For the first time in American history, a sitting president called on American Jews observe Shabbos in honor of the country itself. And this past Friday night, Parshas Bamidbar, a Shabbos table was set inside the White House.
The occasion was “Shabbos 250,” President Trump’s call, issued in his Jewish American Heritage Month proclamation on May 4, asking Jewish Americans to observe Shabbos from sundown May 15 through nightfall May 16 in honor of America’s upcoming 250th anniversary. No president had ever formally encouraged Shabbos observance before. The proclamation was tied to the broader “Rededicate 250” initiative and invoked George Washington’s famous 1790 letter to the Touro Synagogue, with its promise of “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
Among those invited was Rabbi Moshe Margaretten of the Tzedek Association, the Williamsburg-born askan known for his work on the First Step Act, infertility advocacy, and his role in rescuing the last Jews of Afghanistan. Reb Moshe shared a firsthand account of the Shabbos with YWN.
The Tzedek group left their hotel in DC at around 6:20 PM and arrived at the White House about twenty minutes later. As they made their way through security, they watched Marine One come in over the South Lawn, bringing the President back from his two-day state visit with Xi Jinping in Beijing, his first trip to China since 2017.
Inside, a Shabbos table had been prepared in one of the White House reception rooms, with Shabbos licht ready to be lit. The room was packed with Yidden from across the federal government, frum and not-yet-frum staffers from nearly every sector of the administration. Rabbi Levi Shemtov of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) in DC, who has been a fixture of Jewish life in the capital for decades, warned the room not to be mekabel Shabbos yet, with the sole exception of Emily Austin, the sports broadcaster and pro-Israel commentator who had been honored with hadlokas neiros.
After she lit, all cell phones, cameras, and other muktzah items were collected and handed off to non-Jewish staffers to be brought back to the hotel for the duration of Shabbos.
From there, the group walked over to the nearby Decatur House, the historic 1818 mansion adjacent to Lafayette Square, where davening took place. Mincha and Maariv were davened with a full minyan of administration officials and guests. Jacob Reses, chief of staff to Vice President JD Vance, said kaddish at the end of davening.
Then everyone went inside for the seudah. Each guest received a challah cover embroidered with the presidential seal as a memento of the night. The becher used for Kiddush had been recovered from one of the yishuvim ravaged by Hamas on October 7.
The event was arranged by White House Jewish Liaison Martin Marks together with investor and former Holocaust Memorial Council chairman Paul Packer.
The Shabbos 250 reception was just one of multiple gatherings in DC that night. The Combat Antisemitism Movement hosted a separate dinner for over a hundred Jewish members of the administration, Hill staff, and policy professionals, with Psagot wine and copies of the posthumously-published sefer on Shabbos by the late Charlie Kirk distributed to guests. More than 7,500 Yidden across all fifty states had signed up at Shabbat250.org to be part of the national observance.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
