The Daily Signal - The Rich History of Jewish Prayer on the Floor of Congress

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

Between policy debates and competing political agendas, Congress is not exactly known for being a place of peace, except when members pause for a moment of prayer before each session. Today, Howard Mortman, director for communications at C-SPAN and the author of the book “When Rabbis Bless Congress: The Great American Story of Jewish Prayers on Capitol Hill,” joins the show to discuss the rich tradition and history of prayer—specifically, the prayer of rabbis—on the floor of Congress.  We also cover these stories: The Wisconsin Supreme Court rejects a case filed by the Trump campaign, which contested 20,000 ballots cast in the state. An intensive care unit nurse in New York became one of the first people to receive the coronavirus vaccine. New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio says the city should be prepared for another COVID-19 lockdown.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, December 15th. I'm Rachel Dild Judas. And I'm Virginia Allen. Between policy debates and competing agendas, Congress is not known for being a place of peace, except when it pauses for a moment of prayer before each session. As so many across the nation and the world celebrate Hanukkah this week, Howard Mortman, Director for Communications at C-SPAN, and author of the book,

when rabbis bless Congress the Great American Story of Jewish Prayers on Capitol Hill, he joins the show to discuss the rich tradition and history of prayer in Congress. Don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. On Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected a case filed by the Trump campaign against Wisconsin. The campaign called into question the validity of 20,000 Wisconsin ballots, arguing they should be thrown out. The ballots in question were absentee ballots collected by poll workers at a park in Madison,

and ballots were election officials filled in information that was missing. The court ruled four to three that the claims of the campaign were unmerited or should have been brought to the court before the election. In the majority opinion, Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote, The campaign is not entitled to relief and therefore does not succeed in its effort to strike votes and alter the certified winner of the 2020 presidential election. And he further added, our laws allow the challenge flag to be thrown regarding various aspects of election administration. The challenges raised by the campaign in this case, however, come long after the last play, or even the last game. The campaign is challenging the rulebook adopted before the season began.

An intensive care nurse in New York was one of the first people to receive the coronavirus vaccine. ICU nurse Sarah Lindsay, who works in Queens, New York City at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, was given the coronavirus vaccine by Dr. Michelle Chester, corporate director of employee health services at Northwell Health, CNN reported. CBS captured video of the vaccine being administered to Lindsay. Take a listen. I would feel like. I'm pretty great to get ridgen. I would like to thank all the frontline workers, all my colleagues who've been doing a young

job to fight this pandemic all over the world. I'm hopeful. I feel hopeful today. relieved. I feel like healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning to the end of a very painful time in our history. I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe. We're in a pandemic and so we all need to do our parts to put an end to the pandemic. During a press conference Monday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city should prepare for another lockdown per CBS New York. And the current rate we're going. You have to be ready now for a full shutdown, a pause like we had back at the end of the spring.

And that is, I think, increasingly necessary just to break the back of the second wave, to stop the second wave from growing, to stop it from taking lives, to stop. it from threatening our hospitals. On Monday, New York City restaurants were forced to close indoor seating, a move that Andrew Ridgey, Executive Director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, calls absolutely devastating per CBS. Adding, now with the cold weather and snow on its way, restaurants aren't going to have the benefits of outdoor dining to even help them. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Howard Mortman, as we discuss his

book When Rabbis Bless Congress, the Great American Story of Jewish Prayers on Capitol Hill. This is Virginia Allen, host of the Daily Signal podcast. I don't know about you, but YouTube is certainly one of my guilty pleasures. I really enjoy watching short videos on a variety of topics, so I'm always looking for videos that are actually educational and beneficial to me in some way. And the Daily Signal YouTube channel never disappoints. There is so much binge-worthy content from policy and news explainers to documentaries. If you're not driving, go ahead and pull out your phone and subscribe to the Daily Signal YouTube channel so you can be in the know on the issues you care about most. You can also search for the channel by going

to YouTube.com slash Daily Signal. I am joined by Howard Mortman, director of communications at C-SPAN and author of the book When Rabbis Bles Congress, The Great American Story. of Jewish prayer on Capitol Hill. Mr. Mormon, welcome to the show. Thank you. I appreciate your interest. Thank you very much. Prayer in Congress. Now, that is not something that's talked about too often, but you have a really unique window into really all of Congress, the many facets of Congress. So as a director of communications for C-SPAN, how much time do you spend watching or on the floor of Congress each week. Yeah, that's a great question because that is my job. I'm the communications director, which means I work with the media and have to be familiar with everything

we cover at C-SPAN and we cover a lot of Congress. We cover the floor of the House and the Senate and hearings. So as a result of that, I'm not in Congress itself. In other words, I'm not in the press gallery. We have a producer for that, but my job is to watch what's happening on the floor constantly. So I'm always aware of what's going on in the House and the Senate. Wow. I mean, that's such a unique position and one that very, very few Americans have to literally be constantly just very aware of what is happening on the floor of Congress day in and day out. So your book, When Rabbis Blessed Congress, The Great American Story of Jewish Prayer on Capitol Hill, with all of your knowledge of Congress.

