Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, was forced to leave the Seder table on the night of Passover in the middle of one of his favorite songs to answer an urgent call from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
The Forward published a new excerpt from Kushner's new book, “Breaking History: A White House Memoir,” which will be released tomorrow, revealing new details of the efforts that led to the signing of the Abraham Accords, the peace and normalizations between Israel and four Arab nations in August 2020.
The Passover Seder was the first meal Kushner had enjoyed with his entire family in several weeks, he wrote, saying that he "savored" every moment until global politics interrupted.
“As we sang my favorite Passover song, ‘Vehi Sheamda,’ a prayer about God’s promise to deliver each generation of the Jewish people from their oppressors, the familiar sound of my phone broke the serenity: it was MBS, and I had to take it,” Kushner said in the book. “Ivanka nodded knowingly, of course, but I couldn’t help but notice the kids’ disappointed faces as I walked out of the room.”
The book also revealed that then-White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly refused to allow him or Trump's Middle East envoy into the discussions on whether to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem specifically because they were Orthodox Jews.
Kushner also related how he convinced Trump not to cancel a speech to AIPAC in 2016 after Trump learned that leaders of the American Reform Movement would be protesting his speech. Kushner told the then-candidate Trump that cancelling the speech at that time would have been a show of weakness.