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This Hanukkah, Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff will have 3 menorahs that represent Jewish joy and trauma
WASHINGTON (JTA) — For the next eight days, one menorah will be lit in the office of Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff; another will sit in the office of his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris; and a third will illuminate their home.
Each menorah carries symbolism, representing the triumphs or tragedies of Jewish history.
The Second Couple two years ago inaugurated a tradition of lighting Hanukkah candles at their residence. This year, both Harris’ and Emhoff’s offices — both in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus — will have the candelabras as well. At least two menorahs will light up each evening: the one in the residence and the one in Emhoff’s office, where he will be joined by his team for the ritual.
Each of the three melds joy and grief, a nod to a year which included both the trial of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter and Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
The menorah in the residence is on loan from the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the site of the 2018 shooting, which was the worst antisemitic attack in U.S. history. It is one of two designed for the site of the massacre by Daniel Libeskind, the renowned architect who designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
Libeskind presented the menorahs to the reconstituted synagogue, museum and memorial center this year on Oct. 27, the fifth year anniversary of the attack. Emhoff met Libeskind when he toured Berlin earlier this year, and he has twice visited the Tree of Life synagogue.
The menorah in Emhoff’s office is designed by Erwin Thieberger, a Holocaust survivor and coppersmith who lived in Washington’s Maryland suburbs and who modeled his menorahs after those he had made out of flattened nails and scrap metal in the concentration camps.
This menorah is on loan from the recently inaugurated Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum in Washington D.C. It was donated to the museum by Thieberger’s late rabbi, Tzvi Porath of Ohr Kodesh Congregation, a Conservative synagogue in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Another Thieberger menorah featured in the Hanukkah lighting ceremony at the White House in 2015, when Barack Obama was president.
A menorah sits on a table at the Vice President’s Ceremonial Office, Wednesday, December 6, 2023, at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House.
(Official White House Photo by Oliver Contreras)
The menorah on display at the entrance to Harris’ office is on loan from the Jewish Museum in New York. Designed by Josef Haller, it was presented in 1935 to Kahilath Jakob, a small prayer room in Vienna, one of 60 or so Jewish places of worship in the city to survive the Nazi occupation of Austria.
“The Vice President and I want to thank the Jewish Museum in New York, Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum, and the reimagined Tree of Life for lending us such special and historic menorahs in celebration of Hanukkah,” Emhoff said Thursday in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “These menorahs are incredibly meaningful and deeply impactful. Each one reminds us that we must continue our efforts to combat antisemitism and all forms of hate, while living openly, proudly, and with joy as Jews.”
Emhoff spearheaded a panel that shaped the Biden administration’s antisemitism strategy, which was unveiled earlier this year. He has embraced a role that he has said surprised him, as a positive role model for American Jews.
In 2021, the Second Couple’s menorah came from the home of a businessman, Aaron Feuerstein, who was revered for paying employees for months while he rebuilt a factory destroyed in a fire in 1995. It was a nod to the businesses who sought to keep their staffs employed throughout the COVID 19 pandemic.
Emhoff is lighting the “national menorah” later Thursday on the Ellipse in front of the White House, a decades long tradition administered by the Chabad Hasidic movement. On Sunday, he and Harris will host a formal Hanukkah lighting and party at their residence at the Naval Observatory in northwest D.C.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will host their own Hanukkah lighting and party at the White House on Sunday night. A spokeswoman for the First Lady said the menorah in the White House is the same one they inaugurated last year, the first menorah custom-built for White House use.
“It’s made of historic wood from the beams of this house, rescued when President Truman renovated this building,” Jill Biden said at least year’s lighting. “Its hand-hammered silver cups are meant to magnify the glow of the candles, their beauty reminding us both [of] the Hanukkah miracle and the joy it inspired.”
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The post This Hanukkah, Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff will have 3 menorahs that represent Jewish joy and trauma appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Former Hostage From Nova Music Festival Massacre Invites Trump to Dance With Survivors at Memorial Concert
An Israeli soldier stands during a two-minute siren marking the annual Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day, at an installation at the site of the Nova festival where party goers were killed and kidnapped during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, in Reim, southern Israel, May 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The second annual memorial concert honoring the victims killed at the Nova music festival in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, will take place in June, and US President Donald Trump has been invited to attend.
