Visit to the White House

(Adapted from drasha given at Beth Shalom, December 9, 2005)
In a previous post I mentioned that Martha and I had received the following invitation:

The President and Mrs. Bush request the pleasure of your company at a Hanukkah Reception to be held at the White House on Tuesday, December 6th, 2005 at six o’clock. East Entrance

I felt like I was in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Martha and I had just received one of the Golden Tickets. Sure it was one of almost 10,000 for one of the 26 holiday parties at the White House in December, rather than one of the few found by August Gloop, Veruca Salt and the others, but still, a golden ticket.

I guess we made the list in part because 2 months ago a researcher from the Office of Presidential Speech Writing heard about what Beth Shalom did for evacuees Henry and Navila Johnson and was amused by the fact that when I called their daughter to tell them her parents were safe, she screamed “thank you Jesus!” The incident actually made into a speech President Bush gave on September 21st (See previous post).

I had that Wonka feeling again when I called the White House Social Secretary’s office to RSVP. The friendly recorded voice asked for our social security numbers and instructed us to be at the East entrance at 5:30 with our picture ids.

So we went to Washington, endless ribbing from fellow democrats notwithstanding.

We certainly did not want to risk being late and missing our chance to see the Chocolate Factory. So we flew to Washington the evening before the event. Once there we carefully planned out how long it would take us to get to the White House. I have to admit that it was a bit of a thrill to hop into a cab and say “East entrance of the White House please.” The driver, however, could not have been less impressed.

We got to the North East entrance almost exactly at 5:30 thinking that we would need to walk around the block so as not to be the first people in line, but the guests were already lining up at the guard post for the id check. Social Secretary staffers scurried around checking ids under the watchful eyes of the uniformed Secret Service guards. I was relieved when we got through this part. I had this paranoid thought that we would not be on the list somehow and I would wind up being stunned with a tazer rather that getting into the reception.

We moved with the crowd up the walk to a second, larger security station. As we were walking, I listened to the people around us. Some of them were clearly veterans of past receptions and I heard someone in front of us say “Hello ambassador!” to an ambassadorish looking fellow. Many of the others it seems were plain old rube amcha like us.

We reached the security station, where other officers x-rayed bags, put us through metal detectors and wanded us. Once cleared we stepped out into the cold air again and were on the actual White House grounds. It had snowed the previous day and the sky as perfectly clear. The White House glowed against this background. Everyone was quiet as we walked up to the East entrance.

It was only after we were all packed into the entry hall that it became clear how many Hebrews were in attendance. It was at least 500 and probably quite a bit more. Somewhere up ahead a choir was singing. Soon they began to move us into the reception. We walked past enormous portraits of the First Ladies. As we came around a corner we saw the choir. They were young and in old fashioned dress gray uniforms. I thought that they must be from West Point and they were. I found out later that they were the West Point Jewish Cadet’s Choir. This accounted for their good Hebrew pronunciation

All through the building there were military officers from all branches of service in their dress uniforms. They were members of a special hospitality corps that volunteers in the White House during December. One of these amazingly cheery and well-scrubbed soldiers handed us a card that indicated when our group would be called to get our picture with the President and First Lady.

The helpful military aides directed us upstairs where the food and drink were waiting. At a landing on the stair case there was a little table with the event’s Kosher certificate on display. It was strictly glatt at the White House.

When we got upstairs, the Marine Band, also called the President’s Own, began to play. I can’t remember what they were playing when we walked by, but later I heard the best rendition of “I had a little dreidel” imaginable.

There was a buffet set up in the State Dining Room. This being a Jewish gathering, people were not shy about eating. It was one of the best kosher meat meals I have ever had. We did not, however, get to eat right away. As soon as we had our plates, our group was called to go back downstairs for the photo.

More helpful military aides ushered us downstairs and other helpful military aides took us to the Map Room. They double-checked the spelling and the pronunciation of our names. An army officer took charge of us and told us what to do after he introduced us to the President and First Lady. After a few minutes we were taken into the adjoining Diplomatic Reception Room with 2 or 3 other small groups of people. We watched the people in front of us do their thing. It was a Rabbi so and so and his Mother. They were introduced and as they were moving toward The President and the First Lady, Laura Bush said “oh isn’t it nice that you brought your mother!”

I know this will sound strange, but George and Laura Bush looked so much like they do on television that they did not look real. I understood then why they had these helpful military aides all over the place. People tend to get a little catatonic when they meet the President. Martha and I were certainly in a state of disbelief as we waited our turn.

The officer said, “Presenting Rabbi Stanton Zamek and Rabbi Martha Bergadine.” We did as we were told. We walked up to the Bushes, we shook hands and said it was an honor to meet them and then we went to our appointed places: Martha next to the President and me next to the First Lady. President Bush said to Martha, “Is your first name Barbara?” She said, “No sir, it is Martha.” And then winked at her and gave her a little knock with his elbow and said, “I’m getting kinda old.”

The flash went off and we were ushered out.

We were the first group to get our picture taken, so we had the rest of the night to eat and wander around the East Wing. The first thing we did was have a drink.

