Israel paper publishes Obama’s wall prayer

This is so disgraceful it defies logic: 

JERUSALEM (AP) – A written prayer that Barack Obama left this week in the cracks of the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, asks God to guide him and guard his family, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday.  

“Lord—Protect my family and me,” reads the note published in the Maariv daily. “Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.” 

The paper’s decision to make the note public drew fire. The rabbi in charge of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovitz, said publishing the note intruded in Obama’s relationship with God. 

“The notes placed between the stones of the Western Wall are between a person and his maker. It is forbidden to read them or make any use of them,” he told Army Radio. The publication “damages the Western Wall and damages the personal, deep part of every one of us that we keep to ourselves,” he said. 

Another Israeli paper, Yediot Ahronot, published an article Friday saying it had also obtained the note but decided not to publish it to respect Obama’s privacy. 

Many visitors to the 2,000-year-old Western Wall leave notes bearing requests and prayers. Obama did so during a pre-dawn visit there Thursday, following a day spent meeting Israeli and Palestinian leaders.Maariv published a photograph of the note, which it said had been removed from the wall by a student at a Jewish seminary immediately after Obama left. 

Obama’s entire trip has pretty much been a spectacle … one that he’s reaping  huge benefits from, obviously.  I’m already on record as saying I was repulsed by seeing the Obama banners and posters that were placed on a fence nearby the wall (by who I don’t know – but they should have been taken down).   That said, this was a PRIVATE PRAYER and should have been kept that way.   No matter how I feel about Obama politically, he didn’t deserve to have his private prayer revealed. 

This is such an invasion of privacy that I can’t even properly put it into words.  There is public prayer, there is prayer between you and your pastor, and then there is private prayer between you and God. It was bad enough that the mediots were pushing the Jews who accompanied Obama to the wall out of the way to get a photo … but this?

Disgusting.

Edited to add:  After reading this, I felt like I had just peeped in someone’s living room window and not realized it until after it happened.  :(

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