President Obama will host his final Passover seder in the White House on Thursday — five nights after Jews around the world celebrated the start of the holiday.
The annual dinner was put on hold because the president was traveling in Great Britain on Friday and Saturday, part of a six-day trip that also took him to Germany and Saudi Arabia.
Instead of holding the seder overseas, Obama ate dinner Friday with Prince William and Duchess Kate Middleton. The president played a late round of golf Saturday with British Prime Minister David Cameron.
The president, first lady Michelle Obama and a select group of aides and supporters will gather in the Old Family Dining Room for the final time tomorrow night to eat matzoh and tell the story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt.
It’s a tradition that began on Obama’s 2008 campaign, when three junior aides gathered to hold a seder during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania.
Then-Sen. Obama dropped by the impromptu dinner in the basement of the Sheraton hotel in Harrisburg.
“It reminds everyone there of how life was like right before the election and right before we moved to Washington,” Herbie Ziskend, an organizer of the original Seder who worked as an advance staffer on Obama’s 2008 campaign, told The Hill last year.
Eight years later, with his presidency coming to the close, Obama last Friday sounded a bittersweet note about the dinner.
“Mah nishtana halailah hazeh?” Obama asked in a statement, Hebrew for “why is this night different from all other nights?”
“For Michelle and me, this Passover is different from all other Passovers because it will mark our last seder in the White House — a tradition we have looked forward to each year since hosting the first-ever White House seder in 2009,” the president continued.
“As we count the 10 Plagues, we spill wine from our glasses to remember those who suffered and those who still do. And as we humbly sing ‘Dayenu,’ we are mindful that even the smallest blessings and slowest progress deserve our gratitude.”