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Guest Chaplain: Rabbi Michael Beals, Congregation Beth Shalom, Wilmington, DE.
Date of Prayer: May 23, 2013
Welcoming the Guest Chaplain:
Mr. COONS. Mr. President, thank you for the opportunity to recognize and celebrate this morning’s Chaplain. Rabbi Michael Beals has served our community in Wilmington, DE, and our country admirably and with a strength of faith and foundation that you have heard in this morning’s prayer. He is joined by his wife Elissa, a caring veterinarian, his daughter Ariella, whose bat mitsvah was just celebrated, and his daughter Shira and many other family and friends. He has a wonderful and accomplished education, being ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary and also having studied at the American University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
In addition to his remarkable education, he is someone who is profoundly grounded in the calling, in the challenge of rebuilding. As you heard in his reflections in prayer this morning, he is someone who cares deeply for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and is true to the Biblical calling of us to be witnesses to our communities wherever we might be found.
I am grateful for the chance to add his voice to the many who have brought this Senate into session year in and year out over the centuries, and I am grateful for his friendship and leadership in my hometown of Wilmington, DE.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
Mr. REID. With the Republican leader’s consent, I ask now that the senior Senator from Delaware be allowed to say a few words regarding our guest Chaplain.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, Senator Coons and I spent a couple of lovely hours together in Michael Beals’ synagogue last Saturday as his daughter was going through bat mitsvah. I will never forget that occasion. What a joy for everyone there, people from all over the country. I know it was a source of family pride for the father, the mom, and for the rabbi to be there with their daughter on that special day.
To my colleagues I would say that one of the things I pray for every day is that we will find our way to a two-state solution in the Middle East that provides a homeland for the Palestinians, a capital for the Palestinians, and security for the people of Israel and peace for the people of Israel.
There is a great partnership in our State between Rabbi Beals’ synagogue and my church and a number of other churches of different faiths. I just want to mention that here today and thank you for your commitment not just to the least of those in our society and those who need our help but also across the world to a really big trouble spot that needs our attention and our thoughts and our prayers. I thank you very much for being here today. Thank you for your prayer.
I thank the leader for letting me say a few words.
| Contribute a translation | Source (English) |
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Let us join together in prayer. | |
Adon Olam, Master of the Universe, we send our first prayer to the residents of Moore, OK. May it be Your will that those who are missing be found alive and be cared for. Send comfort to those who have suffered loss, and with the help of those gathered here, send the resources required to rebuild. | |
Eternal our God, You commanded us to care for the widow, the orphan, and You commanded us to care for– so appropriate today– the stranger in our midst. Thank You for giving our Nation these esteemed Senators to help us as a nation fulfill the command to care for the most vulnerable in our midst. Into each of these honorable Senators You implanted Your divine spark. Help these Senators, Your humble servants, find a way of working together for the common good. In doing so, may they thus take their individual holy inner lights and join them together, creating one unified shaft of light so strong that it will shine clear up to the firmament above. | |
אָמֵן׃ |
We pray this in Your sacred and Holy Name. And let us all say amen. |
Source(s)
113th Congress, 1st Session. Congressional Record, Issue: Vol. 159, No. 74 — Daily Edition (May 23, 2013)
“Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. Senate: Rabbi Michael Beals on 23 May 2013” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.
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