THE ABRAHAMIC FAITHS:

On Monday, at Shacharit services that begin at 8 in the morning, Rabbi Joseph Prouser will read from the Torah, as he does every Monday morning.

But because that Monday, February 18, also is Presidents Day, Rabbi Prouser will follow the Torah reading by reading the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln's short, transcendent, beautiful, despairing, soaringly hopeful eulogy. Rabbi Prouser has translated it into Hebrew and set it to haftarah trope, so instead of reciting it he sings it. [...]

When Rabbi Prouser chants the Gettysburg Address in Hebrew, he brings together all the strands -- of striving toward what is right; of acknowledging the losses inherent to life; of understanding that decisions have consequences, and that sometimes those decisions are wrong; of trying to live with dignity and courage and decency and love.

Or, as Lincoln said in that second inaugural, "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in."

We have much to do.

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