President Bush played dreidel at the White House on Thursday, first getting a no-decision on “nun” and then winning a pot of chocolates on “gimmel.”
Bush played with students from the Charles E. Smith Day School here as part of the first large-scale Chanukah celebration at the White House.
“From now on in the White House, we will be thinking in terms of a 1,009 points of light,” Bush quipped, after the Synagogue Council of America presented him with a menorah.
The celebration was attended by close to 100 Jewish leaders, administration officials and day school students.
After this year’s main event, a delegation led by Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, Lubavitch’s national director, met with Bush, in keeping with an 11-year-old Chanukah tradition at the White House involving American Friends of Lubavitch.
In addition to presenting him with a menorah, the group videotaped Bush congratulating Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, the Lubavitcher rebbe.
Bobbie Greene Kilberg, director of the White House’s public liaison office, said the dreidel-playing event was the president’s idea and that it would be the start of a Bush tradition.
As for the Synagogue Council’s selection as the group presenting the menorah, Gunther Lawrence, its spokesman, said that the White House “wanted to get a representative group” covering a wide spectrum of U.S. Jewry. The group has Orthodox, Conservative and Reform rabbis in its membership.
JTA will not publish a Daily News Bulletin on Monday, Dec. 25, because of the postal holiday in the United States.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
