PEN America, a nonprofit that promotes free expression through the advancement of literature, held its annual street action called ‘An Empty Chair’ outside the Russian consulate in New York City in support of journalists imprisoned for covering the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Evgeny Maslov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Michael Eckels
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Most Americans don’t have oysters on their Thanksgiving table, but, for a time, the mollusks were a key ingredient on the White House holiday menu. 

“Oyster stuffing and various oyster elements were always included, especially in the later 19th century. Oysters were very popular,” says Lina Mann, a historian with the White House Historical Association. “I think that the location of Washington, D.C., near the Chesapeake Bay, which was a huge oyster hub, made it more of a regional sort of thing, but that has died out over the years.” 

In addition to oysters, White House Thanksgiving meals have included other regional foods such as rockfish from the Potomac River, turtles from Maryland’s Eastern Shore and cranberries from Massachusetts.

Because the holiday is often a more private affair, the White House Thanksgiving menu is not set. Presidential families often spend the day away from the White House, either out of town at their own private homes or at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. 

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan spent Thanksgiving at his California ranch. The menu included turkey, cranberries, cornbread dressing, salad, mashed potatoes, monkey bread, string beans with almonds, and pumpkin pie topped with whipped cream. 

In 1996, President Bill Clinton enjoyed Thanksgiving with family and friends at Camp David, where they ate turkey; dressing with bread stuffing; giblet gravy; mashed potatoes; sweet potatoes; green beans; cranberry mold; a relish tray of pickles, celery, tomatoes, green onions, green and black olives, and carrots; fruit salad; cranberry salad; and pecan and pumpkin pies. 

In 2007, also at Camp David, President George W. Bush and family feasted on a meal that included turkey, jellied cranberry molds, whipped sweet potato soufflé and pumpkin mousse trifle. 

No matter where the commander in chief spends the holiday, turkey is usually on the menu and has been since the 1870s. 

“You have a man named Horace Vose, who is the quote, “poultry king of Rhode Island,” and he starts sending, in 1873, all of these turkeys to the White House,” Mann says. “He does that for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and he does it for 40 years until he dies in 1913. So, there is this kind of precedent of the public sending presidents various birds to their table.” 

But people haven’t always sent poultry. In 1926, President Calvin Coolidge received an unusual offering from a supporter in Mississippi. 

“They were sent a raccoon that was supposed to be served on his Thanksgiving table,” Mann says. “But the Coolidge family decided they didn’t want to eat the raccoon. So instead, they ended up making her a family pet. They named her Rebecca and then eventually Coolidge, for Christmas that year, got her a collar that said, ‘White House Raccoon’ on it.” 

What presidents eat for Thanksgiving can also depend on what is going on in the country. In 1917, during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson remained in Washington and focused on having a more economical Thanksgiving. 

“So, they’re eating cream of oyster soup with turkey trimmings and vegetables, pumpkin pie for the very simple menu,” Mann says. “First Lady Edith Wilson wanted to abide by various food conservation programs that were spearheaded at the time.” 

There were also more austere Thanksgivings during the Great Depression and World War II. In 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his family dined on “clam cocktail, clear soup, roast turkey with chestnut stuffing and cranberry sauce, Spanish corn, small sausages and beans, sweet potato cones, grapefruit salad, pumpkin pie and cheese, coffee, and ice cream.”

This year, President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are spending Thanksgiving on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, a family tradition since 1975. The first lady recently shared Thanksgiving recipes, including her grandmother’s savory stuffing featuring stale Italian bread, with the Food Network.

“Food is love — and gathering together this year for Thanksgiving is healing for our hearts,” Jill Biden said. “The family recipes passed down through the generations, the fun traditions that continue, and the meaningful blessings shared, all keep me filled with gratitude.”
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The challenges facing Iran’s tiny Jewish minority drew increased U.S. media scrutiny this month, as the chief rabbi in the Islamic Republic ended a five-week tour of U.S. Jewish communities by making rare public remarks about the situation of his community.

Yehuda Gerami presented a mixed picture of Jewish life in Iran as he spoke to American Jews at a Fairfax, Virginia, synagogue on November 14, highlighting positive trends for the community as well as challenges. Those remarks, and similar ones that he made in a U.S. magazine article published days earlier, drew skepticism from some Iranian American Jewish media commentators who noted that Iran’s Jews face tougher problems than what Gerami described.

Gerami’s Fairfax speaking event, organized by the Chabad Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish movement, was the only public dialogue during his appearances at multiple Jewish communities on the U.S. West and East coasts. After taking questions from attendees and responding in Hebrew, he departed the United States the next day to return to Tehran.

Iran’s Jews are among the smallest of its religious minorities. In his remarks, Gerami estimated the Jewish population at 20,000 and said its presence in Iran has lasted 2,700 years. But a U.S. State Department report published in May estimates only about 9,000 Jews in Iran, citing the Tehran Jewish Committee. They live in a country of 85 million people, 99% of whom are Muslims, according to a U.S. estimate.