After desert, we played tourist for a while, wandering through the Red room, where Dolley Madison had her receptions, the Green Room, that was Thomas Jefferson’s dining room---history was thick in the air. There on the wall of the library was one of George Washington’s swords, there was that famous portrait of John F. Kennedy where he stands brooding with his arms crossed, looking down, deep in thought.

Then something weird happened. We went downstairs to see some other rooms and wound up suddenly face to face with Karl Rove (again, looking so much like himself that he looked fake.). He shook our hands warmly and it became apparent that he had us confused with someone else; classmates of ours in fact. Still it counts. We get to tick Rove off our political bird watching list. We also bagged the Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff.

It was the experience of a lifetime to be invited to the house of Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Truman, and Kennedy. This house is the most potent symbol there is of American power and also the people’s house. It is where every four years one of our fellow citizens becomes an institution, by wearing, for a time, the mantle of the American presidency. So the fact that there is now an annual Hanukkah celebration in this house is almost miraculous.

When my Grandfather first came to this country as a young man, would he ever have dreamed that Jews would one day be welcome guests of the President of the United States? When my Father was my age, he would never have imagined that Jewish tradition and Jewish peoplehood would be celebrated in the White House. It is a very strange but very wonderful world we are living in when the White House not only puts on a Kosher banquet and lets mashgichim come and supervise the kashering of the White House kitchen, but also where the First Lady poses for a picture with the kashering crew.

We Jews live in a very different world than we lived in a generation ago.

I might have been completely enraptured by the excitement of our evening at the White House and not thought at all about the meaning of the event in terms of Jewish history had I not visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that same morning. The contrast between the morning and the evening was jarring.

The museum, if you have not seen it, is extraordinary. It is exquisitely restrained. The facts are laid out clearly, but without histrionics. The objects and archival film footage speak for themselves. The design of the building carries much of the message, making palpable the horrifyingly banal industrial efficiency of the Shoah. The building makes the visitor fee increasingly constrained, in the grip of a relentless machine.

Along the way, walking downward through the museum, you see how the whole process began with exclusion, legal and social, to impress upon the masses that the Jews were not one of them, they were not entitled to the same rights, they were not part of the nation. Inexorably Jews were pushed to the margins of society, then to the margins of humanity, and final to the status of non-human vermin.

For most of Jewish history the laws that governed our lives were made by others, who told us what we could not do, where we could not work, and where we could not live. For most of Jewish history, soldiers were to be feared and their presence meant only death and suffering. We have lived in many places around the world, but for most of Jewish history we knew that we were not ultimately welcome. We knew that no matter how long we had lived in a country, no matter how much we had enriched its national life, the next day we could be ordered to leave.

Even in America, within living memory, the message to the Jew “you are not welcome, you do not matter” was communicated every day.

During World War II, Jewish leaders begged the administration to bomb the gas chambers and the railroad lines leading to the death camps. No one would listen. One of the most heartbreaking objects in the Holocaust museum is a map of the US bombing campaign against the Auschwitz-Manowitz industrial plants, just a few miles away from the death camp. The United States bombed its factory target near Auschwitz from August 20 through September 13, 1944, but could not spare a single bomb to prevent a single railcar from reaching its destination.

I was thinking of this map as I was standing in the White House map room waiting to be introduced to the President. This was the room where FDR met with the joint chiefs to plan the campaigns of World War II. On the wall is the last briefing map FDR received before he died. This is a room where history was made every day during the war, but it was also where the nation’s leaders were deaf to the pleas of Jewish Americans.

But on Tuesday night, the Map Room was filled with Rabbis and Jewish lay leaders, Jewish army officers, and Jews of every profession. When my Father was a young man, Jews often had to distort or hide who they were to get along in the world. These Jews on Tuesday night were welcomed for who they are. There was a forest of kippot in the dining rooms and plenty of fedoras and pais as well. The soldiers were there to make us feel welcome and at ease. The White House served latkes, cabbage rolls, lox, and the best sufganyot I have ever eaten.

When the menorah was lit Tuesday night the President said this:

“During Hanukkah, Jews across the world signify this miracle by lighting the menorah.  This act commemorates the victory of freedom over oppression, and of hope shining through darkness.  Today, that light still burns in Jewish homes and synagogues everywhere.  And, today, that light will burn here in the White House.”

Our historical memory is short. We are getting used to acceptance. We are accustomed to being a part of this society. We are so comfortable that we are beginning to forget that it has not always been this way. Consequently, we may not full appreciate what it means to have Jewish legislators and officials or the significance of the existence of a national holocaust museum just of the Washington mall, within sight of the Washington monument. We may not be able to see how at odds with history it is to have the White House recognize and honor our festival of religious freedom and Jewish distinctiveness.

My Grandfather, as a boy in Warsaw, had to cower in his house from mobs of thugs that roamed the streets at Eastertime. My Father remembers “gentile only” signs on hotels and apartment buildings and the anti-Semitic broadcasts of Father Coughlin from nearby Royal Oak. My mother was not able to become a nurse because Henry Ford Hospital did not admit Jews to its nursing school.

But Martha and I, along with hundreds of other amcha were invited to the White House. My daughter may think it is strange that her parents met the president, but if so, not because we are Jewish. That in itself is a blessing.