A Netanyahu adviser once gave Tony Blinken Hanukkah joke advice. Thankfully, he ignored it.
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A decades-old memo unveiled by the National Archives on Tuesday shows that Tony Blinken, President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, knows when Hanukkah humor is good, and when it’s as undercooked as a raw latke.
The Archives is posting documents relating to the celebration of Hanukkah every day of the holiday this year. Tuesday’s selection included portions of a 1998 memo from Jacob Maor, an adviser to then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (in his first term), to Blinken, who was then a White House adviser to President Bill Clinton.
The memo is full of Hanukkah jokes, which Maor suggested Clinton say in a public speech he was due to make during a visit to Israel during the holiday. Clinton’s relationship with Netanyahu was tense over the Israeli leader’s settlement policy and Netanyahu’s courting of Clinton’s most virulent U.S. political enemies. The jokes would resonate the way Clinton’s farewell eulogy in 1995 for assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin would, Maor said. Clinton had said in Hebrew, “Shalom, Haver,” or “Farewell, Friend.”
Maor also noted that the traditional Hanukkah greeting is “Hag Urim Sameakh,” or “Happy festival of lights.”
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