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The White House celebrates Hanukkah in the shadow of rising antisemitism
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Two mezuzahs at the vice president’s residence. A custom-built menorah for the White House. A Biden grandson in Hanukkah pajamas.
The Biden administration’s celebration of Hanukkah this year was suffused with grief over reports of burgeoning antisemitism but leavened with words, rites and symbols meant to assure American Jews that this was their permanent home.
Monday night’s Hanukkah party at the White House event included the unveiling of the first menorah to be added to the White House collection. Resident carpenters crafted the elegant slab of weathered wood from lumber left over from a 1950 renovation of the mansion.
As the White House explained in a backgrounder, “Once an item has been added to the White House collection, it is forever a permanent fixture of the White House archives and cannot be removed from the archives by a future administration or Residence Staff.”
“Other menorahs have been borrowed before -— borrowed — beautiful, significant and meaningful ones,” First Lady Jill Biden told the crowd of mostly Jewish guests in the White House’s Grand Foyer, sparkling with gold-themed Christmas decorations, before Monday’s menorah-lighting. “But the White House has never had its own menorah until now. It is now a cherished piece of this home, your home.”
The president picked up on the theme in his remarks after the candles were lit. “You know, to celebrate Hanukkah, previous administrations borrowed a menorah with a special significance of survival, hope, and joy,” he said. “This year, we thought it was important to celebrate Hanukkah with another message of significance: permanence. Permanence.”
It didn’t hurt either Biden’s messaging that just days earlier the cameras caught them crossing the White House grounds holding hands with their Jewish grandson. Beau, whose parents are Hunter Biden and Melissa Cohen, sported a puffy blue coat, a knapsack, and Hanukkah-themed blue pajama pants, emblazoned with white menorahs.
Jews as a permanent part of the American fabric featured the night before at another first: A public lighting of a menorah at the residence of Vice President Kamala Harris, presided over by her Jewish husband, Doug Emhoff. Emhoff pointed out the house’s mezuzahs, the small cases affixed to the doorposts of Jewish homes.
“There’s two of them, affixed to our door frames. And as you can see the menorah in the window, all for the first time,” Emhoff said. He likened the moment to the first Hanukkah he and Harris celebrated as a couple, when she embraced his traditions.
“Flash forward to when I met this beautiful woman over here,” Emhoff said, after describing the American Hanukkahs he enjoyed as a child in New Jersey. ‘She bought me a menorah for our first Hanukkah together when we were first setting up our home in Los Angeles, because it was important for her to know that we had a menorah to illuminate this home that we were building together — this life that we were building together because she knows it’s important to me. It’s important to me as a Jew and all of us as part of our religion and our culture. And as she said, as the first Jewish person married to a president or a vice president, I understand the weight of that responsibility, the obligation that that brings.”
Emhoff was referring to his work convening a round table earlier this month to solicit strategies for countering antisemitism. At that event, he personalized the struggle, saying “I’m in pain right now, our community is in pain.”
The word “scourge” kept coming up at the events. “I’ve launched a new effort to develop a national strategy to counter the scourge of antisemitism and convene the first-of-its-kind White House summit on combating hate-fueled violence,” Biden said during his remarks, referring to the task force he launched a week after Emhoff’s event.
Monday’s candle lighters included Bronia Brandman, a Holocaust survivor who met with Biden on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January; Michèle Taylor, the ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council, who is a daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors; and Avi Heschel, whose grandfather, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, fled Nazi-occupied Europe and joined with Martin Luther King in a Black-Jewish alliance during the civil rights movement.
Saying the blessing was Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, the rabbi in Colleyville, Texas, who freed himself and his congregants from a hostage taker last January. “Antisemitism may be on the rise, and thank God that people are standing at our side,” he said. “We have had such overwhelming love and support, especially from our President and from Dr. Biden.”
On Sunday, the first night of Hanukkah, Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is Jewish, spoke at the lighting of the massive “National Menorah” placed on the Ellipse in front of the White House by Chabad-Lubavitch.
