Between Yom Kippur services, Doug Emhoff shmoozes with the rabbis
Though some were not impressed by his favorite Jewish food, a Washington, D.C., congregation warmly received the second gentleman
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff, center, is interviewed by Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, left, and Rabbi Aaron Alexander at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C., on Yom Kippur on September 25, 2023. Courtesy of Adas Israel Congregation
By Lauren Markoe September 26, 2023
WASHINGTON — Interviewed by two rabbis between Yom Kippur services, the Jewish husband of Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday advised American Jews to band together with other groups to combat rising antisemitism.
“We’re what, 2% of the population?” Doug Emhoff said at Congregation Adas Israel, the largest Conservative synagogue in Washington, D.C. “We can’t do this alone. We need to be there for others so we can ask them to be there for us.”
Emhoff, who has taken one of the most public-facing roles in the Biden administration’s response to antisemitism, spent nearly an hour on the bimah under the tent the synagogue erects every High Holidays in its parking lot. With its senior rabbis — Aaron Alexander and Lauren Hotlzblatt — he discussed antisemitism and his Jewish upbringing at a Reform New Jersey synagogue, and pleased the crowd of about 1,000 congregants with his Hebrew skills. Emhoff assured that he knew the two mezuzahs at the vice president’s residence — one at the front door and one at the back — should together be referred to as “mezuzot.”
And he made a corny Jewish joke which nonetheless killed.
“When do we eat?” he asked on the Day of Atonement, a fast day.
And while “bagels and lox,” his answer to “what’s your’ favorite Jewish food?” was politely received by the congregation at the time, some congregants later wondered to each other why he couldn’t come up with a less obvious answer.
‘Not what I expected’
The second gentleman told the congregation that he didn’t plan to focus so much on antisemitism when Harris won the vice presidency in 2020.
“It’s not what I expected to be doing,” said Emhoff, a former Los Angeles entertainment lawyer. Being a husband to the first woman vice president was what he thought would be the most significant part of the job, and it is, he said. “But being the first Jew in this role — it’s up there.” Biden once called him to the Oval Office and he at first thought he was in trouble. But “he wanted to tell me about his own father who talked to him about antisemitism when he was a kid,” Emhoff said.
Emhoff in January traveled to Auschwitz for International Holocaust Remembrance Day and to the town in Poland his grandparents fled 120 years ago to escape antisemitism. It was only last year that he learned that relatives who stayed likely perished in the Holocaust. In February he addressed the United Nations on antisemitism. And in May he helped roll out the first national strategy to combat antisemitism, a response to a surge in antisemitic incidents in recent years.
“I’m going to continue to use this microphone” to draw attention to antisemitism, said Emhoff.
He talked about how antisemitic incidents have struck close to home, as when a banner was unfurled on an Interstate 405 overpass in October that read “Kanye was right,” referring to the rapper Ye’s antisemitic diatribes. “Near my exit, near my home,” Emhoff said. “It just infuriated me.”
As antisemitic incidents proliferate, he warned against growing “numb” to them. But the response to antisemitism has to be more than calling it out, he continued. “For every horrible things somebody says, we need people out there in a chorus countering that with positive messages about who Jews are.” He said he often does that in his travels to small towns and cities where few Jews live.
He also talked about the Rosh Hashanah celebration and Passover Seders he and Harris have hosted at their Washington residence. And he related the story of an 80-year-old Jewish woman who told him she had lived her whole life in fear, but changed her mind after hearing him talk about his own joy in being Jewish. “I’m going to wear my Star of David now and live out my years not being afraid,” he recalled her telling him.
Emhoff, 58, attended Rosh Hashanah services earlier this month at Adas Israel, but with the vice president. Neither he nor Harris addressed the crowd then, though Holtzblatt acknowledged their presence and the vice president received enthusiastic applause when the rabbi thanked her for her service.
The vice president wasn’t originally slated to come to Rosh Hashanah services, Emhoff told the Yom Kippur crowd, but changed her schedule.
“She wanted to be there, because it’s important to me,” he said.
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