But at its core, the speech was a plea for understanding that his criticisms of Israel’s government stem from his belief that the country must live up to “the type of nation that it was intended to be in its earliest founding.”
“It’s precisely because, yes, I have high expectations for Israel — the same way I have high expectations for the United States of America — that I feel a responsibility to speak out honestly about what I think will lead to long-term security and to the preservation of a true democracy in the Jewish homeland,” he said.
In the same way that Mr. Obama has framed American exceptionalism as the nation’s ability to recognize its own failings and correct them, the president framed Israel’s identity as a struggle across millennia to provide a haven where “everybody has a place, everybody has rights, everybody is a child of God.”
In the run-up to Friday’s speech — which marked Jewish American Heritage Month, a national commemoration aimed at educating the public about the role that Jews have played over the course of U.S. history — several of the president’s allies had urged him to forge a more emotional connection with advocates uneasy about his overtures to Iran and his recent criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sporting a yarmulke — the skullcap that Jewish men wear as a sign of respect for God in temple — the president began by joking about being “an honorary member of the tribe,” but later spoke seriously about the formative influence that Judaism had on him as a young man focused on achieving social justice.
He said he looked upon Israeli leaders Moshe Dayan and Golda Meier with admiration: “The notion of pioneers who set out not only to safeguard a nation, but to remake the world, . . . and those values, in many ways, came to be my own values,” he said.
Speaking from the bema, a platform from which religious services are conducted in synagogues, he added: “They believed the story of their people gave them a unique perspective among the nations of the world, a unique moral authority and responsibility that comes from having once been a stranger yourself.”
Mr. Obama defended his push for a two-state solution as a way of honoring that legacy, even as he acknowledged that “the Palestinians are not the easiest of partners” in the peace process, prompting laughter from the nearly 1,200-person audience.
“I want to be clear that, to me, all these things are connected. The rights I insist upon and now fight for, for all people here in the United States, compels me then to stand up for Israel and look out for the rights of the Jewish people,” he said. “And the rights of the Jewish people then compel me to think about a Palestinian child in Ramallah that feels trapped without opportunity. That’s what Jewish values teach me.”
The president received a warm reception at the event, which had the feeling of a group gathered at synagogue for a teenager’s coming-of-age ceremony. In the hours before the president spoke, attendees chatted excitedly, until a Jewish a capella group from the University of Maryland, Rak Shalom, began performing on the bema.
But the event — which also marked the first Solidarity Sabbath, an effort by the leaders of European and North American countries to confront rising anti-Semitism — had a graver side as well. Half a dozen ambassadors from countries including Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Sweden and Spain attended the speech.
Katrina Lantos Swett, president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, the group that created Solidarity Sabbath, said 16 governments had agreed to observe the occasion, given open acts of anti-Semitism such as this year’s attack on a kosher market in Paris and a Jewish student at the University of California in Los Angeles being questioned about whether she could be an impartial member of student government because of her affiliation with Jewish groups on campus.
Mr. Obama met privately before his speech with that UCLA student, Rachel Beyda, along with several national Jewish leaders in the synagogue’s beit midrash — a small chapel and study center. Ms. Beyda said in an interview that Mr. Obama “didn’t bring up the issues that I’ve had” on campus, but she “appreciated” the fact that he spoke out against anti-Semitism during the course of his speech.
There is no question that the president’s remarks connected with more progressive members of the nation’s Jewish community, who have consistently backed the administration’s policies. Rabbi Gil Steinlauf of Adas Israel introduced Mr. Obama in glowing terms, calling him a “champion of freedom and justice . . . and a great friend of the Jewish people.”
But it is unclear how much the president can change the minds of more conservative American Jews, or of those in Israel. The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, was invited but did not attend; embassy spokesman Aaron Sagui said he was “out of Washington on a previously scheduled trip” and could not return in time to make it for the speech.
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