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4.2.12
WC: 191694

President Bill Clinton

I first met President and Mrs. Clinton, both of whom who are indeed fascinating, on Rosh Hashanah in 1993. We shared many mutual friends and teachers from Yale Law School, but we had never actually met before I invited the President and First Lady, who were vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, to join my family at the M.V. synagogue for Rosh Hashanah services. When I learned that the Clintons were living near us on the Vineyard, I had the following letter hand delivered to the President by a mutual friend:

Dear Mr. President:

It is my great honor to invite you on behalf of the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center (the only Jewish house of prayer on the Island) to attend one of our Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) services. It is a part of the Jewish tradition for the congregation to bless the President of the United States and the great nation that has given us the freedom to practice our religion without prejudice or discrimination. Our congregation would love to extend that blessing personally to you and to invite you to respond with your own New Year’s greeting or to accept our good wishes silently.

In years gone by, Jews in different countries lived in fear that government officials would enter their religious sanctuaries. Such visits were often prelude to crusades, inquisitions, pogrom, and—eventually—the Holocaust. The lyrics of the Broadway hit “Fiddler on the Roof” include the following mock prayer for the Russian Czar. “May the good Lord bless and keep the Czar—far away from us.” In contemporary America, the attitude of the Jewish community is quite different: We welcome our president with open arms.

The services will be held in the Whaling Church in Edgartown—a wonderful building used for year as a place of Christian prayer for whaling captains and their crews. The use of this church for Jewish services symbolizes the ecumenical nature of our wonderful Island…We hope you and your family and staff members (Jewish or non-Jewish) can join us as we pray for a year of peace, health and productivity.

The president immediately accepted, thus becoming, we are told by the eminent Jewish historian Jacob Marcus, the first sitting American president ever to attend a Jewish High Holiday service. I sat next to him during the service and shared a mahzor (Holiday prayer book) with him for most of the davening, pointing out the prayers and whispering explanations of such concepts as the “talit” (prayer shawl) and “mitzvot” (good deeds). We used a prayer book in which the Hebrew was transliterated for the parts that are chanted, and the president and Mrs. Clinton sang along in Hebrew. Then the president spoke briefly from the lectern, declaring his role in the Mideast peace process “one of the most rewarding things I’ve done,” and wishing the Jewish people a “Shana Tova.” He wore a white Kipah my wife and I gave him from our wedding. He and Hillary signed it and gave it back after the service. We have kept it as a treasured reminder of that historic night.

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