Obama To Host Third Annual White House Passover Seder

President Obama is hosting his third annual White House Seder on the first night of Passover, April 18, 2011, complete with a full Seder menu including brisket, potato kugel and macaroons.

The tradition started in a windowless basement of the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Sheraton , during the April 2008 campaign, when Eric Lesser, then Ground Logistic Coordinator (he's now the Director of Strategic Planning for Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers), got his hands on an "emergency Seder kit" from the University of Pennsylvania's Hillel Center. As Lesser and his fellow campaign staffers Arun Chaudhary and Herbie Ziskend were about to begin the Seder, Obama asked if he could join.

Read the whole story

Comments

[climbing panda]

06:42 PM on 04/18/2011

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE! SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE! SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE!

[NateinMpls]

08:31 AM on 04/18/2011

Let me know when Obama participates in a Pagan festival. I believe we are being left out.

[Whinerbozo]

09:13 AM on 04/18/2011

"...left out."? What do you think he was participating in for 20 years at the 'House of Wright'. Or was it 'Wrong'? Whatever!

[NateinMpls]

09:56 AM on 04/18/2011

True.... but you know what I mean.

[cornel]

01:09 AM on 04/18/2011

Why is he not wearing a Jarmulka ?

[jl4141]

09:57 AM on 04/18/2011

Because he's not orthodox Jewish.

Next question?

[Pema]

10:28 AM on 04/19/2011

yea why is he doing this at all. its a dog and pony show

[samiles96]

11:25 PM on 04/17/2011

I'm sure the Right will not accuse Obama of being a "secret Jew" because of this. However, I remember last year when Obama hosted a dinner for the end of Ramadan and all the crazies came out of the woodwork using that as evidence that he is a Muslim.

[Anne Mccormick]

12:45 AM on 04/18/2011

i remember as well. President Obama can't win either way. you do do know that if Obama were Republican there would have been no criticism of his hosting a dinner for the end of Ramadan. nor would there be any criticism of his hosting a Passover Seder.

[Whinerbozo]

09:15 AM on 04/18/2011

An Obamabot!

[naschkatze]

11:47 AM on 04/18/2011

Maybe Obama should just stop pandering for votes to various religious groups and act like the secular leader he was intended to be. Both Obama's Democratic predecessors as well as his Republican ones had the sense to do this.

[Amalek]

07:34 AM on 04/18/2011

I think a last supper re-creation of the passover meal might have been a better idea.

[wolfiegirl]

10:29 PM on 04/17/2011

I betcha my matzo ball soup is better than Michelle Obama's (or their cook.....) ;))))

[Whinerbozo]

09:22 AM on 04/18/2011

That's a bet I wouldn't take!

[GraphicMatt]

10:15 AM on 04/18/2011

Neither are as good as my mother's. : P

[HawaiiShira]

06:33 PM on 04/17/2011

A celebration of their escape from slavery.....their Passover. I can see why Obama chooses to celebrate this holy day. At least when the Jews left Egyptian slavery, they didn't leave empty-handed.

Black Americans even today cannot truly celebrate their deliverance from slavery because we still struggled under the hands of hard taskmasters, and you still have southern states & a whole heap of Teabagpublicans that deny slavery was what the Civil War was all about, and still pine for the days of Jim Crow. Plus, we never got our 40 acres & a mule.

[Waterlooboy]

08:08 PM on 04/17/2011

Your history is a little incomplete. It is many people on the left who deny that the Civil War was about slavery. They don't want to give any credit to the North or the Republican administration for ending slavery. They quote Lincoln having said "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it..." and they deride the Emancipation Proclamation for not really freeing any slaves.

[French Toast]

10:44 PM on 04/17/2011

I have never heard any liberal say that and I am a lifelong liberal socialist. It is often the Republicans who try to use the complex reasons for the Civil War to discredit the emancipation. Get your facts straight, brochacho.

[ADinSC]

11:27 PM on 04/17/2011

What B.S.! The only thing that "incomplete" is your grasp of reality. I live in the South, and it ain't the "liberals" who are denying that the Civil War was about ending slavery.

[erehwon2]

09:59 PM on 04/17/2011

"At least when the Jews left Egyptian slavery, they didn't leave empty-hand­ed."