The Tribe of Nova community announced on Tuesday details about the “Nova Healing Concert” scheduled for June 26 at Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park. Former hostage Mia Schem, who was abducted by Hamas terrorists at the site of the music festival, addressed the media in Israel on Tuesday to talk about the upcoming concert while also sharing a message with Trump.
“Thank you, President Trump, for everything you’re doing to release the hostages,” she said. “I invite you to dance with us in Yarkon Park and celebrate the moment when everyone finally returns home.”
“My vision, and that of everyone’s, is that this year should be different,” Schem added. “A year when we won’t have to shout but embrace. Let’s dance not just for them but with them. This is the strength of our community – it heals, it strengthens, it is our home.”
The setlist for the concert includes Benaia Barabi, Berry Sakharof, Mosh Ben-Ari, Sasi and Rita. The event on June 26 will also feature activities such as therapeutic workshops and spaces for dealing with trauma. Tickets are open and available to the general public, and admission is free for survivors of the Oct. 7 massacre and members of the bereaved families. All profits from ticket sales and event sponsorships will be used by the Nova Tribe Community Association to support the physical and mental healing of Oct. 7 survivors and members of their families, as well as commemoration for those murdered during the Hamas terrorist attack. Last year’s memorial concert was attended by tens of thousands of young people, according to Ynet.
Hamas-led terrorists from the Gaza Strip who infiltrated the music festival in Re’im during the early morning of Oct. 7, 2023, killed 370 people and abducted 44 hostages. Overall, the terrorists killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 captives during their rampage across southern Israel.
The post Former Hostage From Nova Music Festival Massacre Invites Trump to Dance With Survivors at Memorial Concert first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Agrees to Talks on Lebanon Border, to Free Five Lebanese, PM Office Says
An Israeli flag flies in Lebanon, near the Israel-Lebanon border, following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, as seen from Metula, northern Israel, Dec. 3, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov
Israel said on Tuesday it had agreed to hold talks to demarcate its border with Lebanon, adding it would release five Lebanese detainees held by the Israeli military in what it called a “gesture to the Lebanese president.”
A statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel had agreed with Lebanon, the US, and France to establish working groups to discuss the demarcation line between the two countries.
Though Israel has largely withdrawn from southern Lebanon under a ceasefire deal agreed in November, its troops continue to hold five hilltop positions in the area with airstrikes in southern Lebanon citing what it described as Hezbollah activity.
The ceasefire deal ended more than a year of conflict between Israel‘s military and the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah that was playing out in parallel with the Gaza war.
The fighting peaked in a major Israeli air and ground campaign in southern Lebanon that left Hezbollah badly weakened, with most of its military command killed in Israeli strikes.
The post Israel Agrees to Talks on Lebanon Border, to Free Five Lebanese, PM Office Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UN Security Council to Meet Over Iran’s Growing Stockpile of Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium
Members of the Security Council cast a vote during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the 3rd anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at UN headquarters in New York, US, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
The United Nations Security Council will meet behind closed doors on Wednesday over Iran’s expansion of its stock of uranium close to weapons grade, diplomats said on Monday.
The meeting was requested by six of the council’s 15 members – France, Greece, Panama, South Korea, Britain, and the US.
They also want the council to discuss Iran’s obligation to provide the UN nuclear watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency – with “the information necessary to clarify outstanding issues related to undeclared nuclear material detected at multiple locations in Iran,” diplomats said.
Iran’s mission to the UN in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the planned meeting.
Iran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon. However, it is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the IAEA has warned.
Western states say there is no need to enrich uranium to such a high level under any civilian program and that no other country has done so without producing nuclear bombs. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful.
Iran reached a deal in 2015 with Britain, Germany, France, the US, Russia, and China – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – that lifted sanctions on Tehran in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Washington quit the agreement in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first term as US president, and Iran began moving away from its nuclear-related commitments.
Britain, France, and Germany have told the UN Security Council that they are ready – if needed – to trigger a so-called snap back of all international sanctions on Iran to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
They will lose the ability to take such action on Oct. 18 this year when the 2015 UN resolution on the deal expires. US President Donald Trump has directed his UN envoy to work with allies to snap back international sanctions and restrictions on Iran.
The post UN Security Council to Meet Over Iran’s Growing Stockpile of Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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