NEW YORK – Israel’s first observant Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was forced to stay in the kingdom for an extra day for the second time in a month, set to address the United Nations hours before the start of the Shemini Atzeret festival on Monday evening. was, to avoid violating the traditional observance of the holiday.
But Premier used the opportunity to return to the modern Orthodox synagogue that he and his wife lived in Manhattan nearly 20 years ago when they launched their tech start-up.
Kehilth Jeshurun (KJ) welcomed Bennett and his entourage, with its senior Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz introducing the premiere to a crowd of about 150 people before the services began.
Bennett later commented between mincha And marivo Services, extending 15-minute time intervals to commemorate their history with the synagogue that began on a whim.
In one of his favorite stories to share in front of an American Jewish audience, Bennett recounts how he and his wife Gilette went for a Sabbath afternoon stroll on the Upper East Side when they saw a KJ sign for “The Beginner’s Minion”. passed to.
Sold with a free post-service included kiddusho buffet, the young couple began to participate.
“The prime minister said it was here, not in Israel, where his secular wife converted to Judaism,” a worshiper recalled on Monday.
Another participant said, “It was a very warm speech in which he also talked about the bonds that unite Jews both here and in Israel.” “It was a very homely, feel-good” byBut shed light on the issues. “
Monday’s circumstances were far more celebratory than the circumstances that prompted Bennett’s final extended stay In the US at the end of August. Then, a suicide bombing at Kabul’s international airport killed 13 American soldiers and nearly 170 civilians who were helping to pull out of Taliban-hit Afghanistan, Prime Minister with US President Joe Biden from Thursday to Friday. The Oval Office meeting was delayed. Unable to leave the hotel due to the top health ministry’s strict coronavirus guidelines, Bennett attended Friday night services and dinner at Willard Intercontinental’s ballroom.
This time, however, the extra day in America was planned in advance, and he was able to celebrate Shemini Atzeret with the same rabbi who had welcomed him and his wife two decades earlier – Haskell Lukstein, who died on Monday evening. were present in his house. Capability as Rabbi Emeritus of KJ.
Entry to the synagogue was restricted to Bennett and his staff along with a select number of members. While their religious associates took the night off to pray in other synagogues, non-observant members of the Traveling Press stood outside at the corner of Park Avenue and 85th St., in the hope that the prime minister would return. The footage will be snapped. hotels.
It would be a strange sight as Bennett would be walking another one-and-a-half miles to his hotel in Midtown, instead of taking the motorcycle that brought him to KJ before the vacation began.
While they waited for Bennett to appear again, longtime photographer Shehar Azran entertained the press, sharing photographs and stories of the various prime ministers he covered on foreign trips to the United States. One in which Ariel Sharon talks with Michael Jackson for ten minutes at a dinner party and turns to help and asks who was the girl who laughed at reporters the most.
Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon poses for a photo with Michael Jackson during a visit to New York City in 2001. (city Ajran)
After services closed, members began to exit the synagogue and the convoy slowly rolled down Park Avenue.
Prime Minister Bennett arrives at a synagogue on the Upper East Side, a place where he lived with his wife, Gilat, in New York. Arrival in a convoy. After the prayer is over, the meeting will have to return to the hotel on foot pic.twitter.com/a4fxP1RsVk
— Tal Schneider Tal Schneider ال نايدر (@talschneider) September 27, 2021
Though believing that the convoy was a hoax designed to turn them away from the prime minister, a half-dozen Israeli journalists hurried down to Lexington, convinced they would capture a Bennett there.
But the premiere had actually gone some 25 blocks down 5th Avenue, snatching a glimpse of Central Park as confused New Yorkers watched, wondering the identity of the guest who needed a motorcycle of dozens of vehicles, whose was not even being used.
The press finally caught up to Bennett as he finished 61st, capturing the unique moment on his phone as NYPD officers shouted to remain on the sidewalk.
“Shabbat Shalom Mr. Prime Minister,” one of the secular journalists shouted at Bennett, confusing the holiday with the Sabbath.
The Prime Minister shook hands before introducing his security details towards the hotel.
The Traveling Press then debated among themselves whether the strange scene they had documented was enough to make it into the next day’s broadcast.
“I’m used to it. What other news is coming on holiday evenings,” said one of them. “We won’t have anything to report tomorrow anyway.”
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett walks home from the synagogue in Manhattan on September 27, 2021. (screen capture/courtesy)
In fact, Bennett was expected to stay at his hotel on Tuesday before heading home for the night. The Israeli diaspora celebrate the Simchat Torah the day before Jews, so none of Manhattan’s many synagogues will offer the enforced services a prime minister would need.
Some expected that Bennett would have used the opportunity to visit a Conservative or Reformed synagogue in a gesture to the majority of American Jewish people who were not Orthodox or Orthodox.
But the premiere spoke of recognizing the strength in American Jewish pluralism during a Know Jewish Union leaders earlier in the day.
“If there’s one thing I want to import from American Jewry to Israel, it’s the ability to hear, not put people in a box,” he said. “Here, you’re just a Jew, and you’re welcome.”