and everything that you have seen, why was prayer, and even more specifically the prayer of rabbis, the thing which has so impacted you to the point that you said, I need to write a book about this. That's a great question. So I love that question. In the big picture, as a result of me spending so much time watching Congress, you see a lot. You see, you know, fights and debates and acrimony and anger. But you see something, that's really unique in the political process. And that's the beginning of each session of the House and each session of the Senate begins with a prayer. And as a watcher of Congress,

it always just struck me, just looking at that and saying, this looks like nothing else that happens during the day. It's quiet. You're really addressing the prayer. You're addressing God, basically. And it's the first thing Congress does every day. Even before they have a pledge of allegiance,

they have a prayer. and the prayer is offered typically by the House chaplain or the Senate chaplain. So just as a curiosity, as a novelty, almost, the whole concept of opening each session in prayer just kind of struck me as something, this looks like nothing else. So, you know, as part of my job, I watch a lot of Congress. I've always intrigued by the whole concept of prayer. Here's when the story gets a little narrower. There are occasions when the official house, so again, in Congress there is an official house chaplain. and there's an official Senate chaplain.

Both are taxpayer-funded positions. They have staff. There are occasions when the House chaplain or the guest chaplain aren't there. And they have a fill-in chaplain, basically, and they have what's called a guest chaplain. And so that's like a sub-level of this opening session in prayer or the guest chaplains, the fill-ins, the fill-ins on every so often on occasion.

Now, one level below that, on occasion, and much rarer, but it does happen, there are rabbis. And the reason what I'm interested in the rabbis is I'm Jewish. So I kind of perk up on the odd occasion that there is a rabbi who was filling in as a guest chaplain, filling in for the regular chaplain. And that's basically where my story begins. We're talking with Howard Mortman, author of the book, when rabbis bless Congress, the Great American Story of Jewish Prayers on Capitol Hill.

So on average, you say that combined between the House and the Senate, there are about 170 times a year when there is prayer on the floor. So how and when did this tradition begin of rabbis, pastors, and other faith leaders praying aloud on the floor of Congress? Yeah, and you know what? I love that question because it goes back, the tradition of prayer goes back to the. very beginning. I mean, the very beginning of Congress, the first thing they did was appoint a chaplain. And prayer began in the Continental Congress. Benjamin Franklin was an advocate. So this custom, this tradition, goes back to the very beginning of America's legislative branch. And even before they completed the Bill of Rights, there was already prayer opening Congress. I must say that,

you know, this is the book that I've did and the research I've done is not, you know, what looms over this whole story is the whole church state issue. And they're, you know, they're advocates of this practice. There are people who don't like prayer opening Congress. Two responses to that. First of all, it is protected by several Supreme Court cases that Congress can open. And it all goes back to the very beginning. But more important for my purposes, I don't care about that. This is not a church state study. It's not a church state book or argument. since we're talking about the very beginning of Congress in this tradition, I was surprised when I started writing this and started doing research

how little there had been written about this tradition in general, of prayer in Congress, how little looking at this from an historical perspective there was. Again, there might have been the odd arguments for and against the practice, but no one really dived in and looked at who, in my case, who these rabbis are and what they said. That's, you know, so fortunately, there's even though 100, as you mentioned correctly, 170, roughly 170 times a year, Congress opens in prayer. Of those maybe seven times a year, there's a rabbi who does it.

But there was enough for me going back over 160 years to complete a study of this and really catalog all the rabbis. Well, and it is such a beautiful book, and you've done such an amazing job doing just that cataloging all of these events of these beautiful, beautiful prayers. And you wrote in the book that as a February of this year, 441 rabbis have prayed to open congressional sessions. And I know that you talk about many of those rabbis in the book. Are there specific instances of prayers, whether that you researched or that you have personally seen that really impacted you and that stand out in your mind as being really special? Yeah, you know what? What I love,

love the prayers that I really enjoy reading are those that really reflect their times. The broad sweep of history, many of these prayers that are given by rabbis. And I kind of have to include the non-rabis in this view of history because a lot of the prayers that are offered every day encompass in some way what is going on in the world around them. But limiting just to the rabbis part of who are the essence of my study, it's messages around big moments in American history. such as the Vietnam War. And you see rabbis who are offering prayers and messages on behalf of the troops overseas. After 9-11, after terrorism, you see a lot of stronger language about greatness of America.

