[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 2]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 1724]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


                           STANDING TOGETHER

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. E. SCOTT RIGELL

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 10, 2016

  Mr. RIGELL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to submit a statement on behalf 
of my constituent, Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman. Rabbi Zoberman is the 
Founding Rabbi of Congregation Beth Chaverim in Virginia Beach, 
Virginia. Rabbi Zoberman asked me to submit the following remarks:

       Our one God of life's precious blessings in a precarious 
     world who created us to be one family, gloriously diverse and 
     gratefully united, so movingly manifest in our beloved 
     Hampton Roads and in this our Standing Together for our sake 
     as well as Heaven's.
       I am proudly holding my Jewish people's most sacred 
     possession, the Torah Scroll. This one from Brno, Czech 
     Republic, has acquired an added dimension of the sacred. A 
     survivor of the Shoah, Holocaust, number 526 of the Czech 
     Memorial Scrolls, it lost its original congregation and 
     community in the Kingdom of the Night. Hatred of the 
     ``other'' consumed eleven million innocent lives of Jews and 
     Gentiles. The towering Torah's teachings of loving-kindness, 
     is the very foundation of the three great monotheistic 
     religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Joined by the 
     three great Eastern religions they have served as humanity's 
     conscience and civilization's journey forward.
       We are taught in the Torah's inerasable lessons begrudged 
     by humanity's enemies, burning the Torah and its people that 
     each human being is equally though uniquely created in the 
     Divine image, that we should love our neighbors as we love 
     ourselves. We are reminded time and again that we, who were 
     rejected and enslaved in Pharaoh's Egypt, ought to embrace 
     the stranger, namely the ``other'' and the refugee, as 
     members of God's family and our own.
       The Exodus' soaring saga of liberation uplifted Dr. King--
     whose celebration we just observed--to remind America to live 
     up to the Pilgrims' vision of fleeing refugees, walking in 
     the shoes of the Biblical Israelites while yearning for a new 
     land free from the persecution of the ``other.'' Freedom of 
     and from religion has allowed America to flourish like no 
     other nation, immeasurably benefitting from the greatest 
     human diversity anywhere. Diversity is divine.
       We must remember the Jewish refugees, including so many 
     children, fleeing Nazism, who were denied entry to these 
     promising shores. In 1939, the SS St. Louis ship, with its 
     desperate human cargo from Hamburg, Germany, was tragically 
     turned away. I address you from the midst of the children in 
     Europe's Displaced Persons Camps following World War II and 
     the Holocaust. There I spent my formative early childhood, 
     there my family along with a multitude of uprooted survivors 
     and homeless refugees on the run, gradually learned to 
     believe again in human goodness and renew our trust in God 
     after such heavy genocidal losses.
       Today's refugees too are knocking on the door of ``the land 
     of the free and the home of the brave.'' The Syrian ones, the 
     most vulnerable, are heroically escaping their genocidal 
     regime. They too are in displaced persons camps with their 
     children's bodies washed ashore on European beaches. How can 
     we remain silent? Those allowed to enter following a most 
     careful vetting process, will become along with their 
     progeny, patriotic and tax-paying Americans. Steve Jobs' 
     biological father was a Syrian immigrant. Refugees and 
     immigrants keep alive the American dream for us all, ensuring 
     that America may ever be a blessing.
       We reassure our dear Muslim neighbors, colleagues, and 
     friends, which we unreservedly appreciate their indispensable 
     contributions without which we would be diminished. Barbaric 
     ISIS targets them too and they fight it with fellow 
     Americans. We all stand together in the ark of survival with 
     a shared future and fate. Indeed, we mutually and joyfully 
     are our sisters and brothers' keepers. We cannot be 
     separated. Let us be mindful of the danger of poisonous 
     demagoguery to our enviable American democracy and inclusive 
     way of life, as well as to our ethical standing. Words and 
     lives do matter. Words and lives are inextricably connected.
       Let us reaffirm in this grand gathering the infinite value 
     of each and every one of us. Both our differences and 
     commonalities are precious to our common Creator. They should 
     be the same for us. Finally, let us pledge to never ever 
     abandon our deepest mooring and most sacred proposition that 
     God's divinity and human dignity are indivisible. Shalom, 
     Salaam, Peace.

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