Thank you all for coming to this unique here at the museum of Jewish heritage, not far from ground zero. I would like to express our deep appreciation to the many distinguished guests - of different faiths and nationalities - who have joined us here.
This is not the usual gathering on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, which is often to honor the host country or its foreign minister. Rather, I have invited you here tonight for an entirely different reason - and the guest list reflects the uniqueness of the occasion. It was important for me to have here with us representatives from a wide range of faiths and nationalities, in order to send a united message from this Sukkat Shalom - this tabernacle of peace - of our shared commitment to co-existence and tolerance.
Your being here tonight helps send this very importance message. Let me take a moment to explain to you the significance of this gathering in my eyes.
Today, I visited the Bnei Avraham synagogue in Brooklyn Heights that had been desecrated by swastikas, and I was reminded how important it is for the voice of moderation to be heard above the noise of extremism.
We live in a time when religion and God are being dragged onto the battlefield. Religion is, once again, being abused as a call to arms. Disputes that are political and resolvable are being turned by extremists into conflicts that are religious and endless. By perverting religion, atrocities are justified, war is glorified, and peace is impossible. This battle is not merely ideological. It has direct casualties, hurting people of all nations and faiths.
We have here with us tonight, the families of Gilad Shalit, Udi Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who are held hostage by groups who represent this kind of violent and hate-filled abuse of faith. We pray that our sons, Gilad, Udi and Eldad will soon return home, and be welcomed with loving arms by their families and an entire nation.
I want to say that, in a way, we are all being held hostage by this extremist version of religion. I believe it is time to reclaim religion. It is time to disarm it. It is time, for people of all faiths and cultures, to restore to religion its humility and its openness. It is time to reclaim a religion that creates space also for the truths of others.
And that, I think, is what the sukkah is all about. The festival of Sukkot recalls the journey of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to independence in Israel. On this journey through the desert the Israelites lived in sukkot, fragile huts, shielded only by divine protection.
For three thousand years Jews have commemorated this journey by leaving their homes for seven days to live in simple huts - open to the elements. The sukkah is a structure built not on absolute truths but on a recognition of our impermanence and fallibility. For seven days, we are asked to seek protection not behind walls but in the guidance of an unknowable divine presence. For seven days, we step outside our fortresses. We drop our defenses and recognize our weaknesses. And it is precisely at this moment of humility that Jewish tradition calls on us to open our doors to others, to guests, in the Aramaic phrase - ushpizin.
We have come out from behind our walls and our fences to dwell in the sukkah and by so doing we open ourselves to the other. The sukkah, then, represents a prayer for peace. It is not a prayer that OUR peace be enforced on others. It is a prayer that we build a universal and open house where peace can reside.
This is the ideal of co-existence that we need to represent and that religion, every religion, is capable of embracing. It is in this spirit that we have gathered here today.
It is this spirit that is found in the words of the Jewish prayer: "May you spread over us the tabernacle of your peace."