Yehuda Kaploun, a rabbi and the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism at the State Department, told JNS that he hosted a “familial” Shabbat dinner on Feb. 20 at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington for ambassadors, senior administration officials and Jewish community leaders.
U.S. President Donald Trump refers to the institute, an independent organization that Congress created in 1984 and which is located near the Lincoln Memorial, as the “Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.”
The dinner was timed to come just after the inaugural meeting, at the institute, of the Board of Peace, which Trump has said will govern Gaza’s future.
“After Thursday’s historic meeting of the Board of Peace, I can’t think of a better place to celebrate dialogue and friendship for Jews, Muslims, Christians and people of all faiths,” Kaploun told JNS.
The Shabbat dinner was set up with long, connected tables. Outside caterers were enlisted, and attendees were given yarmulkes and Hebrew and English booklets that outlined “a history of what Shabbat is, what the customs are and why Shabbat is uniquely special,” Kaploun told JNS.
“It has an impact when people understand why you do something,” he said.
Some 100 people attended the event, about 90 of whom were an equal number of ambassadors and Trump administration officials, according to Kaploun.
Israeli-American philanthropist Miriam Adelson attended as did Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism, and officials from the State Department, White House counterterror team, National Security Council and National Security Agency and attorneys from the White House counsel’s office.
Unlike a typical diplomatic reception, the evening had an intimate tone, according to Kaploun. “It wasn’t a diplomatic cocktail hour,” he told JNS. “It was familial.”
The atmosphere, he thinks, helped shape candid conversations about combating Jew-hatred and advancing understanding.
“There were moments within the dinner where people expressed a new resolve to lead in fighting antisemitism,” he said. “When you sit and you begin to understand each other’s traditions, you can have cordial conversations. It’s not foreign to you.”
“Shabbat now is not foreign to 40 different ambassadors, who may have never experienced a Shabbat dinner before,” he added.
Hosting an Orthodox Shabbat dinner helped educate attendees, especially envoys from other countries, about Jewish security concerns like “people not carrying their phones,” Kaploun said. “People aren’t using their cars.”
“When you have countries that are dealing with high levels of antisemitism, it is important for those people to realize the issues and the concerns of the Jewish community,” he told JNS. “They’re now much more knowledgeable.”
Since the dinner took place during Ramadan, there was a Middle Eastern dessert table “in honor of iftar,” the evening meal that breaks the fast for Muslims, Kaploun said.
The “Shabbat with the ambassador to combat antisemitism” will be a repeated event, according to Kaploun. “We have very good plans on where we want to use it—not just within America.”
He hopes the educational event will accomplish the same thing that the Board of Peace does.
“My hope is that Hamas will disarm and allow the ability for people to do the work that the president would like to see done that would provide prosperity and an educational process that teaches people not to hate,” he said.
Trump and Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state, have “made it very clear that their goals are to have an effective peace, not a peace in theory,” Kaploun told JNS. He added that there are “practical measures, practical items, things that have to get done,” and that there ought to be “interfaith dialogue of lowering the rhetoric of hate.”
The rabbi and special envoy wouldn’t share details of diplomatic conversations that took place at the Shabbat meal, but he told JNS that the event had the tone of “quiet diplomacy” that the State Department sets.
“To have people from Azerbaijan and Armenia, and Oman, Lebanon and Qatar and Emirates and Saudi and Jordan,” Kaploun said, “You had a cross section of France, Italy. Everybody felt very, very positive that there is room for growth to be able to work together for the cause of peace.”
“I think that’s probably the biggest message of the Shabbat,” he said. “That we have a chance to make a difference under this president, and it would be foolhardy for everybody not to take the opportunity to work together for a common goal of peace.”
“A meaningful peace,” he added. “Not a peace in theory. A practical peace.”
