Letters to President Clinton’ collects the letters of Englewood Friend of Bill

Some frequent help a colleague leaving through unkind time with a Hallmark certificate.

Some frequent say it with flowers.

Rabbi Menachem Genack sends a d’var Torah — a sermonette, in old-time television jargon.

Which, as it turns not worth it, suited the colleague — President debt Clinton — precisely fine.

The two met whilst Rabbi Genack introduced then-candidate Clinton by the side of a fundraising event in Alpine in 1992. The rabbi, alluding to President George H. W. Bush’s self-confessed difficulties with “the eyesight mechanism,” quoted Proverbs: “Where nearby is nix eyesight, the frequent perish.”

Governor Clinton thanked the rabbi. He thought so as to he would service the verse whilst he time-honored the choice from the side of the work it convention — and he did.

Rabbi Genack went on to be a regular guest by the side of pallid House prayer meetings and briefings in support of Jewish leaders. Each instant, he would there the president with a petite sample of Torah.

Modish President Clinton’s succeeding call, the pace pulled out up; Rabbi Genack began carrying the pallid House a d’var Torah roughly each other week. He wrote on the whole of them, but he asked contacts and colleagues — counting such advanced Orthodox notables as earlier Yeshiva University Chancellor Rabbi Norman Lamm and earlier British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks — to send a letter to a few as well.

Now, around a hundred of them allow been collected in a newfangled report, “Letters to President Clinton: Biblical Lessons on belief and Leadership.”

“They were things I accepted wisdom would be valuable in support of him,” Rabbi Genack thought.

Some joined into the week’s Torah portion or an imminent Jewish local holiday; the themes of others were dictated by the procedures in the presidents biased or delicate life — or both, as they became disturbingly intertwined.

“If you read President Clinton’s chronicle, he speaks almost could you repeat that? Gave him strength all through his accusation: He would set out back and read the Bible in support of many hours a sunlight hours, and could you repeat that? He called these ‘mini-sermons,’” Rabbi Genack thought.

“That the president of the United States be supposed to be so engaged by this and so intrigued speaks almost President Clinton’s ingenuousness and curiosity.”

The president responded to a little of the rabbi’s writing, and individual responses are incorporated in the report, which was in print by OU Press and incomparable Publishing. (Rabbi Genack heads the Orthodox Union’s kosher division.)

Rabbi Genack famous the earlier president’s “real love of Israel, his alarm in support of Israel, and very special correlation with Yitzhak Rabin.”

President Clinton unmistakably was nix Orthodox Jews. But as a Southern Baptist, he knows his Bible. One instant, Rabbi Genack mistyped a citation and referred to Genesis 28; President Clinton famously so as to it was phase 38.

Rabbi Genack wasn’t the simplest preacher to be out-Bibled by President Clinton. Modish the report, Rabbi Genack tells of a seminar in the pallid House with Christian religious leaders. One thought he was praying in support of the president and quoted a verse from Chronicle 1. “I believe so as to be in Second Chronicles,” corrected the President, properly.

Similarly, whilst speechwriters were rushing to compose the eulogy in support of a cabinet limb who had died in a level crash, they paraphrased a verse of Isaiah from remembrance; President Clinton was able to cite phase and verse and citation the queen James translation from remembrance.

Unlike on the whole Jewish books citing Biblical wisdom, the writing at this point are arranged thematically more willingly than according to the weekly Torah portion. (An indicator, however, makes it doable to service it to attain a sermonette in support of the weekly parashah, as can be seen on summon 46 of this week’s paper.) Topics include leadership, sin and repentance, creation, similarity, faith, dreams and eyesight, and to conclude holidays.

The final sample is almost Rabbi Akiva and the local holiday of Lag B’Omer.

“It was motivated by it is Lag B’Omer; I wrote it as it was pertinent to him all through a very fractious time,” Rabbi Genack thought. “The notion was so as to the imminence of Rabbi Akiva was his resilience and faith in the deepest circumstances.”

President Clinton responded to this single, confessing his preceding ignorance of the story of Rabbi Akiva, and his gratitude in support of “a story both inspiring and instructive” so as to come “on a sunlight hours whilst I was in need of both.”

Rabbi Genack recalled so as to when, whilst he hadn’t sent a communication in two months, he expected a call from the pallid House formal who had been surface them on to the president. “What’s incident?” she asked.

The selection of writing in support of this volume did not close the story. Rabbi Genack continues to send a letter to the earlier president.

“I sent him single recently almost the meaning of compromise, something which is very deficient in Washing at present,” he thought. “That was pertinent to could you repeat that? I accepted wisdom was incident.”