Obama to host Thursday night seder
President Obama will host a Passover seder Thursday evening in the White House.
The president's schedule for the rest of the week, released on Tuesday evening, said that Obama would mark the beginning of the holiday with a seder for friends and staff. No other information was provided. It is believed to be the first presidential seder held in the White House.
William Daroff, vice president of public policy and director of United Jewish Communities' Washington office, said the White House seder demonstrated how far the American Jewish community has come:
In 1943, rabbis marched to the White House to demand action from the President of the United States to save European Jewry from the Nazis. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded by sneaking out the White House back door to avoid seeing the rabbis.
Sixty-six years later the President of the United States is spending Thursday evening with his friends and family celebrating the liberation and survival of the Jewish people.
President Barack Obama's seder - scheduled on the second night so as not to disrupt first night family seders -- is a testament to how far we have come as a Jewish people in America. Jews are a vital component in the mosaic that is American culture and society. Our welcome through the front door, and the dining room door, of the White House speaks to the inclusiveness of today's America and of President Obama. This night is indeed different from all other nights.
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Melvin Shapiro
04/08/09 04:03 PM
I am a 68 year old American Jew. I clearly remember the tail-end of WWll and the terrible discovery of the fate of 6 million fellow Jews following the war. The images and stories of this terrible event have been permanentaly burned into my conscienceness. As a kid, reading about the Holocaust, I was always confounded and amazed at the reaction or lack thereof, on the part of those slaughtered. That such an event was in the planning and the pieces of the Jews destruction were being assembled on a scale that could not have been all that secret (knowing what I know about human nature), and yet the intended victims CHOSE to ignore it all, until it was far to late --this has always baffled me! Until this past election. I now see how it works..... garden parties, faux seder dinners and such all feel so much better.