https://opensiddur.org/?p=21520Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. Senate: Rabbi Israel Zoberman on 11 December 20142018-09-02 23:37:17The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 11 December 2014. Textthe Open Siddur ProjectUnited States Congressional RecordUnited States Congressional RecordIsrael Zobermanhttps://opensiddur.org/copyright-policy/United States Congressional Recordhttps://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105United States of AmericaOpening Prayers for Legislative BodiesSenate113th Congressתחינות teḥinot21st century C.E.58th century A.M.English vernacular prayerPrayers of Guest Chaplains
Guest Chaplain: Rabbi Israel Zoberman, Founding Rabbi of Congregation Beth Chaverim in Virginia Beach, VA.
Sponsor: Senator Mark Warner
Date of Prayer: 11 December 2014
Our one God of life’s blessings,
Who brings us together to be one family
(gratefully united though gloriously diverse)
through the Divine commandments of loving-kindness.
May the awesome Author of an enchanting yet endangered universe
uplift our honored Senators
with the essential twin gifts of freedom and responsibility,
ever fulfilling the demanding American dream.
At these crossroads of compelling challenge,
may the Senators be reassured
that each human life is a singular journey of promising purpose,
that the Creator’s divinity
and human dignity
are inseparably linked.
May the Most High bless the Senators,
the Nation,
and humanity
with SHALOM’s sacred healing,
hope,
and harmony.
Recalling my early childhood
in a Displaced Persons Camp
in Germany’s American Zone,
and on my 40th anniversary in the rabbinic ministry
in the most ecumenical Nation under Heaven,
I am grateful.
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Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman is the Founding Rabbi of Congregation Beth Chaverim in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Born in 1945 in Chu, Kazakhstan (USSR) to Polish Holocaust survivors who had met in Siberia, Rabbi Zoberman spent his early childhood in Poland, Austria and from 1947 to 1949 at Germany’s Wetzlar Displaced Persons Camp, American Zone. He grew up in Haifa, Israel and served in the IDF in the 1960s before emigrating to the United States in 1966. Rabbi Zoberman is the only rabbi to earn a doctorate in Pastoral Care and Counseling from Chicago’s McCormick Theological Seminary, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. A resident of Virginia since 1981, he served one year as Associate Rabbi at Ohef Sholom Temple in Norfolk before founding Congregation Beth Chaverim, the first Reform synagogue in Virginia Beach. In 1999, his alma mater, Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, awarded him the honorary Doctor of Divinity Degree.
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