He described how his grandmother found refuge in the United States and how two of her siblings perished in the Holocaust. “The protection of the rule of law is the foundation of our system of government,” he said at the lighting. “As attorney general, I will never stop working to guarantee that protection to everyone in our country. All of us at the Department of Justice will never stop working to confront and combat violence and other unlawful acts, fueled by hate.”
The message of permanent refuge was a welcome one, but the degree to which it sank in varied.
Wiliam Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, contrasted Biden’s warm welcome with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s could shoulder to the rabbis who arrived at the White House in 1943 to appeal on behalf of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. “We’re standing here in the citadel of freedom and democracy, where the entire White House is focused on the Jewish people, on the Jewish story of survival,” Daroff said, “where the food is kosher. “
After Monday’s event, celebrants met for an after-party organized by the Jewish Democratic Council of America in the basement of the storied Hamilton hotel. They ate kosher-style sushi, slurped up cocktails (“The Gelty Pleasure”, a mix of Bailey’s, Kahlua, Demerara syrup and cold brew coffee was $14.99) and shared anxieties about America’s uncertain future, particularly in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s recent dalliance with open antisemites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes.
“Despite what we saw in the White House tonight, antisemitic incidents are on the rise in this country and not just those hateful comments that we hear,” Rep. Kathy Manning, a Jewish Democrat from North Carolina told the partygoers, “but violent attacks in synagogues, in Jews on the street across the country and frankly, throughout Europe.”
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The post The White House celebrates Hanukkah in the shadow of rising antisemitism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Remembering Abe Foxman, the longtime ADL leader known as the ‘Jewish pope,’ who always answered my calls
Friday before sundown, I realized that Abe Foxman had not sent me his weekly “Shabbat Shalom” message. For the past seven years, since we began texting regularly about Jewish and political issues, the message would arrive each Friday like clockwork — often accompanied by screenshots of Shabbat memes. My response never changed: “Good Shabbos, tzaddik,” using the Hebrew word for a righteous person that Foxman himself often used.
A few minutes after sundown, I texted him anyway: “Good Shabbos, tzaddik.” Then I turned off my phone. The message showed as “read” Saturday night. But there was no response.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one waiting for Foxman’s Shabbat greetings. The silence said everything. On Sunday, the Anti-Defamation League announced that its former longtime chief had died at age 86.
I first started texting with Foxman after he stepped down in 2015 as national director of the ADL, concluding a remarkable 50-year run with the organization, including nearly three decades at its helm. By then, he had become one of the most recognizable Jewish communal leaders in America. He was nicknamed the “Jewish Pope.” Former President Barack Obama, a frequent target of Foxman’s criticism over Israel policy, said upon Foxman’s retirement: “Abe is irreplaceable.”
For me, a rookie journalist covering national politics through a Jewish lens, Foxman became an invaluable source. He was in the room with presidents, prime ministers and world leaders during some of the Jewish community’s most consequential moments. Yet he was always available. He answered calls quickly. He texted back. He spoke candidly. He could be sharp, direct and deeply critical when he thought leaders were making mistakes. But he was also compassionate, warm and surprisingly personal.
Every conversation began the same way: asking about me. My kids. How I was holding up. Only then would we get to politics. The conversation would often veer from Yiddish to English and back again.
Our last conversation was on April 15, after a record 40 Senate Democrats voted to block $295 million for the transfer of bulldozers to Israel and 36 of them also supported a measure to block the sale of 1,000-pound bombs to the Jewish state. “A broch,” Foxman replied, using the Yiddish word for disaster. “A sad time for American politics.”
That worldview shaped much of his public commentary in recent years. In interviews with the Forward and other publications, Foxman weighed in on rising antisemitism, campus protests, Democratic divisions over Israel, President Donald Trump’s rhetoric, and the Biden-Netanyahu relationship.
