Having blown the Obama seder story once today, I want another crack at it. The Washington Post gets it right: this is a lowkey, familiar event. Just look at that picture again. 
It's an intimate setting, and the people seem happy to be there. It feels somewhat informal and friendly. Gemutlich, as my mother would say.
My mistake of this morning, thinking that Alan Solomont, a big Jewish philanthropist, was next to Obama, is revealing. There are no big Jews here! Imagine if this was Clinton's seder. Larry Summers, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Spielberg, Weinstein. Not here. The names are Eric Lesser, a recent Harvard grad; Laura Moser, a writer who worked for Slate and I'm guessing is in an intermarriage with Arun Chaudhary, the White House video guy. Lesser's dad. A Harvard/Chicago friend of Barack's called Eric Whitaker. Rahm's not here. Nor David Axelrod. The most prominent person seems to be Susan Sher, a deputy counsel. And her sons, one of them named Evan Moore. An earlier intermarriage?
I'm as down on the conventional Harvard culture of the Obama White House as anyone. But think of the messages being sent by this truly historic event: a very diverse group of elitists, the kind of people the Obamas feel comfortable with, no celebrities, but Jews as just part of the mix. The event underscores one of my big themes here: Jewish gifts are being shared in assimilationist America. The big crime of Moses Mendelssohn,during the last great Haskalah, or Enlightenment period, wasn't translating German texts into Hebrew, it was translating Hebrew texts into German.
Our liberation story belongs to everyone. Next year: Jerusalem.
