The first American president to understand the meaning of Chanukah was George Washington, who was inspired by a lone Jewish soldier in Valley Forge during the harsh winter of 1777-78 when prospects were bleak and all seemed lost for the nascent American revolution.
One frigid evening, Washington was out trying to boost his despondent troops when he observed a solitary soldier struggling to protect a little flame from the bitter Valley Forge wind. The soldier told the general that, as an immigrant who had fled his native Poland seeking freedom from the Russian regime to practice his Jewish faith, he had lit the candles on the soon-to-be-free American earth in celebration of the Jewish festival of Chanukah, which commemorates the impossible Jewish victory many centuries ago against vastly superior fighting forces.
He told Washington that just as the God of Israel had helped the ancient Jews prevail over their mighty enemy, so would He help America prevail in its just cause for independence and freedom. Washington, inspired by the message of the little Chanukah candles, went on with increased confidence and vigor to lead the Continental Army to an unlikely victory against the British.
Later, in December 1778, when Washington was dining during Chanukah at the home of Jewish merchant Michael Hart, his host began to explain the customs of the holiday. The general, explaining that he already knew about the holiday from a Jew at Valley Forge, told the above story, which Hart’s daughter recorded in her diary.
There is no record of any American president recognizing Chanukah for the next two centuries. Christmas was formally recognized by President Coolidge, who was the first to dedicate an official White House Christmas Tree in 1923, a tradition continued by FDR. Although Truman also treated Christmas as if it were a universal holiday celebrated by all Americans, he became historically, albeit indirectly, linked to Chanukah when David Ben-Gurion officially presented a 1767 bronze menorah from the Buergel (Germany) Synagogue to Truman on his birthday (May 8, 1951).
Shown here is an original newspaper photograph of Truman in the Oval Office receiving the menorah as a gift from Ben-Gurion and the people of Israel.
(In 2008, during the last Chanukah of his administration, President George W. Bush cut short his farewell trip to Iraq and Afghanistan to attend his final Chanukah party at the White House, where Yariv Ben-Eliezer, Ben-Gurion’s grandson, and Clifton Truman Daniel, Truman’s grandson, together lit the very menorah that Ben-Gurion had presented to Truman.)
Jimmy Carter was the first president to officially recognize Chanukah when he walked from the White House to nearby Lafayette Park to deliver brief remarks and became the first president to light the Chabad National Menorah (1979), a ritual in which all subsequent presidents have participated.
Shown here is a photograph of the 1975 Israeli Delegation to President Ford at the White House signed by future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, who was then the Chairman of Israel’s Likud Party.
President Reagan visited the Rockville, Maryland JCC, where he delivered brief remarks after the menorah was lit (1983). During a Chanukah event where he hosted an American Friends of Lubavitch rabbinical delegation at the White House (1984), the president told the story of Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff and the 1983 barracks bombing in Beirut. When the rabbi’s yarmulke was thrown away because it was covered in blood after being used to wipe the faces of wounded Marines, Catholic chaplain Father George Pucciarelli tore off a piece of his camouflage uniform for Rabbi Resnicoff to use as a temporary yarmulke.
The first President Bush proudly displayed the menorah he had received from the Synagogue Council of America, and he attended a Chanukah party for staff at the Executive Office Building (1991). But it was not until 1993 that a president hosted a menorah lighting ceremony at the White House, when President Clinton gathered about a dozen schoolchildren for a small ceremony there; readers may recall the event received national media attention when the ponytail of one of the young visitors began smoking from contact with the candle flames and Clinton extinguished the burning hair with his bare hands.
Clinton later began the practice, which continues to this day, of inviting Jewish leaders to the White House Chanukah lighting ceremonies.
President George W. Bush hosted the first official White House Chanukah Party, using a century-old menorah borrowed from the New York Jewish Museum (December 10, 2001). Moreover, while candles had been previously lit in the Oval Office, Bush moved the celebration to his private White House residence. Tying the Chanukah celebration to the events of 9/11, the president noted that although 2001 had been a year during which Israel and America had grieved together, we pray for a better day “when this Festival of Freedom may be celebrated in a world free from terror.”
Displayed here is photograph of Bush addressing a group during the 2003 celebration at the White House, during which a Jewish a cappella group from Maryland performed Chanukah selections. Bush has inscribed the photo “University of Maryland Hillel, warm regards, George Bush”
The following year in 2004, non-kosher food was accidentally mixed in with kosher foods that had been specially brought to the White House for the Chanukah party; to avoid a recurrence of this embarrassing fiasco, Bush ordered Marines and Navy officers, under rabbinic supervision, to kasher the White House kitchen. During the 2005 festivities, he became the first president to actually light a candle during the White House ceremony, which was actually held before Chanukah because the president would be traveling during the actual eight days of the holiday; at the event, Rabbi Joshua Skoff delightfully quipped that his children were excited “to observe the 25 days of Chanukah.”
For the 2007 ceremony, Bush invited the parents of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl, who had been murdered by Islamic terrorists, to light the menorah that once belonged to Daniel’s great-grandparents, who brought it with them when they moved from Poland to Israel to establish the town of Bnei Brak (1924).
Citing Pearl’s famous final words – “’My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish” – the president noted that “By honoring Daniel, we are given the opportunity to bring forth hope from the darkness of tragedy – and that is a miracle worth celebrating during the Festival of Lights.”
President Obama continued the tradition of a White House Chanukah party but he generated controversy his first year by hosting a much smaller reception and then compounded the slight when his invitations made no mention of Chanukah, referring only to a “holiday reception.”
In subsequent years, however, his Chanukah celebrations always featured a menorah of emotional and historical importance to Jews. The 2009 gathering included a silver menorah on special loan from the Jewish Museum in Prague; candles were lit by two young children of a Jewish soldier deployed in Iraq; and Obama became the first president to issue his formal Chanukah message in both English and Hebrew.
The 2010 celebration featured a Chanukah menorah from New Orleans that had survived Hurricane Katrina, and in 2011 candles were lit on a menorah that had survived Hurricane Sandy. In 2013, the famous “Statue of Liberty” menorah from the Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia was used.
In 2015, Obama invited Israel’s president Reuven Rivlin to the White House celebration, marking the first time that American and Israeli presidents lit a Chanukah candle together. In his final year in office, Obama held two separate parties and invited the families of the late Elie Wiesel and Shimon Peres to light their own menorahs at the White House.
The history of the menorah lit by the Peres family is a beautiful story worthy of retelling:
During the Holocaust, the Walden family, in France, having successfully kept their Jewish identity from the Nazis, entrusted their magnificent menorah to sympathetic neighbors on a nearby farm who promised to protect it. When Chanukah came, the Waldens, at great peril, retrieved the menorah and, in their private secluded room, lit the candles. Soon after, the Nazis raided the neighbors’ farm and burned it to the ground. The menorah and the Waldens both miraculously survived the war and when the family moved to Israel in 1952, they took the menorah with them.
Some twenty years later, Raphael Walden married Shimon Peres’s daughter, and the families gathered together each year to light this very menorah – with their first posthumous lighting taking place at the White House.