Senators slate bipartisan, interfaith healing service

WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 (JTA) — As Congress looks to return to a sense of normalcy following the impeachment episode, two U.S. senators are calling on their colleagues to join together in a bipartisan healing process. Sens. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) slated a reconciliation gathering on Capitol Hill on Thursday in hopes of moving beyond the divisions that have polarized lawmakers in recent months. Lieberman, the Senate’s only Orthodox Jew and a respected moral authority, emerged as an influential voice among his colleagues after he delivered an emotional denunciation of Clinton’s behavior in an address on the Senate floor in August. “The time for reconciliation is now,” Lieberman said in a short statement. “We need to pull together and face the future with a collaborative spirit that encourages reconciliation and renewal.” Lieberman and Brownback serve as co-chairmen of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Jewish and Christian values, a public policy center that is coordinating the event along with its parent organization, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of the international fellowship, was slated to participate in the event, along with the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, general-secretary of the National Council of Churches, and Senate Chaplain Lloyd Ogilvie. “The idea is that there has been so much discord and so much polarization, not only in Congress but among the people, and that wherever one stands on the issue of impeachment, it’s time to move on, and it’s time for healing and for reconciliation and for closure to this matter,” Eckstein said.