Beam of Light: The Story of the First White House Menorah

This beautiful and meaningful children’s book tells an impressive story revolving around Hanukkah, a menorah, the Holocaust, and the White House — both the literal White House and figurative presidency that resides within. Further, it is told by the narrator — one of the original timber beams from the White House, salvaged when the building was renovated during Harry Truman’s presidency, between 1948 and 1952. The beam explains the need for the refurbishment in literal and symbolic terms.

Literally, the building was crumbling during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, immediately prior to Truman’s. Symbolically, the presidency’s legitimacy was crumbling due to FDR’s refusal to receive a delegation of rabbis in 1943, who were protesting what would come to be known as the Holocaust. (Historians seem to agree that the president didn’t receive the only formal protest at the Capitol during the Holocaust because the president’s advisors feared the group wasn’t “American” enough to acknowledge that the Nazi extermination of Jews across Europe was a bad thing.)

As the weight of the building, and this offense before God and man, is what the beam suggests is causing the White House to fall apart (e.g., a piano leg fell through the floor, protruding through the dining room’s ceiling). The strong beam is stored in a warehouse for seventy years, it explains, until President Biden has the beam retrieved and made into the White House’s first official menorah in 2022. The book is very well written, tying these thematically related and meaningful elements into a compelling narrative.

The illustrations are very fine, engaging, and the book itself is top-notch. While the story does not dive into political issues beyond those mentioned above, while we all continue to be concerned about rot within the White House, which has in turn led to heightened persecution of Jewish people, this is a wonderful story book, and a memorable one, for children of all ages. It is an important book; I cannot recommend it more.