Foxman could be combative and unapologetic. Critics on the left viewed him as too hawkish on Israel, while critics on the right sometimes accused him of being too willing to criticize the Israeli government or American conservatives. But nobody doubted his commitment to the Jewish people and to Israel.
Foxman’s own life story
Born in Baranavichy in 1940, in what is now Belarus, Foxman survived the Holocaust as an infant after being hidden by his Polish Catholic nanny, who baptized him to hide his Jewish identity, while his parents were confined to a ghetto. After the war, he was reunited with his parents, first living in a displaced persons camp in Austria before immigrating to the United States.
Those early experiences shaped the course of his career and ultimately made him one of the most influential Jewish communal leaders of the modern era.
In 1965, after getting degrees from City College of New York and New York University School of Law, Foxman joined the Anti-Defamation League as a legal assistant. Over the next five decades, Foxman rose through the ranks of the organization before being named its national director in 1987, a position he held until 2015.
Under his leadership, the ADL became one of the world’s most prominent voices combating antisemitism and hate.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed Foxman to serve on the council of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He was reappointed by Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. He was also vice chairman of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.
Foxman was often willing to challenge leaders he believed were wrong on Israel, including Democratic presidents he otherwise respected. He was sharply critical of Obama’s approach toward Israel early in his presidency and became one of the leading Jewish voices opposing the administration’s 2009 demand for a freeze on Israeli settlements.
In remarks at Foxman’s farewell dinner in 2015, Susan Rice, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and national security advisor under Obama, told the audience: “The thing I most value about Abe is his candor and integrity. He holds everyone to the same high standards, and I can always count on him to tell it to me straight, even when he knows I won’t necessarily like what he has to say.” In 2020, Foxman publicly advocated for Biden to choose Rice as his vice-presidential running mate.
“America and the Jewish people have lost a moral voice, a passionate advocate for the Jewish people and the state of Israel, and a remarkable leader,” Foxman’s successor, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, said in a statement announcing Foxman’s death.
Foxman’s political commentary
Even after retiring from the ADL, Foxman remained a leading voice in Jewish public life, especially after the election of Trump in 2016.
Foxman told me in an interview at the time that the Jewish community should engage with Trump and hold him accountable when needed. He advised Trump to be cautious about making good on his promise to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He became more critical of Trump after the president said that there were “very fine people on both sides” in response to a 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
In 2020, Foxman broke his tradition of not endorsing political candidates to back Biden. He argued that Trump was a “demagogue” whose reelection would be a “body blow for our country and our community.”
Once Biden took office, Foxman started to express doubts about the president’s handling of the U.S. relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said it “sends the wrong message to our friends and enemies” that Israel is being held to a higher standard than other countries in the region. Foxman was also a harsh critic of the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul, warning that the right-wing cabinet ministers could hamper support for Israel among American Jews.
In 2024, he warned that Biden’s increasingly harsh rhetoric over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza would repel Jewish voters. “I believe that this administration, because of its political season, is taking American Jews for granted or has written us off,” said Foxman. ”If they’re worried that the Arabs in Michigan will vote with their feet, they need to worry that Jews can also vote with their feet.”
Most recently, Foxman was critical of national Democrats opposing the military operations against the Iranian regime in March for a lack of congressional authority. “Sadly, it is purely political games,” Foxman told me, noting that previous Democratic administrations conducted military operations without explicit congressional authorization. “Ninety-nine percent of Democrats are on record saying Iran is a terrorist state and cannot have nuclear weapons. So why this game?” he asked.
Now, as Jews mark Jewish American Heritage Month, that voice is silent. But for me, and for the many people still waiting for one more “Shabbat Shalom” message from Foxman, he will not soon be forgotten.
Foxman is survived by his wife Golda, his daughters Michelle and Ariel and four grandchildren.
JTA contributed to this article.
The post Remembering Abe Foxman, the longtime ADL leader known as the ‘Jewish pope,’ who always answered my calls appeared first on The Forward.
