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Leonard Bernstein wrote a love song to the White House; now it’s an elegy
In 2017, Cynthia Erivo, clad in white like a bride, took the stage at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center to perform “Take Care of This House.” It was opening night of the National Symphony Orchestra’s season, and Erivo was singing First Lady Abigail Adams’ solo from the little-known Leonard Bernstein and Alan Jay Lerner musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
That show, an ode to the first century of the White House’s existence, premiered in 1976, and has a rocky history: It closed on Broadway after only 20 performances, including previews. But the musical, while imperfect, was daring — a recounting of American history that featured a series of presidents, their first ladies, and their Black servants. Erivo sang in the first year of President Donald Trump’s first term. Then, having a Black actor on the Capitol’s most prominent stage sing the part of a white first lady — in a song that promises a Black servant he has a part in the American dream — felt like resistance.
Yes, the political tide might have been turning away from the heartfelt messaging of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which suggested women and people of color were as central to American history as any white, male president. But in the world of culture, Erivo’s performance proclaimed, that kind of equal respect was still the true American dream.
Is it still?
Where Jacqueline Kennedy’s Garden, also known as the First Lady’s Garden, once bloomed, there is an expanse of yellow-brown dirt. The First Lady’s Office, shaped by Eleanor Roosevelt and Rosalynn Carter, is a heap of twisted metal. Where the corridors of power once linked the presidential operations of the West Wing to the visitor’s office — the point of public access to the public’s house — there is an expanse of scarred, dusty red brick, the innards of the house exposed.
Amid Trump’s demolition of the White House’s East Wing, the rubble where part of the most familiar facade in the country used to stand feels like a rebuttal to the simple exhortation Adams’ character expresses in “Take Care of this House.” “Keep it so clean,” she sings, “The glow can be seen / All over the land.”
Bernstein held a troubled but profound attachment to the vision of a United States that lived up to its founding promise of liberty and justice for all. That oft-broken pledge was a theme of West Side Story: “America,” with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, is an unusually effective, and entertaining, argument both for and against maintaining hope in this country. Bernstein’s support for the civil rights movement was so well-known that it occasionally backfired, with Tom Wolfe famously asking if the composer’s activism was just a way of accenting his own glamour.
But the picture of a better country — a country that was true to its professed ideals — has rarely sounded as unglamorous, or as meaningful, as it does in “Take Care of This House.” Adams coaches her servant carefully: Make sure the doors are locked and the surfaces are shined, and be ever alert to anything even mildly amiss.
Whatever Bernstein’s failings as an activist, he understood something essential about what the White House means. It is an example of the best of the U.S. because it is humble: Not a palace, but a place that successive generations — especially First Ladies, and their unsung servants — have strived to make beautiful. Some people may visit the White House to gawk at the extravagance, or to feel the rumbles of the machinery of power. I suspect more do because they are drawn to their own sense of ownership of it — the idea that they, too, could have a small part in making it great.
Will Trump’s new ballroom make it greater than the First Lady’s Garden did? Greater than the quiet energy that came from standing between walls that had witnessed the making of history?
It’s true that luxury and ease are also manifestations of a kind of American dream — a different one than that which Bernstein and Lerner articulated. But today, watching Erivo sing Adams’ paean to the beauty of a carefully kept home, my heart aches. All that work, over all those decades, and the end is a landscape of desolate rubbish, with the suggestion of gaudiness to follow.
When I think back to my own visit to the East Wing of the White House in 2015, I think about the last lines of Bernstein and Lerner’s song: “Take care of this house / Be always on call/ For this house / Is the hope of us all.”
I felt a sort of soft awe back then. I wonder if that feeling is one I’ll ever have again.
The post Leonard Bernstein wrote a love song to the White House; now it’s an elegy appeared first on The Forward.
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Jeffries Ends the Suspense, Endorses Mamdani in NY Mayor’s Race
Zohran Mamdani, a New York City mayoral candidate, speaks on Primary Day at a campaign news conference at Astoria Park in Queens, New York, United States, on June 24, 2025. Photo: Kyle Mazza vis Reuters Connect.
US Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a top elected Democrat in the US Congress, on Friday endorsed Zohran Mamdani in the race for mayor of New York City, four months after the New York State assemblyman won the Democratic Party nomination.
The long delay in the House Democratic leader’s embrace of the 33-year-old self-described democratic socialist came after a steady stream of questions from journalists on whether he ever would go to bat for Mamdani, and as Republicans keep asserting that Democrats are too far-left for the nation.
“I deeply respect the will of the primary voters and the young people who have been inspired to participate in the electoral process,” Jeffries said in a statement. “Zohran Mamdani has relentlessly focused on addressing the affordability crisis and explicitly committed to being a mayor for all New Yorkers,” he said.
Jeffries’ Brooklyn congressional district is part of New York City.