The theme of immigration, so many of these rabbis who are in this study are from other countries. And they come to America as part of the great immigration of the Jewish immigration. and come here and talk about how great America is and how thank you to America for welcoming in their families and the immigrants. To really answer your question, the ones that struck me the most just from a historical perspective are, believe it or not, there were rabbis who survived the Holocaust and moved to America and became rabbis and ended up praying in Congress. And for me, just to see some of their names, there were even a couple. survivors of Auschwitz, the famous death camp the Nazis had. And some of these rabbis came to America, went to rabbinical school, became rabbis here, and ended up praying in the literal center of American democracy. And it struck me what a nice victory over Hitler in a way of being able to really assert

American democracy and part of that Jewish experience. That is so, so powerful. And when it comes to actually selecting, you know, who are these rabbis that pray, who are the reverends, the pastors, who gets to choose? Great question, because that really is at the core of how this whole, how everything happens, how I guess chaplain is selected. For the most part, and there will be exceptions, but for the most part, the man or the woman of cloth, the clergy man or the clergy woman is sponsored by his or her local representative. It could be the member of Congress in the House in the Senate. It's the senator from that person's state who sponsors the rabbi or the clergyman or the reverend, the minister to pray. It is a big honor for the clergy members to pray

is also a big honor for the sponsoring member to be associated. They are not donors, but they are big members of the community, esteemed members of the community who typically get associated with the members. So it's a big honor all around. And what's interesting is, you know, they give after a member of Congress typically sponsors, I guess, Chaplin, that member gives a one-minute remark for speech after they sponsor, and that goes in to the congressional record. So it's, you know, it's, part of the honor of sponsoring someone now in this great age of sort of great, but in this age of social media, the, those typically the clergy member will appear with that, with their sponsor and take a picture and they tweeted or put it on Facebook or, you know, or share video of them afterwards of the prayer. So social media becomes a big component of that of just being the member being able to show their constituents.

that he or she has sponsored a, you know, that day's guest chaplain. That's an interesting facet because obviously that was not in existence here, even just 20 years ago. So certainly something that has, I suppose, changed a bit. And, of course, impacted every area of culture, but even just something, yeah, like prayer on the hill. We are talking with Howard Mortman, author of the book, when rabbis bless Congress, the great American story of Jewish prayers on Capitol. Hill. You wrote the book to really tell, in part, the broader story of Jewish history in America. So how did you incorporate that history into the book?

Yeah. So the two big buckets for me is the Jewish history and the congressional history. On the Jewish history, I'm not a rabbi. I'm not, you know, I think I flunked out of religious school, so I'm the least qualified to be talking about prayer. But for me, I am a history junkie. I'm a politics junkie. Working a C-SPAN feeds that. So being Jewish, having just a basic knowledge of this, has really been meaningful for me to fill in so many blanks in my own education,

learning about the sweep of American Jewish history. And again, this is something, you know, writing this book and doing this research has both been both an incredibly rewarding, meaningful, and fun experience, but also at the same time, daunting and a bit scary because no one's ever done this before, so I better get it right. So, you know, it just involves a lot of triple checking, making sure I have the names right, and I'm not saying things that are just wrong in the Jewish tradition. You know, I don't go out of any limbs and say, you know, whether these prayers are right or wrong, but just more of just recording them and grouping them and trying to.

trying to make a story out of them. At the same time, you know, this is, even though it's about rabbis, it's not, I did not want this to be a Jewish book to the exclusion of non-Jews. I want people who want to learn about this incredible tradition in Congress to come away with a deeper understanding of this practice. So, you know, I don't want this to be seen as just, it's a book, a Jewish book by rabbis. It's a book about Congress and a tradition that just has gone very, that has not been much reported on or even written about.

