Holy work

Peace, then prayer: Mincha service held on White House lawn

Historic event in DC… No, not the signing ceremony

Jewish participants in the Abraham Accords ceremony gather for prayer on the White House lawn, September 15, 2020 (Twitter screenshot)
Jewish participants in the Abraham Accords ceremony gather for prayer on the White House lawn, September 15, 2020 (Twitter screenshot)

Some 20 religious Jews gathered for the mincha afternoon prayer service on the south lawn of the White House upon the conclusion of the Abraham Accords signing ceremony on Tuesday, with US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman among them.

Videos and photos of the prayer service quickly circulated through social media, some of them hailing the gathering as another historic event within the historic peace signing event.

The worshipers wore masks and kept a social distance from one another because of COVID-19.

Hundreds of people had amassed on the sun-washed South Lawn to witness the signing of agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The accords formalize the normalization of the Jewish state’s already-thawing relations with the two Arab nations.

Earlier in the month, another rare minyan was completed by a group of Jews living in Dubai who had come to the Emirati capital for the historic visit of a joint US-Israel delegation to the UAE that helped lay the groundwork for the normalization treaty.

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