WATCH: Protesters sing in Hebrew after National Guardsmen at White House request a prayer

National Guardsmen from Utah asked Jewish protesters to sing a prayer. Image by Twitter

By Helen Chernikoff June 4, 2020

At the request of a National Guardsman from Utah, protestors sang a canonical Jewish plea for peace at protests outside the White House on Tuesday night, according to video from the scene.

“Shalom rav al Yisrael amcha, tasim l’olam,” sing multiple voices out of the frame, as three Guardsmen watch and one in particular grins throughout. “Grant abundant peace over your people Israel, forever,” the prayer beseeches God. It’s part of the Amidah, Judaism’s central prayer, said three times a day, and also often sung separately.

One of the protesters, Joshua Rosen, 27, later wrote this piece for the Forward about his experiences.

At the 8-second mark, the clip features a singer breaking into an enthusiastic refrain — “Tasim l’olam!” — and then it cuts off just as one of the group starts to suggest another song.

Members of the National Guard, who have identified themselves as coming from Utah, are having short conversations with protestors at the White House. Here is what happened when one particularly friendly Guardsman asked a protest-goer to sing a prayer: pic.twitter.com/kXYTcgS9lX

— Rebecca Tan (@rebtanhs) June 4, 2020

Helen Chernikoff is The Forward’s senior news editor. Contact her at [email protected] or follower her on Twitter @thesimplechild

Helen Chernikoff is the Forward’s News Editor. She came to the Forward from The Jewish Week, where she served as the first web director and created both a blog dedicated to disability issues and a food and wine website. Before that, she covered the housing, lodging and logistics industries for Reuters, where she could sit at her desk and watch her stories move the stock market. Helen has a Master’s of Public Administration from Columbia University and a BA in History and French from Amherst College. She is also a rabbinical school dropout. Contact her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @thesimplechild.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO