4.2.12 WC: 191694 President Bill Clinton I first met President and Mrs. Clinton, both of whom who are indeed fascinating, on Rosh Hashanah in 1993. We shared many mutual friends and teachers from Yale Law School, but we had never actually met before I invited the President and First Lady, who were vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, to join my family at the M.V. synagogue for Rosh Hashanah services. When I learned that the Clintons were living near us on the Vineyard, I had the following letter hand delivered to the President by a mutual friend: Dear Mr. President: It is my great honor to invite you on behalf of the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center (the only Jewish house of prayer on the Island) to attend one of our Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) services. It is a part of the Jewish tradition for the congregation to bless the President of the United States and the great nation that has given us the freedom to practice our religion without prejudice or discrimination. Our congregation would love to extend that blessing personally to you and to invite you to respond with your own New Year’s greeting or to accept our good wishes silently. In years gone by, Jews in different countries lived in fear that government officials would enter their religious sanctuaries. Such visits were often prelude to crusades, inquisitions, pogrom, and—eventually—the Holocaust. The lyrics of the Broadway hit “Fiddler on the Roof” include the following mock prayer for the Russian Czar. “May the good Lord bless and keep the Czar—far away from us.” In contemporary America, the attitude of the Jewish community is quite different: We welcome our president with open arms. The services will be held in the Whaling Church in Edgartown—a wonderful building used for year as a place of Christian prayer for whaling captains and their crews. The use of this church for Jewish services symbolizes the ecumenical nature of our wonderful Island...We hope you and your family and staff members (Jewish or non-Jew