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Paper Makes Obama Prayer Public

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Los Angeles Times

Published: July 26, 2008

JERUSALEM - Barack Obama's visit to the Western Wall was a public event. The handwritten prayer he left there was meant to be private.

But as soon as he doffed the requisite skullcap and left, a Jewish seminary student pulled a folded piece of paper from a crevice in the ancient wall and offered it to the mass-circulation Maariv.

The newspaper's decision to publish it Friday, under the headline "Obama's note," provoked a storm of criticism in Israel over an intrusion into his relationship with God.

"Lord - Protect my family and me," the unsigned note said. "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."

Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki, traveling with the candidate in London, declined to confirm or deny the note was the senator's. The handwriting in the photograph published by Maariv appeared to match Obama's inscription Wednesday in the guest book at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial.

The note was written on stationery of the King David Hotel, where Obama stayed during his visit this week.
Shmuel Rabinovitz, the rabbi who manages Judaism's holiest site, was furious.

"The notes placed between the stones of the Western Wall are between a person and his maker," he told Army Radio. "It is forbidden to read them or make any use of them."

The publication, he added, "damages the Western Wall and damages the deep, personal part of every one of us that we keep to ourselves."

The newspaper said the prayer was provided by a student at an Orthodox Jewish seminary. It did not say whether he had been paid.

According to the Jerusalem Post, several people who happened to be at Obama's unannounced, pre-dawn appearance Thursday scrambled to find his missive among the many inserted in the wall. Millions of people visit the 2,000-year-old wall each year, and many leave written prayers between its wide beige stones.

Rabinovitz and his team pull out the scraps of paper to make room for more, but do not read them. Jewish law considers the prayers to be holy texts and forbids their destruction; twice a year they are buried in containers on the Mount of Olives.

Meanwhile Obama, nearing the end of a fast-paced international campaign trip, warned Iran, "don't wait for the next president" to take office before yielding to Western demands to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

"The pressure, I think, is only going to build," he said at a news conference beside French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris.

Obama spent less than five hours in the French capital, time enough for his motorcade to drive past curious Parisians gathered along the sidewalks hoping to catch a glimpse, receive a greeting from his host on the steps of the presidential palace and then hold private talks before a news conference.

The French president veered close to an endorsement to a man he called "my dear Barack Obama."

Sarkozy recalled that when they first met in 2006 neither was president.

"And one of us became president. Well, let the other do likewise, huh? I mean, that's not meddling" in the U.S. election, Sarkozy said.

Obama observed that when Sarkozy visited the United States two years ago, he met with only two senators - himself and John McCain.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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