Okay, I'll bite. What great assets were they allowed to take with them? The story behind the Passover matzo is that the Jews had no time to let the dough rise before baking a little bread for their journey. Sounds like they were in a pretty big hurry to vamoose for what ended up being their forty-year journey through the desert.

[HawaiiShira]

10:18 PM on 04/17/2011

According to the holy scriptures:
Exodus 12:4,32,34-36 (KJV)
And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls; every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb. [32] Also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be gone; and bless me also. [34] And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneadingtroughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders. [35] And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: [36] And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required . And they spoiled the Egyptians.

Nothing derrogatory, just a fact. Because of obedience.

[Whinerbozo]

05:29 PM on 04/17/2011

Isn't customary/respectful for even non-Hebrew male guests to wear a
yarmulke at a Passover Seder? Just curious.

[tonewheel]

06:47 PM on 04/17/2011

Not necessarily. As a reform Jew, we don't wear the headgear at our Seder.

[Whinerbozo]

08:50 AM on 04/18/2011

Thank you for your explanation.

[naschkatze]

11:49 AM on 04/18/2011

Interesting. I didn't know that.

[jl4141]

10:02 AM on 04/18/2011

Not to any of the dozen or so seders I've been to.

[Whinerbozo]

06:21 PM on 04/18/2011

In your case, it was because you were the only one there so it didn't matter.

[raker]

05:00 PM on 04/17/2011

Every year we get news of the Obama seder, and every year I cringe. It is artificial to host a custom of a religion not one's own. It trivializes the custom, reducing it to theater. I'd rather see the President be a guest at a Jewish colleague's seder, an authentic religious/cultural observance.

[totaldisbelief]

09:40 AM on 04/18/2011

you said "theater" and that's exactly what this is...and your point of the President going to the home of a Jewish colleague is a good one and more apropo as well.

[jl4141]

10:04 AM on 04/18/2011

I disagree. I suggest you read Richard Rubenstein's comment, about 2 down from here.

[Barbara DeZan]

01:27 PM on 04/17/2011

I started to read the comments to see how long it would take before the screwballs starting bashing Obama on this...and, guess what.

You were the first post!!!!

Congratulations.

As much as you may not like it, we live on a huge world with billions and billions of people. One of our leaders rolls is diplomacy, then there's international relations....oh, and those tiresome meeting "thingies"..... Ya know, keeping the peace between nations..or trying to.

You see, the world doesn't revolve around us.....we go around the sun with everybody else. A mature citizen would recognize that tolerance towards diversity is the first step towards good relationships with neighbors...and would recognize that one of the Presidents duties is to keep those relationships...and improve when he can.

Now, I'll move on to the next misfit who wants to bash Pres Obama. You people are always good for a few laughs.

[DeeFromTheD]

05:20 PM on 04/17/2011

TELL IT ! BARB. F & F.

[BahtHarim]

09:15 PM on 04/17/2011

Don't be silly, Reb Sharon. It was a tradition started by Obama's Jewish staff members, and continuing even now. Lighten up. Gut Yontiff.

[Richard Rubenstein]

08:05 AM on 04/17/2011

Performed properly, a Passover Seder is a celebration of freedom, pure and simple. And when the story is told completely, we are taught to first put ourselves in the shoes of the slaves, and also reminded that everyone who perished on the other side of the Red Sea was also a child of G-d. A hundred or more generations later, both sides of every human conflict still forget this lesson. There's no better place than the White House for a refresher. Perhaps if every house--a leader's or not---received a lot more reminders, we'd all be a lot better off. Doubtless some hateful people out there will use the annual message as a fulcrum to attack the President, or his supporters, or one religious group or another. All the more reason to teach the lesson every year.

[VOTER]

10:36 AM on 04/17/2011

Well said.

[COPESTIR3]

06:30 PM on 04/16/2011

This is beautiful. There is no better place to have a Passover Seder than in the White House.

[Pema]

08:12 PM on 04/16/2011

why?

[naschkatze]

08:54 PM on 04/16/2011

x2

[COPESTIR3]

10:13 PM on 04/16/2011

why not? After all, the White house is the People's house. Celebrating the Passover Seder represents respect for millions of Jewish Americans. Additionally, for Christians, the Last Supper was a Passover Seder.