[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15040-15041]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

                                 PRAYER

  Dr. David Halpern, Rabbi, Flatbush Park Jewish Center, Brooklyn, New 
York, offered the following prayer:
  Our Father, Sovereign of the world, we stand in the House of freely 
elected representatives of all the American people. These men and 
women, dedicated and strong, have accepted the awesome burden of 
promulgating the laws by which our free society lives and shall live. 
They wear this mantel of leadership in profoundly perilous times.
  The threat to human security wears many faces: Tyranny, terror, 
religious oppression, racial tension, disease, hunger and despair. We 
seek the solution to these problems. We search diligently for the road 
to peace, for the path to harmonious living, for the means to achieve 
human dignity for us all created in Thine image.
  May we always remember that to safeguard our own freedom, we must 
speak out against oppression, and, where warranted, even take up arms 
against it. To enjoy the blessings of our own wealth, we must also 
provide for the underprivileged and the needy. To be truly strong 
requires more than strength of arms, it requires strength of spirit.
  Almost six decades have passed since the age of the Nazi death camps, 
the places where 6 million Jewish men, women and children had their 
lives cruelly and brutally ended, their only sin that they were born 
Jewish. The world has watched helplessly as in the last decade hundreds 
of thousands of different nationalities and ethnic groups have been 
slaughtered. We pray that the destruction of man by his fellow because 
of religious beliefs or racial origins will be known no more; that 
people of different religious paths may learn to live side-by-side in 
peace and in harmony.
  We ask Thy blessing upon these members of our Congress, the spiritual 
heirs of those who were so instrumental in bestowing upon the seed of

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Israel the restoration of their homeland. We pray that our President 
will succeed in his determined mission of building peace with security 
and of shining the bright light of freedom upon that benighted part of 
the world.
  Grant that our President and Vice President and all our elected 
leaders will be blessed with clear vision to see and understand the 
future, and the courage and heart to make it a blessed and beautiful 
reality.
  We pray in the words of Isaiah: May the spirit of the Lord rest upon 
us, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and 
strength, the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord. Amen.

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