Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Shimon Peres’ Son Will Light Menorah at President Obama’s Last Hanukkah Party

WASHINGTON — Members of Shimon Peres’ family will light candles at President Barack Obama’s final Hanukkah party using a family heirloom menorah.

Chemi Peres, the late Israeli president’s son, and Mika Almog, his granddaughter, will light the candles at the party Wednesday evening, more than a week before the start of the holiday, according to a statement released Monday by the Peres family confirming earlier reports.

The menorah is one preserved during the Holocaust by the Waldens, the family of Peres’ son-in law, and was used for years at family Hanukkah lightings.

“The menorah survived the Holocaust and was carried from Poland, to France, and finally, to Israel by the family of the Ninth President Peres’ son-in-law, Professor Rafi Walden,” said the statement. “The late Ninth President Shimon Peres, who was raised on Jewish values and traditions at the knee of his grandfather, Rabbi Zvi Melzer, lit the Hanukkah candles every year, and made sure that this special menorah held a place of honor in the Walden-Peres family.”

Peres, who died in September, was the Israeli leader closest to Obama during two terms when he was often at odds with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Obama awarded Peres the presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 and Peres the year following enthusiastically endorsed Obama’s ultimately failed efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.