(Jewish Group) Pandemic Hanukkah at Biden's White House feels like a family gathering [View all]

Absent were the bands and choir performing traditional holiday songs. Notably missing, too, were the signature lamb-chop trays and assorted latkes. And in the pandemic-limited crowd of 150, dotted with yarmulkes with the presidential seal, a lone member of the Hasidic community of Borough Park, Brooklyn — a community that voted in large numbers for Donald Trump and who had an open door in his White House — stood out.

Wednesday evening’s affair in the East Room of the White House was a very different Hanukkah party than all that have come before it in a tradition begun in 2001. It was a more intimate affair, due to concerns about the coronavirus, and for many of the attendees, it felt more personal.

“This is a White House tradition,” President Joe Biden noted at the beginning of his remarks. “But for the first time in history it is a family tradition.”

He was talking about the family of Vice President Kamala Harris, whose husband. Doug Emhoff, is Jewish — a first. It was also the first time that the menorah — designed by the famous Holocaust survivor Manfred Anson — was lit by a Jewish Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer.



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