LA-based rabbi: Why’d he deliver Trump inauguration prayer?

Despite thousands of petition signers urging him to avoid Donald Trump, Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder and dean of the Westside-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance, delivered one of three benedictions at Trump’s swearing in.

Possibly echoing Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again,” Hier told a massive inauguration crowd: “It’s not God’s business to make the Earth great, it’s man’s business.”

As his two-minute prayer began, Hier said, “Bless President Donald J. Trump and America, our great nation.”

“Guide us to remember the words of the Psalmists, `Who may dwell on your holy mountain? One who does what is right and speaks the truth,”‘ a phrase found in Psalm 15.

Hier quoted from Psalm 82 when he called to “dispense justice for the needy and the orphan for they have no one but their fellow citizens and because a nation’s wealth is measured by her values and not by her vaults.”

Following Hier’s remarks, benedictions were delivered by the Rev. Franklin Graham, the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (founded by his father, the Rev. Billy Graham) and the international Christian relief and evangelism organization Samaritan’s Purse, and Bishop Wayne T. Jackson of Great Faith Ministries International.

Hier told City News Service before the benediction that he chose themes from the Torah and Talmud “that resonate in the 21st century.”

The “general trend” of his reading was “drawn from an idea in the Psalms when the Psalm says `The heavens belong to God but the Earth belongs to man,”‘ Hier said.

“The concept there is human beings … don’t get to receive Social Security at birth because they haven’t achieved anything. They don’t deserve it. The themes is human beings are God’s partner. When the partner does his share, things are great on our planet.

“When the partner fails and does nothing, that reflects what happens here on Earth.”

Hier said he was called by an official of the Presidential Inaugural Committee and told him he would be honored to speak at the inauguration.

Hier’s participation in the inauguration was announced by the committee on Dec. 28 and five days later, an anti-Trump petition on the website Change.org was started asking that Hier withdraw.

The petition was later revised by its author, Mya Stark, the executive director of the nonprofit organization Los Angeles Makerspace, “to be more respectful.”

Signers are asked “to register their difference of opinion on routes to what is most certainly a shared goal: to defend the American dream that we can live freely, equally and in harmony with each other.”

The petition expresses concerns that Hier’s participation in the inauguration “helps to `normalize’ the dangerous and hate-fueled Trump administration” and “by speaking at his inauguration, especially as a hero of a half-century battling hate and intolerance, we feel you lend those elements of your `brand’ — if inadvertently — to help create a smokescreen for Trump, implying that he should be let back into the fold of human discourse WITHOUT having to overtly distance himself from avowed bigots and speak out against them.”

The petition received 3,259 signatures as of Friday.

Hier said he received “hundreds of emails and calls from all over the country pleading with me to continue and not to listen to these petitions.”

“I didn’t weigh in on both sides of that argument because I made the decision immediately when I was called and I stand by it,” Hier said. “I would have done it if it was a Democratic nominee. It’s my duty as an American to do it.”

Hier called it “a great privilege” to speak at the inauguration.

“My parents escaped in the ’20s from Poland where the climate for Jews was one of hostility and prejudice,” Hier said. “They came to this country where Judaism flourishes. Today in the United States of America, the Jewish community is the most vibrant Jewish community probably in the Diaspora in 2,000 years.

“You have secular Jews, Jews who are atheists, Reform Jews, Conservative Jews, Hasidic Jews, Modern Orthodox Jews and every one of them is allowed to thrive in this country. When you’re called to participate in the inauguration of a president of the greatest democracy, there’s only one answer – – yes.”

–City News Service