MEIR SOLOVEICHIK

The eternal link between Lincoln's life and Passover - the fact that Lincoln's death, marked in the Hebrew calendar, coincides with Passover every year - is certainly fitting, and perhaps even part of the providence that Lincoln began to see in his own life and the life of his nation.

Europe is no longer a Christian continent; few Europeans attend religious services on Sunday, and the European Union recently refused to refer to Europe's religious heritage in its fledgling constitution.

In both Israel and America, Jews have experienced unparalleled freedoms, achieved great economic success, and exercised appropriate degrees of political power.

Over the course of history, many Jews have ultimately embraced Christianity - some forcibly, some in order to advance in non-Jewish society, some out of wholehearted belief.

There is, of course, only one chosen nation. But Abraham Lincoln would call America 'an almost chosen nation' because he believed that America had a providential role to play in history, inspired by the example of God's ancient covenant people.

For Jews, the paradigmatic convert is the biblical Ruth, who sought not only a new relationship with God but also a new nationality.

Either Jesus is the son of God, or he is not.

As with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, the origins of Shearith Israel trace back to a small group of religious freedom-seekers and a treacherous ocean passage to the New World.

The Hebrew Bible, while firmly opposing pagan sexual practices, nevertheless celebrates man's and woman's desire for each other as divinely designed.

Jews bear children not only because the carnal election of Abraham must continue. For Jews, raising children is essential to living a rounded ethical life.

We Americans unite faith and freedom in asserting that our liberties are your gift, God, not that of government.

The election of the Jewish people is the result of God's falling in love with Abraham and founding a family with him.

Of all the rabbinic sages of antiquity, perhaps none was more influential or famous than Rabbi Akiva.

If Christians see Mormonism as a dramatic deviation from a millennia-old, biblically-based faith, Jews see Christianity in the same light.

How can finite man commune with an infinite God? To both Christians and Jews, God himself has made that possible by irrupting into the temporal world. To Christians, God became man in the Incarnation; to Jews, the God that spoke out of the fire on Mount Sinai gave his Torah.

Ours is decidedly not an age of Abrahams, Jacobs, or of youthful Elazars proud to be regarded as men of seventy. On the contrary, it is one in which the external signs of aging are avoided at all costs, youth is worshipped, and immortality is sought not in children but in Botox.

Religions, by definition, disagree as to the truth - a reality that cannot be overcome by demanding that one or the other faith repudiate its claim to truth.

We know a great deal about the configuration of the menorah from the biblical book of Exodus. Beaten out of solid gold, the ancient candelabrum boasted six branches emerging from a seventh, its central shaft. The menorah was adorned with golden buttons, cups, and flowers.

We live in an age in which the biblical-moral traditions that have guided us for centuries are increasingly being forgotten.

Jews seek to cleave to the will of God as set forth in the Bible and, particularly, the Pentateuch, with its rabbinic commentaries, the Mishnah and Talmud.

The giving of the Torah is a story of God seeking to provide humanity with the opportunity to make moral decisions.

Even as Jews and Christians profoundly disagree about the truth, they are united in the belief that there is a truth to be sought.

Marriage is about love, but it is not first and foremost about love. First and foremost, marriage is about continuity and transmission.

While Jews and Christians both agree on many religious issues, we disagree, and believe each other profoundly wrong, about others.

As delineated in the biblical book of Leviticus, Israel's atonement was achieved, year after year, through the sacrifices brought on that day by the high priest.