Reform Rabbi: I Turned Down Offer to Speak at Inaugural Service
Rabbi Ari Plost
By Josh Nathan-Kazis January 17, 2017
A Reform rabbi from Maryland rejected an invitation to address Donald Trump at a prayer service marking the presidential inauguration because he thought his participation “could appear callous to the many fears in [his] community.”
Writing Tuesday in the Washington Post, Rabbi Ari Plost of Congregation B’nai Abraham in Hagerstown, Maryland, said that he turned down an offer to speak as a Jewish representative at the Presidential Inaugural Prayer Service at the Washington National Cathedral on Saturday morning.
Trump and vice president-elect Mike Pence are slated to attend the service, which has been held at the cathedral each inauguration since 1933.
Plost wrote that he could not, in good conscience, speak at the service.
“My pastoral experiences over the last year have left an indelible mark on me,” he wrote. “In 2016, my congregants and others in my community called upon me overwhelmed and in tears from the constant rhetoric of antagonism and derision. So I turned down the invitation for Saturday’s service because I could not still serve as an authentic pastoral presence if I were to participate in a ceremony where my presence could appear callous to the many fears in my community.”
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
