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November 30, 2022 3:22 pm
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Singer Pat Boone Honored with Algemeiner’s ‘Warrior for Truth’ Award

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Pat Boone accepting The Algemeiner’s 2022 Warrior for Truth Award at the 9th annual J100 Gala, 29 November, 2022 (Screenshot)

Legendary Singer Pat Boone received The Algemeiner’s Warrior for Truth award on Tuesday evening in recognition of his decades-long support for the state of Israel and his opposition to antisemitism.

Speaking at The Algemeiner’s 9th annual ‘J100’ Gala honoring the top 100 people positively influencing Jewish life in 2022, Boone, who has sold more than 45 million records in a career spanning seven decades, said that he feels “like family” with the Jewish people. “I call myself, as a Christian, an ‘adopted Jew.’ I’ve always been and considered myself part of God’s chosen people,” Boone said.

Boone has a lifelong history of support for Jewish causes and for the state of Israel. Accepting his award, Boone recounted his inspiration in writing the lyrics to his 1960 hit “The Exodus Song (This Land is Mine)” based on the instrumental theme song from the film Exodus. “On that Christmas Eve, when I wrote those words as they were coming to me like I was taking dictation…the words ‘this land is mine’ came,” Boone said. “And I realized it was a personal declaration, it was not trying to encompass three or four thousand years of Jewish history, but the claim of one Jew: ‘This land is mine.’” Boone also described performing the song at the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur War for IDF troops in territory newly captured from Syria.

Boone, who wears necklaces with the Star of David and Jewish Chai symbol, also spoke about how his faith helped inspire his support for the Jewish people and opposition to antisemitism from an early age. “I obviously remembered what God said to Abraham: ‘I will make of you a great nation, and from your descendants all the nations of the world will be blessed.’ What a statement!” Boone said. “‘And I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you’ – those words were stamped into my soul. I wanted to be on the ‘blessing’ side of God.”

Watch Boone’s full acceptance speech below:

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