When David Wolpe, a well-known Los Angeles Rabbi, was asked last week to deliver the closing benediction for the second day of the Democratic National Convention, he could not have known that his words would be spoken in the midst of an intense controversy over the status of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
Earlier in the day, chaos erupted on the floor of the convention as Democratic leaders attempted to reinsert into the platform language explicitly affirming that the party considers Jerusalem to be Israel's capital. The voice vote—which required two-thirds of those voting to be in the affirmative in order to pass—clearly failed, prompting delegates in attendance to boo when convention chair Antonio Villaraigosa declared the measure passed anyway.
Instead of avoiding the controversy, the rabbi addressed it head-on—delivering a stunning rebuke to the Democratic Party in his benediction by explicitly identifying Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The Jerusalem rebuke did not appear in the Rabbi's prepared text distributed beforehand to the press, suggesting he added them in specifically to respond to the day's earlier actions. Wolpe said:
You have taught us that we must count on each other; that our country is strong through community, and that the Children of Israel on the way to that sanctified and cherished land, and ultimately to that golden, capital city of Jerusalem, did not walk through the wilderness alone.
Rabbi Wolpe placed special emphasis on the word "capital" in his delivery.