Posted on 04/18/2008 3:55:50 PM PDT by freerepublic_or_die
Pope Benedict XVI paid a 22-minute visit to the Park East Synagogue — the first papal trip to a United States synagogue — on Friday afternoon.
He presented the synagogue with a medieval Jewish manuscript from the Vatican library and received three gifts: a seder plate, a Passover haggadah and a box of matzoh. The pope offered warm remarks and was showered with praise and music, but in a brief, three-minute address, he did not address the Holocaust, anti-Semitism or historic tensions between Jews and the Catholic Church.
The pope entered the temple As the choir sang “Sh’ma Yisrael,” a central declaration of faith in Judaism, a synagogue elder drew back a thick blue velvet drape, exposing the Torah scrolls that are stored behind the bimah. Rabbi Schneier told the pope that after Exodus, the Jews “embraced the law that governs the relationship between man and God.”
Rabbi Schneier recalled that he attended the pope’s inauguration in 2005 at Benedict’s invitation. “Your visit today to Park East Synagogue, a historic occasion that will be recorded in history forever, is a reaffirmation of your outreach, good will and commitment to enhancing Jewish-Catholic relations,” the rabbi told the pope. “In our lifetime, your holiness, both of us have experienced the ravages of war, the Holocaust, man’s inhumanity to man — and also tasted the joy of freedom.” The rabbi added later, “With integrity and true to our respective traditions we look toward Heaven.
(Excerpt) Read more at cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com ...
I must admit I was mesmerized by what I can only describe as a divine presence about him that literally touched me through the screen, thinking to myself how beautiful, touching this ecumenical gathering turned out to be.
My mind began to wander, thoughts of Israel, the Middle East, Iraq, religious strife, sectarian in fighting, Jihad, killing, blood, death, misery, chaos, anarchy, a Twilight Zone, reverse-imaged upside down inside out, diametrically polar opposite end of the spiritual,social, political, civil spectrum, the overwhelmingly all-encompassing egregious harvest of satanic proportions, of infinite war, night, hopelessness, helplessness, that this miserable bitter culture and its people have wrought, spawned .... and then once again, the promise of a new day, a new era, a new moment in the history of Man, turns back into the ghastly infinitely nightmarish scenario without end...
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
Wonderful!! Thank you for your thread.
Thank you. I only caught the end of this live; I’ll catch the replay in a couple of hours. He was being warmly greeted by rabbis and male congregants at the front of synagogue and then, as he walked out, shook hands along the way. However, one woman leaned over and kissed his ring. She couldn’t have been Jewish, right?
Why not? Had I been there I would have kissed him, too.
If you mean to ask how likely is it that this woman, who I would have to assume was a member of the synagogue as a practicing Jew in good standing, would have the religious sense, fervor,zeal to kiss the Pope, I would have to say absolutely, unequivocally,
My hunch is that she was one very shrewd, very smart cookie, who as an ardent practicing Catholic with some very lovely Jewish friends managed to engender the dream of a Catholic lifetime to get to meet/kiss the Pope in a way she would never have otherwise had.
Beautiful.
As a secular right wing Jew, I say this was beautiful! In the words of President Bush: “Awesome!”
“My mind began to wander, thoughts of Israel, the Middle East, Iraq, religious strife, sectarian in fighting, Jihad, killing, blood, death, misery, chaos, anarchy, a Twilight Zone, reverse-imaged upside down inside out, diametrically polar opposite end of the spiritual,social, political, civil spectrum, the overwhelmingly all-encompassing egregious harvest of satanic proportions, of infinite war, night, hopelessness, helplessness, that this miserable bitter culture and its people have wrought, spawned .... and then once again, the promise of a new day, a new era, a new moment in the history of Man, turns back into the ghastly infinitely nightmarish scenario without end...”
There is something almost poetic in your prose here in describing exactly the way things are to this day. But hope springs eternal, doesn’t it.
It is this very mechanism that underscores the belief in a Messiah, especially in helping those living in the days when life was truly a struggle merely to subsist.
So absolutely, yes indeed, hope springs eternal because life springs eternal, life springs eternal because hope springs eternal, where there is life there is hope, where there is hope there is life.
My mom,who is 95,called me to tell me to watch the ceremony-it seems this was the synagogue she attended as a little girl.Her dad,whom I never met,owned a grocery in the area.She said that Harry Houdini was a worshipper there.
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