The White House Is Back To Telling Jews That Time Started With Jesus
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Nathan Guttman December 7, 2017
In the all-consuming debate surrounding President Trump’s Jerusalem statement, little attention was paid to the formal date on the proclamation signed by Trump.
The end of the document stated that it was signed on “this sixth day of December in the year of our Lord two thousand seventeen.” This is the formal language used by the U.S. government for presidential proclamations, referring to the years passed since the birth of Jesus Christ (and the beginning of the Gregorian calendar).
Former U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro may be the only one who paid any attention to this formulation. In fact, as he explained on Twitter, when Shapiro served in the Obama administration, he “worked hard (with mixed success) to get that standard formulation out of White House proclamations aimed at the Jewish community.”
Shapiro’s hard work may have made a change in the previous administration. But under Trump, the “year of our Lord” is back, even when signing a document recognizing the capital of the Jewish state.
Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected] or on Twitter @nathanguttman
Did you know that only 2% of Forward readers donate to support our nonprofit newsroom? That 2% make it possible for millions to read the Forward without a paywall or subscription — removing any barriers to the full and fair Jewish story.
But while the Forward is free to read, it isn’t free to produce. Big stories — like deep dives into the antisemitism data, political scoops or reporting trips to college campuses — take months of research and fact-checking. All while we keep you informed of what you need to know each day.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Forward Publisher & CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