Gerami said his community achieved some positive developments in recent years, like persuading Iranian authorities to let Jewish schools close on Saturdays for the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest, and renovating a Jewish ritual bath, or mikveh, in Tehran.

“Also, we now have about six kosher restaurants in Tehran, two in Shiraz and two in Isfahan, with a higher level of observance of Jewish dietary laws than before,” Gerami said. “And we opened a Jewish seminary in Tehran where dozens of young men learn to become rabbis and to conduct ritual animal slaughter. They then return to their cities to teach and spread holiness.”

But Gerami said his community also has been under financial pressures from Iran’s high inflation and weak economy that have affected Iranians as a whole.

‘No interest in politics’

Asked how he feels about Iran’s Islamist rulers engaging in low-level conflict with the Jewish state of Israel, where he studied in his youth, Gerami responded cautiously.

“We always keep in mind that we have no interest in politics. We are Jews who only want to learn the torah, or bible, and perform good deeds as a religious duty. But there are many times in which it is not easy to be a Jewish leader in Iran,” he said.

Some Iranian-American Jewish commentators told VOA they believe Gerami is under pressure from Iran’s authoritarian leaders not to criticize them for fighting Israel or discriminating against Jews. They said Gerami appears to be trying to avoid provoking Iranian authorities to take retaliatory measures against him and his community members.

In one example of the pressure facing Gerami, he told his audience why he paid a condolence visit to the home of top Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani days after the U.S. assassinated Soleimani in a Baghdad drone strike on January 3, 2020. The United States and Israel had labeled Soleimani a terrorist responsible for years of attacks on U.S. and Israeli targets and accused him of plotting more.

“We felt sensitivity, not from the government but from [Iranian] people. People were talking about revenge … and we felt that there could be, God forbid, a danger to the lives of Jews and the community [in Iran]. So for that reason, we had to go to [Soleimani’s] family and to be seen, and to say that we don’t agree with what [the Americans] did and that we weren’t satisfied,” he said.

Months later, one of Iran’s holiest Jewish sites, the Tomb of Esther and Mordechai in Hamedan, suffered an apparent antisemitic arson attack. There has been no word of any prosecution for the May 14, 2020, incident, which caused minor damage to the site.

Judaism is one of three minority religions that Iran’s Islamist constitution allows to be practiced in the country. The other two are Christianity and Zoroastrianism.

But Iran’s Jews and other recognized minorities are barred by law from serving in the judiciary and security services. They also cannot hold authority over Muslims in the armed forces.

When Jews and other recognized minorities seek “blood money” as restitution for various crimes, Iranian law reduces the value of that blood money to half of what a Muslim is entitled to.

Punishment for visiting Israel

The Iranian legal system also threatens Jews with prison for visiting Israel, a country that Iran’s rulers repeatedly have said should be destroyed.

Such calls were a factor in the U.S. declaring Iran to be the world’s top state sponsor of antisemitism last year, said former U.S. Deputy Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism Ellie Cohanim.

“It’s not only about their genocidal desire to ‘eliminate’ Israel, to quote the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself, but also because they deny that the Holocaust ever took place. They go so far as to host Holocaust cartoon competitions, if one could imagine something so vile,” said Cohanim, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy who wrote about Gerami’s U.S. visit in Newsweek.

She said a third reason for labeling Iran as a top state sponsor of antisemitism was its ongoing funding and training of U.S.-designated terrorist groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, accused of carrying out attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets around the world in recent decades.

Iran had about 85,000 Jews at the time of its 1979 Islamic Revolution, according to Encyclopedia Iranica. Most fled the pressures of Islamist rule by emigrating in the decades that followed.

‘Sense of tolerance’

But thousands of Jews have chosen to remain. Most of Iran’s Muslims treat them well, said Karmel Melamed, an Iranian American journalist who wrote an op-ed about Gerami last week for U.S. news outlet Jewish News Syndicate.

“Iranians really don’t look at their countrymen as far as their religion [is concerned]. There’s a sense of tolerance, there’s a sense of respect of their neighbors, co-workers, friends,” he said.

Melamed said most Jews in Iran either feel financially secure enough to stay or are too poor and elderly to believe they would improve their lives by moving to another country.

But he said that choice comes with a price.

“Their thinking is: ‘This has been our home for years and years. We have familiar friends. We have familiar language. And we’re willing to put up with this regime. We’re willing to put up with the status of a third-class citizen,’” Melamed said.
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Tawanda Carter is a school librarian in New Orleans, Louisiana. She said preparing for the holidays has presented a unique set of challenges this year, a sentiment shared by millions of Americans.

“Food prices are higher, and a lot of items aren’t even in stock,” she said, as she gets ready to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family in Atlanta, Georgia. “We’ve been keeping an eye out for sales and also thinking about new dishes to make up for the traditional ones we might not be able to eat this year.”

