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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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What it means for Jews when Trump administration officials misquote the Bible
(JTA) — The Bible is back in the news.
In a Pentagon prayer service on April 15, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth quoted what was seemingly meant to be a verse from the ancient Hebrew prophet Ezekiel, but was in fact from the Gospel of Tarantino, as Stephen Colbert quipped.
In response, Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesman, released a statement on X noting that the homage to the auteur’s 1994 film “Pulp Fiction” was intentional. Hegseth had “shared a custom prayer … which was obviously inspired by dialogue in ‘Pulp Fiction.’”
Two days later, the New York Times suggested that President Donald Trump was likely participating in “America Reads the Bible,” a marathon reading of scripture to take place in Washington, D.C.’s Museum of the Bible, as a means to repair his relationship with Catholics after he publicly sparred with the pope over the Iran war and deleted a tweet depicting himself as Jesus Christ.
“President Trump has a complicated relationship with the Bible,” the paper noted. “He has often called it his favorite book, has posed with it for photographers outside a church and has sold his own edition for $60. But he has also struggled to name a favorite passage or even pick a favorite Testament between the two.”
At the event on April 21, Trump read a passage from 2 Chronicles, in which God promises to heal the land if its people “humble themselves, pray, and seek My favor.”
As a scholar specializing in the influence of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish ideas on American history, I can attest that the habit of American leaders citing chapter and verse (accurate or not) is as old as the United States itself. In fact, it dates back to the Pilgrims. It has been a powerful and effective means of cultivating covenantal community. Americans who cited scripture have forged a country unique in world history in the religious freedom it has offered to all its citizens, not the least of which to us Jews, the original biblically bound people.
The America ethos of fighting for freedom and liberty, drawn from the story of the Children of Israel millennia ago, to this day shapes how the United States operates both internally and on the world stage.
Reflecting on the harsh and uncertain early days of Plymouth Colony, William Bradford, who signed the Mayflower Compact and would serve as the territory’s governor for roughly three decades, paraphrased the Exodus story and Moses’ final speech in Deuteronomy. Arriving in the New World, he said, his fellow Pilgrims could only see:
a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men — and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. Neither could they, as it were, go up to the top of Pisgah to view from this wilderness a more goodly country to feed their hopes; for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects.
In the first half of this excerpt from his journal, Bradford was alluding to the Israelites’ escape from Egypt into the rough wilderness in which they would wander for 40 years. And then he referenced the mountaintop on the precipice of the Promised Land, Pisgah, on which Moses stood as his people were about to complete their arduous journey as described in the last of the Five Books of Moses. To Bradford, scripture was a source of strength and solace during communally challenging times.
Ten years later, the Puritan leader John Winthrop would describe in similarly Hebraic lens how if Massachusetts Bay Colony’s residents will do right in the eyes of the Lord, “We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when 10 of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies… For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”
Winthrop was misquoting of Leviticus 26:8: “Five of you shall give chase to a hundred, and a hundred of you shall give chase to ten thousand.” However, the details were less important than the sense of divine mission that was powering the Pilgrims’ and the Puritan’s project.
Later, the American Founders also possessed a powerful attachment to the Bible, even if the details were sometimes hazy.
John Adams, in 1776, after hearing a sermon paralleling the Patriot cause to Israel’s fight against Pharaoh’s tyranny, ruminated: “Is it not a Saying of Moses, ‘who am I, that I should go in and out before this great People’?” It actually was not a saying of Moses. Adams was conflating Moses’ “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh…” speech in Exodus 3:11 with a a request by a much later Jewish ruler, King Solomon that God “give me now wisdom and knowledge to go out and come in before this people” (2 Chronicles 1:10).
A year earlier, the equally-enamored-with-
Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the country’s most biblically literate president ever, often weaved scripture into his seminal addresses, from “four score and seven years ago,” which was likely borrowed from a rabbinic sermon citing a verse in Psalms, to a purposeful paraphrase of Exodus 19:5 when, on Feb. 21, 1861, he referred to Americans writ large as the Lord’s “almost chosen people.”
It hasn’t only been political leaders, of course, who rephrase the Word in an effort to encourage Americans to live up to their highest ideals. Martin Luther King Jr. made reference to that same mountaintop as Bradford in the civil rights leader’s final speech on April 3, 1968 in Memphis. He rousingly reassured his audience that:
We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop… I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
Citing (and mis-citing) scripture, then, is a longstanding and worthy American tradition.
Some Jews might feel excluded by Jesus and New Testament texts being invoked in a nonsectarian context by public leaders, and verses can be abused as opposed to correctly interpreted. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of looking to the Bible to shape the soul of America has served a largely positive purpose. A religious civic space is full of happier, healthier people who give more charity, have more children and forge a strong sense of community.
