Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg of St. Paul, Minnesota, was part of a group of sixteen rabbis invited to a private meeting with President Bush after Rosh Hashanah.
"...I told him a story that I told over Rosh Hashanah about an elderly volunteer for an Israel organization who said that his passion for volunteering for Israel was driven by the fact that he had been part of a l iberating group at at one of the concentration camps. An inmate came up to him and saw his name tag and saw that he was Jewish, and said, 'Are you Jewish?' in Yiddish. Expecting a hug from this recently freed inmate, the soldier said, 'Yes.' Instead of a hug, he got a slap, and the former inmate said 'You're too late.'Posted by Alan at October 1, 2003 12:23 PM"The President looked at me in the eye and said, 'Part of my job is to make sure we'll never be too late.'
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"We're such a small people, and we have been controlled, restricted and murdered by the greatest empires in history. We have arrived at this period of history, still a time of danger for our people, but we are living in the freest country in history.
"I was just stunned to be sitting across the table from the most powerful person in the world, a man of true humility and belief in one God, who spent much of this hour and a quarter, speaking from the depth of his heart about his concern about anti-Semitism and his understanding of Israel's predicament. I know many disagree with policies of his. I'm sure every rabbi there had some disagreements. But there was no denying the moment, the genuineness, the power of the experience. It felt surreal.
"When I left I went across the street to the park and cried. I had so much emotion about being there. After all we have gone through as a people for 4000 years, so many tyrants under whom we have lived who have brutally mistreated us, to live in an an age when the leaders of the most powerful nation of the world care so deeply for this small people, as many presidents have, is amazing. It had a feeling of holiness to it -- of feelings God's words that 'those that bless the childen of Israel will be blessed.'"