Four score less 4 years ago our forefathers brought forth on the Levantine shore, in our historic homeland, a reborn Jewish nation, dedicated to our age-old values as a people of G_d, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that the values of our ancient prophets and our religious traditions will guide this nation.
Now we are engaged in a great war of truth, justice and security, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come together to dedicate our lives, energies, and love to that nation, so that all our precious brothers and sisters, children and elderly who here gave their lives that that nation might live, will not have died in vain. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot hallow -- this ground. The brave men and women, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and our historic nation on its own land of the people, for our people, and by our people, with the help of G-d, shall not perish from the earth.
D. Kristt/A. Lincoln
Dr. Don Kristt, holds a degree in medicine as well as Rabbinical ordination. He is a former Professor of Neuropathology, now pursuing a degree in Biblical Archaeology.. As a published poet, three of his recent poems on the war have appeared on-line on the Deronda. Review web site.