WASHINGTON — Two mezuzzahs at the vice president’s residence. A custom-built menorah for the White House. A Biden grandson in Chanukah pajamas.
Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and Pres. Joe Biden help Holocaust Survivor Bronia Brandman to a menorah at the White House Chanukah party, Dec. 19, 2022. (Brendan Smialowski/ AFP/Getty)
The Biden administration’s celebration of Chanukah this year was suffused with grief over reports of burgeoning anti-Semitism but leavened with words, rites and symbols meant to assure American Jews that this was their home.
Monday night’s Chanukah 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 before the Dec. 19 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 Chanukah, 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 Chanukah with another message of significance: Permanence. Permanence.”
It didn’t hurt the Bidens’ messaging that 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 Chanukah-themed blue pajama pants, emblazoned with white menorahs.
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 UN 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 era.
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.
“Anti-Semitism may be on the rise, and thank G-d 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 Dec. 18, the first night of Chanukah, 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.
He described how his grandmother found refuge in the US 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.
William 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.”
Vice President Kamala Harris also held a menorah lighting, on Dec. 18.