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Jailed Iranian Peace Laureate Mohammadi Moved to Hospital in Tehran
A picture of Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi on the wall of the Grand Hotel in central Oslo before the Nobel banquet, in connection with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize 2023, in Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 2023. Photo: NTB/Javad Parsa via REUTERS
Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi has been moved to a hospital in the capital, Tehran, and has been granted a suspension of her sentence on heavy bail, a foundation run by her family said on Sunday.
Mohammadi, 54, won the prize in 2023 while in prison for a campaign to advance women’s rights and abolish the death penalty. She suffered a heart attack two weeks ago.
Her family had called for her to be transferred from Zanjan, northwest of Tehran, where she was serving her sentence and where she had been initially taken to a hospital, so that she could receive better medical care.
She is now at Tehran Pars Hospital for treatment by her own medical team after being transferred by ambulance, the Narges Mohammadi Foundation said in a statement.
Mohammadi was sentenced to a new prison term of 7-1/2 years, the foundation said in February, weeks before the US and Israel launched their war against Iran. The Nobel committee at the time called on Tehran to free her immediately.
She had been arrested in December after denouncing the death of a lawyer, Khosrow Alikordi. A prosecutor told reporters that she had made provocative remarks at Alikordi’s memorial ceremony.
The foundation gave no details of the bail arrangements or suspension of her sentence.
“However, a suspension is not enough,” it said. “Narges Mohammadi requires permanent, specialized care. We must ensure she never returns to prison.”
Iran shut down most of the internet in the country in January as authorities suppressed mass protests triggered by economic unease. Rights groups have reported ongoing executions of people involved in the unrest.
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Israel’s Attorney General Calls to Cancel Netanyahu’s Mossad Chief Appointment
Israeli Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara. Photo: Twitter
i24 News – Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara told the High Court of Justice on Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to appoint Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman as the next Mossad chief must be canceled.
Baharav-Miara filed her position ahead of a Tuesday hearing on petitions challenging the appointment, telling the court that “substantial flaws” had been found both in the process conducted by the advisory committee and in the conclusions it drew. She said Netanyahu’s decision suffered from “extreme and blatant unreasonableness” and could not stand legally.
At the center of the dispute is the case of Ori Elmakayes, who was a 17-year-old minor when he was activated in 2022 by Division 210, without going through authorized intelligence channels. At the time, the division was commanded by Gofman. Elmakayes was arrested in May 2022 under espionage charges after two officers sent him classified information and told him to post it online as part of an “influence campaign,” despite not being authorized to do so. Gofman initiated this operation. Elmakayes was then held in full detention until July, spending an extended period under electronic monitoring and house arrest before the indictment against him was canceled in late 2023.
Baharav-Miara says Gofman’s involvement in leaking the classified information to the minor, “casts a heavy shadow on Gofman’s integrity and thus on his appointment to head the Mossad.” The attorney general also identified serious procedural failings in the advisory committee’s work. She notes that the majority members signed their opinion before committee chairman and former Supreme Court president Asher Grunis had written his dissent and before two members had reviewed several classified documents significant to the full picture. Grunis concluded that integrity flaws had been found and that it was not appropriate to appoint Gofman as Mossad chief.
The attorney general also says the committee failed to hear directly from Elmakayes or from a relevant senior military intelligence officer, instead relying in part on media interviews.
Netanyahu, who appointed Gofman to head the Mossad starting in early June, for a five-year term, submitted his own response to the court on this past Friday, arguing that the decision fell within his executive authority. The Prime Minister also said that his assessment of the matter was “dozens of times superior” to that of the court, adding that Gofman’s integrity was “found pure,” and describing him as the most qualified candidate.
Other coalition figures responded to the attorney general with sharp criticism, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir accused Baharav-Miara of fighting the state, while Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said her position was “one step too far” and vowed to advance legislation splitting the attorney general’s role in the Knesset’s summer session.