Israel is one of America’s most important and cherished allies, the office of Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) told JNS, as he met this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
Now, it has emerged on social media that the senator placed a prayer slip in the Western Wall (Kotel) on behalf of a Chabad-Lubavitch family in Bozeman, Mont., some 40 miles north of Yellowstone National Park.
Rabbi Chaim Bruk, who runs the Chabad Lubavitch of Montana with his wife Chavie, received a text message from Daines showing the senator putting a slip of paper in a crevice of the Kotel. “My prayer for you, Chavie and your children,” the senator wrote, inserting symbols of “praying hands” and an Israeli flag.
In a lengthy social-media post, Bruk shared both screen captures of the senator’s text message and a bit of his story.
“For just one moment, please remove all politics from your mind and heart. I know it’s hard, but please do it anyway,” Bruk wrote. He then shared that he is a Jewish man living in Montana in 2023 whose great-grandparents were murdered for the “crime” of being Jewish in Poland.
“A sitting U.S. senator from my hometown of Bozeman is visiting Israel with his wife and sends me a private text message with a picture of the note he placed in the Kotel, the Western Wall, on behalf of me and my family,” Bruk wrote.
He said he was honored by the senator’s friendship.
“I would ask any Montana representative with a ‘D’ or ‘R’ after their name to honor my family and do the same when they visit our eternal capital of Jerusalem,” added the rabbi.