Regardless of one’s party or views on those in power today, then, quoting the Bible in the American public sphere has long characterized the American experiment. On the whole, it has been largely good for the American collective character and good for the Jews. Occasionally, these quotes might be imperfect, but they reflect a worthy national will: the desire to see through the long march towards liberty and justice for all.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post What it means for Jews when Trump administration officials misquote the Bible appeared first on The Forward.
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Recalling Yeva Beider, devoted widow of the writer Chaim Beider
דעם 6טן אַפּריל 2026 האָט אין ברוקלין זיך געפֿעלט יעוואַ לאָזדערניק־ביידער ע״ה אין עלטער פון 103 יאָר. זי איז צום בעסטן באַקאַנט אין דער ייִדיש־וועלט צוליב איר אָפּגעגעבנקייט איר מאַן, דעם פֿאַרשטאָבענעם שרײַבער, פּאָעט און רעדאַקטאָר חיים ביידער ע״ה.
זינט חיים ביידערס טויט אין 2003 האָט יעוואַ זיך אָפּגעגעבן מיטן אָפּהיטן זײַן ליטעראַרישע ירושה ובפֿרט דורכן העלפֿן אַרויסגעבן זײַן לעקסיקאָן פֿון די ייִדישע שרײַבער אין ראַטן־פֿאַרבאַנד, רעדאַקטירט דורך באָריס סאַנדלער און גענאַדי עסטרײַך. דאָס איז אַ וויכטיקער צוגאָב צום לעקסיקאָן פֿון דער מאָדערנער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור, ווי אויך צו דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור־פֿאָרשונג בכלל.
דורך אַ שמועס מיט איר זון מאַטוויי, האָב איך זיך דערוווּסט אַז יעוואַ לאָזדערניק איז געבוירן געוואָרן דעם 27סטן נאָוועמבער 1922 אין שטעטל וואָלאָטשיסק, מערבֿ־אוקראַיִנע, בײַם טײַך זברוטש. די צווייטע וועלט־מלחמה האָט זי איבערגעלעבט אין סאָוועטן־רוסלאַנד און אין 1946 האָט זי חתונה געהאַט מיט באָריס שפּיזעלן, וואָס האָט אָנגעפֿירט מיטן פֿינאַנץ־אָפּטייל פון דער גובערניע. יעווא האָט אויך געאַרבעט פֿאַר דער גובערניע־רעגירונג.
מיט שפּיזעלן האָט זי געהאַט צוויי זין, מאַטוויי און איסאַק. ווען דער עלטערער זון, מאַטוויי, איז געבוירן געוואָרן, האָבן זיי אים געמאַכט א ברית און צוליב דעם האָבן ביידע אָנגעוווירן זייערע שטעלעס בײַ דער רעגירונג, ווי אויך זייער דירה. שפּיזעל האָט באַקומען אַרבעט אין אַ כעמיע־פֿאַבריק. אין 1967 איז ער אַוועק אין דער אייביקייט.
אין 1978 האָט יעוואַ חתונה געהאַט מיט חיים ביידערן און צוזאַמען האָבן זיי עולה געווען אין 1996. אין זעלביקן יאָר האָט דער פֿאָרווערטס, צוזאַמען מיט אַנדערע ייִדישע קולטור־אָרגאַניזאַציעס, זיי פֿאַרבעטן אין די פֿאַראייניקטע שטאַטן, וווּ זיי זענען פֿאַרבליבן. ביידער איז נפֿטר געוואָרן אין 2003.
ווען איך האָב באַקומען די טרויעריקע בשׂורה וועגן יעוואַס פּטירה זענען מיר געקומען אויפֿן געדאַנק אַ שלל מיט זכרונות. ווער ס׳האָט זיך פֿאַרנומען מיט ייִדיש אין שטאָט ניו־יאָרק במשך פֿון די שפּעט-90ער יאָרן פֿונעם פֿאָריקן יאָרהונדערט, און פֿרי אינעם ערשטן יאָרצענדלינג פֿון איצטיקן, וועט קיין מאָל ניט פֿאַרגעסן אָט דאָס פּאָרל ייִדישיסטן: ער, דער שטילער, מיט די דיקע ברילן און ווײַסע, צעשויבערטע האָר פֿון אַן אינטעלעקטואַל, און זי — לעבעדיק און באַרעדעוודיק.
זי איז געווען זײַן פֿאַרוואַלטערין, קען מען זאָגן. זי האָט געפֿירט זײַן צײַטפּלאַן, געזען אַז ער זאָל עסן באַצײַטנס, און תּמיד מיטגעבראַכט עסן מיט זיך, כּדי מיטצוטיילן מיט אַנדערע: אַ פּעקל זיסוואַרג, אַ האָניק־לעקעך אַ מתּנה אויף יום־טובֿ, צי וואָס ניט איז. זי האָט געקענט גוט דערציילן אַ וויץ און האָט שיין געפֿירט די שטוב.