His endorsement of Mamdani, who shocked political observers on June 24 with a convincing victory in the mayoral primary, comes just 11 days before the city’s November 4 general election.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, also of New York, has so far withheld any endorsement in the mayoral race.
Mamdani is running against a field of candidates that includes former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, who opposed him in the Democratic primary and is now running as an independent.
Republican President Donald Trump has called Mamdani a “communist” and has hinted that he might deploy the National Guard to New York if he becomes mayor.
Republicans in the deeply divided US Congress have taken cues from Trump and used terms such as “communists,” “socialists” and “Marxists” in an attempt to paint even less liberal Democrats as being out of step with the national electorate.
Next month’s New York City election, along with governors’ elections in Virginia and New Jersey, are being closely watched as possible indicators of each party’s prospects in 2026.
Midterm elections next year will determine whether Republicans hold onto their narrow majorities in the House and Senate, with many races already shaping up.
Jeffries said Mamdani has pledged to make public safety of New York’s large Jewish community a priority amid “a startling rise in antisemitic incidents.” Progressives and moderates within the Democratic Party have often been at odds over US policy toward Israel and its massive bombing campaign of Gaza over a two-year period, triggered by an attack within Israel by Hamas.
On Thursday, New York Mayor Eric Adams, who is not running for re-election, endorsed Cuomo in a move seen as attempting to undercut Mamdani.
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Netanyahu, Rubio Discuss Implementation of Gaza Ceasefire as Top US Diplomat Rounds Off One-Day Trip
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Feb. 16, 2025. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a phone call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday as the top US diplomat concluded his brief visit to Israel.
They discussed the outcomes of the visit and reaffirmed “the deep and enduring partnership between Israel and the United States,” according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office.
Netanyahu thanked Secretary Rubio for his steadfast support and for his “commitment to strengthening the US-Israel alliance during these challenging times.”
The Prime Minister and The Secretary of State emphasized their shared commitment to continue close cooperation to advancing the common interests and values that unite the United States and Israel, first and foremost, the return of the remaining deceased hostages and the disarming Hamas and demilitarization of Gaza.
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New book by Carol Matas to be the centrepiece of upcoming Jewish Heritage Centre Kristallnacht program
By MYRON LOVE Belle Jarniewski, the executive director of the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, has high praise for Carol Matas’s newest book, ”A Storm Unleashed,” which is scheduled to be launched on Monday, November 10, at 7:00 P.M. at the Campus (in the multipurpose room) as part of our community’s annual commemoration of Kristallnacht – that infamous day in November, 1938, when the Nazis launched their first co-ordinated physical assault on Germany’s Jewish population.
Jarneiewski described the new novel as “striking” and a welcome new addition to Holocaust education in the school system.
Matas will be discussing her new novel on Novemebr 10 in conversation with Jarniewski and Holocaust educator Kelly Hiebert.
According to the author, “A Storm Unleashed” is the story of the Nazis’ little-studied dog breeding and training program. “I came across this program while doing research for an earlier book,” she says. “The program produced over 200,000 dogs who were instrumental in helping the Nazis with the round-ups, getting Jews onto the trains and in cowing prisoners in the concentration and death camps.”
As with most of Matas’s books, the central character is a teenager – 13-year-old Mia – who is living with her widowed Jewish father and her dog, Max, in Berlin. (Her mother wasn’t Jewish.) Her father happens to be a veterinarian who is pulled into this training program,” Matas notes.
Considered a “Mishlinge” (a child of one “Aryan” parent and a second Jewish parent), the novel traces Mia’s story from a happy childhood to the day-to-day nightmare that characterized Nazi Germany.
Carol Matas is another of many hidden gems in our community. In a writing career that is approaching 50 years, “A Storm Unleashed” is her 50th book. She is quietly introducing her 51st book, “Kai and the Golem,” with a reading to Grade 1 to 3 students at Gray Academy.
I first Interviewed Carol more than 45 years ago – for an article in the Jewish Post. As I recall, she had been an in-demand actor who started writing to fill her time between acting assignments. After her children were born, she retired from acting and devoted herself entirely to writing because it was a way to remain creative while at home raising children.
Her first books were in the science fiction genre. She soon began exploring issues of antisemitism and Jewish history with a focus on teenage Jewish main characters, written for a younger readership. In that earlier interview, she noted that her books were centered around Jewish themes.
In recent years. she reports, “she has been working with a new genre – picture books. “I worked with a mentor and learned a lot,” she says. “ I also have finished a dystopian novel about a world where all the Jews have been removed. One young girl slowly starts to uncover her Jewish heritage.
“I don’t have a publisher for that one yet.”
Matas says that she is happy to be able to continue writing. “I still enjoy it,” she concludes. “And I very much want to contribute to Holocaust education for young people. I think that that is very important.”
Interested readers can register for the Kristallnacht program by going online at jewishheritage@jhcwc.org or by phoning 204 477-7460. Proceeds from the sale of the book will go toward Holocaust education.