With Jonathan D Sarna

The first president who took official notice of Chanukah was one of the Jewish community’s least-favourite occupants of the White House, Jimmy Carter. In 1979 he lit the new “National Menorah” erected by Chabad-Lubavitch, and delivered brief remarks.

Every president since Carter has recognized Chanukah with a special menorah-lighting ceremony, and limited his Christmas messages to those who actually observe the holiday.

Chanukah came to the White House itself, in 1989, when President George H.W. Bush displayed a menorah there, given to him by the Synagogue Council of America.

But the first president to actually light a menorah in the White House was Bill Clinton. In 1993, he invited a dozen schoolchildren to the Oval Office for a small ceremony. The event made headlines when 6-year-old Ilana Kattan’s ponytail dipped into the flame. Clinton ran his hands through her hair to snuff out the smoke.

Menorah lightings grew in importance during the Clinton years. Memorably, in 1998, Clinton joined Israel’s president, Ezer Weizman, in lighting a candle on the first night of Chanukah in Jerusalem. But no White House Chanukkah parties ever took place under Clinton. Instead, he included Jewish leaders in a large annual “holiday party.” Jews mingled with Christians at those parties, but those who kept kosher did not find much to eat.

The first president to host an official White House Chanukah party, and the first to actually light a menorah in the White House residence, was George W. Bush, beginning in both cases in 2001. Since Bush made a point of injecting religion, complete with baby Jesus, into his many annual Christmas parties — a separate Chanukah party for Jews showed sensitivity. The annual Chanukah party also underscored Bush’s deepening bonds with Orthodox Jews, the Jewish religious stream most sympathetic to his “faith-based” agenda. Hasidic leaders in distinctive garb regularly appeared at these parties, and beginning in 2005 (after an embarrassment in 2004 when kosher and non-kosher foods were mixed up), the parties became completely kosher.

Barack Obama is thus only the second president in history ever to hold a White House Chanukah party. He is limiting his guest list to the 400 Jews who are nearest and dearest to him in these austere times, despite the fact that Mr Bush had 800 guests last year.

Beauts from the Past

For most of the 20th century, the only December holiday that gained White House recognition was Christmas. Calvin Coolidge inaugurated the practice of lighting an official White House Christmas tree in 1923, and he also delivered the first formal presidential Christmas message. He assumed, as most Americans of his day did, that everybody celebrated Christmas.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom the American Jewish community adulated, proved no more sensitive when it came to Chanukah. He sent evocative Christmas cards to Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and other friends in the Jewish community, and declared that Christmas was a national holiday “because the teachings of Christ are fundamental to our lives.” His successor, Harry Truman, another favorite of the Jewish community, echoed Roosevelt in his Christmas message to the nation. He called upon Americans to “put our trust in the unerring Star which guided the Wise Men to the Manger of Bethlehem.”

Perhaps the most astonishing of all White House Christmas messages was delivered by a man who should have known all about Chanukah since he was born just blocks away from a large Shul in Brookline, Mass., and had many Jewish friends and supporters. Yet John F. Kennedy egregiously declared in 1962 that “Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, as well as Christians, pause from their labours on the 25th day of December to celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Peace.” He believed (or, at least, his speechwriter believed) that “there could be no more striking proof that Christmas is truly the universal holiday of all men.”
Jonathan D. Sarna is the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and the author of “American Judaism: A History” (Yale University Press, 2004). He is serving this year as senior scholar at the Mandel Leadership Institute in Jerusalem.