איין מאָל בין איך געווען בײַ איר אָפּנעמען אַרכיוואַלע מאַטעריאַלן ביידערס און זי האָט מיר דערלאַנגט אַ פּסחדיקן מיטאָג: איר ספּעציעלן טאָג־טעגלעכן סאַלאַט ֹ— שאַלאַטן מיט פּאָמידאָר און אוגערקע, אַלץ צעשניטן און באַשאָטן מיט אַ ביסל זאַלץ און געלאָזן שטיין אַ נאַכט אין פֿרידזשידעיר. ס׳האָט געהאַט אַזאַ פֿרישן טעם… און דערצו איבערגעוואַרעמטע כרעמזלעך אַליין־געמאַכטע.
אַז איך האָב דאָס איין מאָל דערציילט דער ייִדיש־ליטעראַטור־פֿאָשערין שבֿע צוקער האָט זי מיר גלײַך איבערגעגעבן אייגענע זכרונות — וועגן יעוואַ ביידערס יויך. זי און דער היסטאָריקער דוד פֿישמאַן זענען ביידע געווען בײַ די ביידערס אין שטוב אין מאָסקווע, האָט יעוואַ זיי דערלאַנגט אַ יויך צום טיש וואָס, זאָגט שבֿע, „איז געווען איינס אויף דער וועלט.“ איין מאָל איז שבֿע געפֿאָרן אין אַן אויטאָ מיטן ייִדישן קולטור־טוער גרשון ווײַנער ז״ל און אַנדערע, ווען עמעצער האָט דערמאָנט דעם נאָמען „יעוואַ ביידער“. אַלע האָבן תּיכּף געלויבט איר יויך און מסכּים געווען אַז ס׳איז טעם גן־עדן.
יעוואַ האָט אויך געהאַט אויסערגעוויינטלעכע זכרונות צו דערציילן פֿון איר לעבן. זי איז למשל אַ מאָל געווען אויף אַ חתונה, וואָס מע האָט געפּראַוועט אויף ביידע זײַטן פֿון טײַך זברוטש: די מחותּנים און גוטע־פֿרײַנד האָבן געוואָרפֿן מיט „מזל־טובֿס“ און פּעקלעך עסנוואַרג איבערן טײַך. אין 2012 האָט דער ניו־יאָרקער רוסיש־שפּראַכיקער פֿאַרלאַג „ליבערטי פּאָבלישינג האַוס“ פֿאַרעפֿנטלעכט אירע זכרונות אונטערן טיטל „אימענאַ נעזאַבוועניע“ (אומפֿאַרגעסלעכע נעמען).
יעוואַ איז געווען אַ ליבער מענטש און ליב געהאַט די ייִדישע קולטור. זי וועט אונדז שטאַרק אויספֿעלן.
The post Recalling Yeva Beider, devoted widow of the writer Chaim Beider appeared first on The Forward.
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2 Jewish men stabbed in London, in attack British PM Keir Starmer calls ‘utterly appalling’
(JTA) — Two Jewish men were stabbed on the street in a heavily Orthodox neighborhood of London on Wednesday, escalating anxieties amid ongoing incidents targeting local Jews that police say reflect Iranian involvement.
A man was arrested at the scene in Golders Green after being apprehended first by members of the Shomrim, a Jewish security force that operates in parts of London. Hatzola, the Jewish-operated nonprofit emergency service whose ambulances were recently burned in an arson, treated the two victims.
“One male was seen running along Golders Green Road armed with a knife and attempting to stab Jewish members of the public. Shomrim responded immediately and detained the suspect. Police attended and deployed a taser,” Shomrim said in a post to social media.
Both men who were stabbed — one in his 70s and the other in his 30s — are hospitalized in stable condition, according to the Metropolitan Police.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the attack, calling it antisemitic and praising the nonprofit services that responded.
“The antisemitic attack in Golders Green is utterly appalling. Attacks on our Jewish community are attacks on Britain,” he said on X. “Thank you to Shomrim, Hatzola and the police for acting swiftly. Those responsible will be brought to justice.”
The incident comes amid a series of attacks on Jewish institutions, and arrests of people who allegedly staged them or otherwise are accused of posing threats to the London Jewish community. No one had previously been injured in the incidents, which have included multiple arson attacks on local synagogues and, on Tuesday, a fire at a memorial in Golders Green for those murdered by the Iranian regime. Police have arrested dozens of people in recent weeks and have said they see evidence that Iran may be paying locals to stoke violence against Jews.
The Metropolitan Police said they were working to identify the nationality and background of the attacker in Golders Green, who they said was 45 and had attempted to stab officers to responded to the scene. They also acknowledged that the current situation is alarming to Jews in London.
“We are aware of the significant distress and concern this incident is likely to cause in the face of a number of incidents in the local area,” Deputy Chief Superintendent Luke Williams, who leads policing in the area, said in a statement. “A suspect is in custody, and investigators are considering all possible motives.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post 2 Jewish men stabbed in London, in attack British PM Keir Starmer calls ‘utterly appalling’ appeared first on The Forward.