Across the United States, prices on essentials such as groceries and gas are rising at a pace unseen in a generation. Experts say the cause is a mix of worker shortages, supply chain issues and stimulative economic policies enacted to support families and financial markets during the global pandemic. For many, however, the timing of the price increases couldn’t be worse as families prepare for their first holiday gatherings since the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine.

“The price of fresh produce has doubled,” said Maria Gallagher-Venable, co-owner of a pet-sitting business in a New Orleans suburb. “Meat prices are climbing every day, too. We’re trying to do all our Christmas shopping online to avoid shipping delays, but those prices are higher than usual, as well, and the cost of gasoline has already meant finances are tighter.”

“I went to the grocery store to buy a head of iceberg lettuce and it was $3.69!” said local restaurant owner Shane Finkelstein. “It’s usually a dollar. It costs more to cook at home than it used to. It costs more to eat at a restaurant than it used to. And I don’t think this is going to change. Restaurants need to charge more, or they’re going to go out of business. This is just how things are now.” ​

A worker shortage 

Gallagher-Venable thinks the worker shortage is largely the result of greedy companies unwilling to share profits with their workers.

“The minimum wage is a joke in this country, and people are tired of working like dogs just to stay in debt,” she said.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that as of last month, approximately 3 million fewer people in the U.S. were looking for work than in February 2020, the month before the pandemic began. While there’s no denying the economy faces a shortage of workers, the underlying cause is still under debate.

Megan Forman co-owns several bakeries in New Orleans. Labor shortages aren’t only being seen in the service industry, she said. A lack of workers throughout the supply chain is causing prices to fluctuate.

“When you don’t have enough employees, you can’t produce as much as you want,” she said. “And that’s not just at our bakery. When farmers can’t hire enough workers, they can’t plant and harvest enough. When trucking companies can’t hire enough drivers, they can’t ship as much.”

Economists have said that after accruing savings throughout the pandemic, Americans are eager to purchase goods and services again. Many businesses, however, have been unable to match the demand.

“Thanksgiving is one of the biggest holidays of the year for bakeries, and we’re returning to pre-pandemic sales,” Forman said. “But the ability for us to get the ingredients and supplies we need — it’s like the Wild West. So unpredictable.”

So, too, are the prices of those ingredients and supplies. Forman said these days one seller will offer eggs at $30 per case, while another has the same eggs priced at $17. The next day, she said, things can swing drastically.

“We need paper cups for our coffee, but they’re so difficult to find, or expensive when we do find them,” she said. “Everything is like that now. There’s high demand and not enough supply, so we’re getting charged more for what we need to run our bakery.” 

Getting lean 

For a while, Forman said she attempted to absorb the costs rather than passing them on to her customers. That couldn’t last, however.

“It got more expensive to purchase ingredients. It got more expensive to hire staff. And so, eventually, we need to raise the prices of what we sell, or we’re going to go out of business.”

In addition to raising prices, many business owners are reconsidering their business models and seeking ways to become more efficient. Forman, for example, said she’s begun training employees to do both “front of house” work, such as serving customers, as well as “back of house” work, such as food preparation and dishwashing. She’s also finding ways to operate at capacity with fewer staff members by, for example, making breakfast sandwiches ahead instead of offering them made-to-order.

“I think it’s forcing a lot of small companies to become better businesses,” said Grant Estrade, co-owner of a gardening supply shop and farm outside New Orleans. Estrade said that without a regular supply of employees, business leaders must evaluate what is the most profitable thing to pursue with the limited resources they have.

That, he said, can make a company leaner and more efficient. Estrade said he’s dropped parts of his business he can’t do right now and instead sought partnerships with other small businesses to do some of that work.

“If we make great soil but we don’t have the staff to deliver it, I can pay another small business to deliver it for us,” he said. “It’s economical. Maybe that’s what we should have been doing all along.”

A new way

It’s not just businesses that are reconsidering how they operate in a changing economy. Individual Americans are also looking to adapt as the cost of the holidays rises.

Rebecca Urrutia is a mother of four young children in Tolland, Connecticut. As she looks ahead to holiday gift shopping, she’s certain product shortages, shipping delays and increased prices mean the status quo will no longer work for her family.

“Our holiday shopping looks a little different this year,” she said. “We’ve decided to scale back and to shop at local bazaars, thrift shops and community share sites instead of buying brand new items for all of our shopping.”

Urrutia sees it as a silver lining that she hopes other Americans will embrace this season, she said.

“I think, after the pandemic, many of us are choosing to live more simply and to be grateful for what we have.”

Tawanda Carter, the school librarian in New Orleans, said she’s seeing something similar in her friend circle.

“A lot of us are reevaluating what we need versus what we want in life,” Carter said. The rising cost of gasoline, she said, has her thinking more about climate change and her own health. She decided to purchase a bicycle and use it for many of her daily trips. She’s living more like she imagined her great-grandmother and grandmother might have lived, she said.

“They told me their adage was ‘use it up, wear it out or make do,'” Carter said. “And our generation always talks about ‘reduce, reuse and recycle.’ I’m trying to use the current situation as an opportunity to live by a combination of both sayings.” 
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