Washington, USA - One of the three rabbis who participated in the National Prayer Service for President Obama on Wednesday morning was in hot water by noon with his fellow Orthodox rabbis, who hew strictly to Jewish religious law.
According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the Rabbinical Council of America (the organization of Orthodox clergy) is unhappy with Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York City, because he participated in a largely Christian service in a church. (Full story here [http://jta.org/news/article/2009/01/21/1002407/rca-says-lookstein-violated-its-rules-by-participating-in-national-prayer-service].) That is expressly forbidden by long-standing RCA policy.
The RCA said in a statement:
Any member of the RCA who attends such a service does so in contravention of this policy and should not be perceived as representing the organization in any capacity ..."
The executive director of the RCA, Rabbi Basil Herring told JTA:
To go into a cathedral, in this case an Episcopalian cathedral in the main sanctuary, is certainly by most accounts not appropriate."
Lookstein, mindful that the two other major branches of Judaism would have rabbis giving readings, told JTA,
I felt it was a civic duty to honor the new president of the United States ... Had I pulled out it would have been something of an insult from the Orthodox community, which was at least the way I felt.
Oy. If only the late humorist/linguist Leo Rosten, author of The Joys of Yiddish, had lived to parse this one. He might have put it with the section of his book on "Talmudic reasoning," the root of hairsplitting religious and legal debates -- and many Jewish jokes.
This is clearly, however, no joke for Lookstein.