederick Douglass, born in slavery, a black abolitionist and a noted orator, who witnessed Lincoln’s second inaugural.

As Douglass wrote in his autobiography, on inauguration day, March 4, 1865, “Reaching the Capitol, I took my place in the crowd where I could see the presidential procession as it came upon the East Portico.”

Click here to read on…

Comments

There are no comments for this entry