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Joshua Bolten: White House Judaism Guru
Because of his last name, most people don't realize that new White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten is Jewish. But Ronald Kessler's best-selling new book "Laura Bush: An Intimate Portrait of the First Lady” reveals that Bolten is the Bushes' guru on matters Jewish – and spotlights Laura's special interest in Judaism. [Editor’s Note: Check out this FREE offer for Ron Kessler’s "Laura Bush” -- Go Here Now.] Kessler writes that Bolten noticed that interest when he began working for the first Bush presidential campaign as policy director in March 1999. "I would have dinner with the family at the Governor's Mansion or at the ranch," Bolten is quoted as saying.
While not Orthodox, Bolten does not eat shellfish and eats meat only when it is served in a kosher home or restaurant, Kessler found. "I didn't make a big deal of it, but she [Laura] noticed that I would just pass on certain items of food," Bolten says. "She was sensitive to that."
Story Continues Below Laura would make sure to include a vegetarian alternative like a grilled Portobello mushroom with melted cheese. "She doesn't pepper you with questions, but she would ask interesting questions about the Jewish holidays or the meaning of the rituals," Bolten said. "Whenever I was over for a meal, they would say grace. They would ask me to say grace in Hebrew and ask for the translation." When Bush became president, Laura held the first Hanukkah lighting and party in the White House and served the first entirely kosher meal there.
Kessler says that when Laura would invite Bolten to stay over at Camp David, she would remember a prayer Bolten had said at meals back in Texas. Called the "Shehecheyanu," it begins, "Blessed are you, Lord, our God, king of the universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season." The prayer is said on a blessed occasion, such as the first day of a holiday. At Camp David, Laura would ask Bolten to say the blessing to mark a joyful event. The book notes that on April 18, 2001, on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Laura and the president toured the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. It was the first of several visits by the first lady. Fred S. Zeidman, the chairman of the museum's governing council, had been a friend of the Bushes for more than 15 years. But it was not until 2005 that he learned that Laura's father Harold Welch had been a liberator of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Nordhausen, Germany, when he served in the Army during World War II. For President Bush, the lessons of the Holocaust have taken on special meaning. "The president has said to me several times since 9/11," Zeidman disclosed, "that almost every day he gets up and thinks about what he learned during his tour of the Holocaust Memorial Museum. It's given him the resolve during the tough times involving Iraq and the war on terror, because he knows that it's the right thing to do to prevent further loss of life and to protect America." On the morning of the second Hanukkah lighting and party on December 4, 2002, Bush met with Jewish leaders in the Roosevelt Room, Kessler writes. Jay Lefkowitz, an observant Jew who was chief of the president's Domestic Policy Council, remembered that one participant stood up and said that some 60 years earlier, his father had been part of a delegation of Jewish leaders who sought to meet with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to urge that the U.S. bomb railroad tracks to impede the Nazis' ability to kill Jews in concentration camps. The Jewish leaders never got a meeting, and Roosevelt never took action to thwart Hitler's genocide. He said it would divert resources from the effort to win the war. "Mr. President," the man said to Bush, "I think I can speak for everyone in this room when I say that if you had been president, there would be millions more of us alive today." Several months later, in May 2003, Laura created a stir during a visit to Jerusalem when she visited the Wailing Wall, Judaism’s holiest shrine, and was angrily heckled by Israelis. The protesters shouted "free Pollard now,” demanding that the U.S. release American Jew Jonathan Pollard, imprisoned for spying for Israel. But Laura calmly placed a handwritten note in the wall, as is the Jewish custom, and returned to her motorcade.
[Editor’s Note: Check out this FREE offer for Ron Kessler’s "Laura Bush” -- Go Here Now.]
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