So I hope Congress junkies and Congress lovers will embrace this project as well. Well, it's such a unique approach. I mean, like you say, so little research has been done on this topic. So it's so special to have it now kind of all in one place and this new window into an aspect of Congress that has not been broadly written about. As you were doing your research for the book, was there anything that you uncovered that was just, just a real wow moment or that has really impacted you personally. Yeah, thank you for that. I actually will, if we have a moment, I want to share just a really neat personal story

about this. So the video, so there are two parts to the research. There's the video component. And that means rabbis who gave prayers in Congress during the C-SPAN era, which means that's when television coverage of the House. began, 1979, and in the Senate, 1986. So there's, there's, there's, there are prayers that were on national TV through C-SPAN starting in 79. And then the other half of the prayers, roughly, are those that predate that TV era and live only the congressional record. So I had to go through

both the video of C-SPAN as well as the congressional record to really track down on this prayers. Now, part of that for, for prayers that live on video, that were on TV, I put those on YouTube. So all the rabbi prayers that were given on television I have the video for and I have a mechanical process of just putting them on YouTube as part of the research. Now, a couple months, about two months ago, I got a note out of the blue from a family of a rabbi who has since died, but his name was Rabbi Maurice Lyons. And Rabbi Maurice Lyons of St. Louis gave the prayer in the Senate back in 1994. And as part of my mechanical process, I put that prayer on YouTube.

It was a nice three-minute prayer. And a couple months ago, the family of the now since deceased Rabbi Maurice Lyons was Googling around for the anniversary of his death. In the Jewish tradition, the anniversary is called a Yardt site. And so they were trying to find any mentions of Rabbi Maurice Lyons. And they stumbled over the YouTube that I had posted. And the family sent me a letter that when the grandson said, my God, we found. this video of our grandfather, we didn't know he gave a prayer. And I think he said, we'd never even

heard his voice. And he sent a note to me, say, this is incredible to get this YouTube of him giving a blessing over Congress. And Rabbi Maurice Lyons actually speaks Hebrew in the prayer. And I went back to him, this even more incredible to hear this kind of a personal connection with your family and what I've been doing as part of my research. So that was for me, just to connect with this family, which probably would have never even known about this prayer or even seen video. It was just a very personal connection between that family and my work. And this is like two months ago. And it just really struck me as this, wow, what just a beautiful moment for both of us as part of that. That's so powerful. I mean, just incredible to think of that personal

impact for that family and how special that is for them to have that, to look back on for generations to come. What a beautiful aspect to this project that you've taken on. It really came alive. And it kind of, you know, I'm not an academic. I'm not a professional. I'm not a professional story. And I love history. But I don't have, I didn't study it as, you know, in terms of research project. But it's those moments. And there's a couple other examples like that of just of descendants of rabbis or other grandchildren who say, hey, are, am I in the book? or was my father in the book. And just, you know, those are really special moments

when something, you know, is as precious as given a prayer in Congress, really connects with the families or the people themselves. Yeah, I mean, it brings a whole new meaning and dimension to a topic that not many people have thought much about. So that's just absolutely incredible. I, you know, personally, I am such a believer that prayer is powerful and that, you know,

when we think about America and the things that have shaped our nation, I truly strongly believe that prayer is at the center of that narrative. But I do just find it really interesting that while prayer has been removed from so many other places in our nation, that it has so soundly remained in Congress. How has prayer managed to be kept as this really sacred tradition in Congress when we've seen it removed from other spaces. Yeah, that's a really, really solid question because prayer in Congress has withstood Supreme Court challenges and not just prayer in Congress,

but the prayer in opening city council meetings, prayer in state legislative sessions. Prayer goes on in the legislative bodies, I believe, almost every one of the states. There are prayers that open each convention, political convention, the Republican and Democratic Convention, have prayers that are open.

I can't speak. I don't know if they decide if there's because of the change and because of COVID for the upcoming one of January, but prior inaugurations have had prayers as part of it. So, you know, there are, there have been from the beginning folks who oppose the practice on church state grounds, but it is very much enshrined and it's protected in numerous cases. Now, you know, we're talking about Congress here, there is no chaplain in the executive branch. There's no chaplain of the White House. The Supreme Court doesn't have a chaplain, even though they do invoke God in their opening of each session. This is very much a legislative phenomenon. One little quirk about this is there are no prayers that opened the Knesset in Israel. So if you were a rabbi in Israel and you want to pray

in a legislative body, you have to come to America to do that. That's really interesting. I didn't realize that. That's so fascinating. Well, this is just incredible that you have taken the time to really comb through history, just generations and generations, and put this beautiful book together. We certainly encourage all of our listeners to get a coffee. You can find it on Amazon at your local bookstore. It says, where rabbis bless Congress, the great American story of Jewish prayers on Capitol Hill. It'll make a great Christmas gift. So be sure to get a coffee. And Mr. Mortman, we really thank you for your time today.

I appreciate this so much. Thank you for the opportunity. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening and we'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation.

It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Rachel Del Judas, sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.