Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. Senate: Rabbi Stephen Pinsky on 13 June 1989

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Date: 2022-11-27

Last Updated: 2025-03-23

Categories: 🇺🇸 United States of America, Opening Prayers for Legislative Bodies

Tags: 101st Congress, 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, Prayers of Guest Chaplains, U.S. Senate, תחינות teḥinot

Excerpt: The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 13 June 1989. . . .

Content:

Guest Chaplain: Rabbi Stephen Pinsky, Temple Israel, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Date of Prayer: 13 June 1989
Sponsor: Sen. Rudy Boschwitz (R-MN)

Sen. Boschwitz: I thank the majority leader, Mr. President. I also found the rabbi’s prayer inspirational, as I so often do. I am a member of his congregation in Minneapolis, and I am proud to say that he is my rabbi and that he is here today to open the Senate. We look forward to today visiting together here in the Senate, and we look forward to having him again here in Washington. I yield the floor.

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	Our God and the god who links us generation to generation, soul to soul, heart to heart: As we begin this day’s session of this Senate, let us pause to reflect upon our lives and upon our Nation— upon its dreams and its promise.
	We are thankful for this new day and for this season of the year as the days grow longer and the pace of our lives slow just a bit as the Earth warms and cares seem softened by the Sun’s lengthening rays.
	And we are grateful for the lives we lead, for our homes which offer us safe havens from life’s inevitable storms, for our families which give life purpose and meaning, for our Nation, this Republic with its “amber waves of grain,” its “purple mountain majesty,”^[1] From Katherine Lee Bates’s, “America the Beautiful” (1895). its patriot’s dream, its alabaster cities, its citizens proud and free, its institutions democratic and open.
	And although this Nation celebrates a vision of “one nation under God,”^[2] Added to the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States in 1954. we know all too well that our society, being a creation of men and women, does not yet reflect that which a nation under God must reflect.
	Our streets are too often filled with violence and a spreading sense of valuelessness and despair. Our people are not yet one nor do all share equally Your gifts to our Nation and our land. There is hunger, there is fear, there is poverty of the body and of the spirit.
	Give us, O God, the ability to feel the pain of others, to reach out to them, to share our blessings with them. Help us to build a society based on equity and justice, on righteousness and peace. Give us that wisdom, that breadth of vision, which shall enable us to understand that if the cost of turning our land into a garden seems high to some, the price of making it a desert is higher still.
	Grant the men and women of this Senate the strength and the courage to do what must be done so that this Nation, this blessed land, may represent the very finest and the very best, that it may, indeed, “become” one nation under God. Bless the work of their hands, the Nation which we love so deeply and of which we are so proud so that all God’s children will some day sit at His table and drink the wine of deliverance and eat the bread of freedom.

Source(s)

101st Congress, 1st Session. C-SPAN.
Congressional Record, Vol. 135, Part 8 — Bound Edition, p. 14316.

Congressional Record v. 135, part 8 – 13 June 1989. p. 11461

Notes

Notes
1	From Katherine Lee Bates’s, “America the Beautiful” (1895).
2	Added to the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States in 1954.

Contributor: Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

Co-authors:

Name: the Congressional Record of the United States of America
Bio: The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress, published by the United States Government Printing Office and issued when Congress is in session. Indexes are issued approximately every two weeks. At the end of a session of Congress, the daily editions are compiled in bound volumes constituting the permanent edition. Statutory authorization for the Congressional Record is found in Chapter 9 of Title 44 of the United States Code. (wikipedia)
Website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Record
Profile Link: https://opensiddur.org/profile/united-states-congressional-record

Name: Stephen Pinsky
Bio: Stephen H. Pinsky, born in New York City, was ordained a “Rabbi in Israel” in 1971 by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York and awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity by his alma-mater in 1996. Rabbi Pinsky began his rabbinic career as the Assistant and then the Associate Rabbi of Temple Beth-El in Great Neck, New York. Five years later, he was named Rabbi of Temple Sinai of Bergen County located in Tenafly, New Jersey. In July 1981, Rabbi Pinsky was invited to become the Associate Rabbi of Temple Israel. He was elected Senior Rabbi of Temple Israel in 1986 and remained in that position until 1991 when he was named Regional Director of the Midwest Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations – now known as the Union for Reform Judaism. During his tenure in Minneapolis, Rabbi Pinsky was part of a national movement dedicated to moving Reform worship toward a more traditional style including a wider use of Hebrew in the liturgy, a greater emphasis on ritual as well as an increase in the depth and breadth of Jewish education for young people and adults. In the larger Minnesota community, Rabbi Pinsky was appointed to a committee by the late Governor Rudy Perpich whose purpose was to establish an institution which would serve the humanitarian needs of its citizens. Along with the Presidents of the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic, the Dean of the University of Minnesota’s Law School and other state notables, Rabbi Pinsky helped establish the Center for the Victims of Torture which he later served as Co-Chair of its Board. One of his most significant accomplishments was helping to develop the Interfaith Circles program which was created to foster Christian Jewish dialogue which is still in use nationwide. While serving as the UAHC Regional Director in St. Louis, Rabbi Pinsky continued his work in community outreach by serving as Vice-President of the St. Louis Chapter of the American Jewish Congress, Secretary of the St. Louis Rabbinic Association and President of the Interfaith Partnership of Greater St. Louis, the largest interfaith organization in Missouri. He also served on the Boards of the St. Louis Jewish Federation and its Jewish Community Relations Council. In July of 1996, Rabbi Stephen H. Pinsky became the spiritual leader of Temple Beth Torah in Wellington, Florida – a Reform congregation serving the western communities of Palm Beach County.
Website: https://templebethtorah.net/our-rabbi-emeritus/
Profile Link: https://opensiddur.org/profile/stephen-pinsky

Name: Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
Bio: Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also translates prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)
Website: https://aharon.varady.net
Profile Link: https://opensiddur.org/profile/aharon-varady-transcription

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