Next Year in the White House: Barack Obama’s First Presidential Seder

The true story of how a small Seder dinner on the campaign trail inspired Barack Obama to bring the tradition into the White House and host the first ever Presidential Passover celebration.

In 1800, President John Adams held the first formal Christmas dinner at
the newly built White House. In 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes
observed Easter with a public ＂Egg Roll.＂ But it wasn’t until 2009 that a US president officially celebrated Passover.

A year earlier, on the campaign trail, three staffers had to get creative in order to host a Seder dinner. They gathered in a hotel basement, joined by candidate Barack Obama. They made the most of their surroundings and modest dinner, shared the stories and rituals of the holiday, and found connections between their communities. They made a toast and a promise to a future, grander celebration: next year in the White House.

For the first time, this story is told for picture book readers by award-winning author Richard Michelson and lauded illustrator EB Lewis in this special partnership with PJ Library.

Richard Michelson is a poet, children’s book author, and art dealer whose children’s books have been listed among the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and The New Yorker; and among the 12 Best Books of the Decade by Amazon.com. He has been a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award, the Harlem Book Fest Wheatley Award, and the National Jewish Book Award, as well as receiving two Skipping Stones Multicultural Book Awards, a National Parenting Publication Gold Medal and an International Reading Association Teacher’s Choice Award. In 2009 Michelson received both a Sydney Taylor Gold and Silver Medal from the Association of Jewish Librarians, the only author so honored in AJL’s 50 year history. Michelson received his 2nd Silver Medal in 2017 and his 2nd Gold Medal in 2018. Additionally, Michelson won the 2017 National Jewish Book Award.
Michelson is the owner of R. Michelson Galleries, the host of Northampton Poetry Radio, and the current Poet Laureate of Northampton Massachusetts.

E.B. Lewis has illustrated over seventy books for children, including the New York Times Best Illustrated Book Award, Kirkus Best Illustrated Book Award, and the Golden Kite Honor Award winner Jabari Asim’s Preaching to the Chickens and the Caldecott Honor Award Winner, Jacqueline Woodson’s Coming on Home Soon. He is also a five-time Coretta Scott King winner.
Presently, Lewis teaches at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He is also a member of The Society of Illustrators in New York City, and an artist member of Salamagundi Art Club of New York.