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A Military Downgrading of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

A Military Downgrading of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — Two distinct messages could be heard after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced new measures on Thursday to make it more difficult for the military to discharge openly gay men and lesbians.

Political activists who support President Obama’s call for Congress to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy heard of the interim steps and offered full support — even though they criticized the administration as having taken too long.

Military personnel, in particular members of the officer corps, heard that they face reprimand or worse if they go outside the official Pentagon review of “don’t ask, don’t tell” to publicly advocate maintaining the policy.

Both Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, criticized a three-star general in command of Army forces in the Pacific for urging those who support the ban to write their elected officials and lobby their unit’s leaders.

“If those of us who are in favor of retaining the current policy do not speak up, there is no chance to retain the current policy,” the commander, Lt. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon, wrote in a letter published March 8 in Stars and Stripes.

Mr. Gates made his frustration clear. “I think that for an active-duty officer to comment on an issue like this is inappropriate,” he said at a news conference.

Mr. Gates and Admiral Mullen have said that all service members who wish to express an opinion on the ban will have an opportunity through channels during the Pentagon review. Admiral Mullen said he had spoken with the Army chief of staff about General Mixon’s letter.

The developments that played out at the Pentagon, across the military and among gay rights groups served as more evidence of the deep disagreements over the current policy, adopted in 1993, which allows gay men and lesbians to serve in the military if they keep their sexual orientation a secret. Only Congress can repeal the law, a step Mr. Obama is urging.

The Pentagon study, expected by the end of the year, will assess the views of service members, families and other relevant groups on how lifting the ban should be carried out. Mr. Gates said the study was not to determine whether to repeal the law, only how best to institute any repeal voted by Congress. “Doing it hastily is very risky,” Mr. Gates said.

The four armed services chiefs — representing the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force — have testified that they remain concerned about moving too swiftly to lift the ban, saying it could make it harder for their forces to do their jobs while fighting two wars.

The interim measures take effect immediately, Mr. Gates said, and will ensure that the current policy is carried out in “a fairer and more appropriate manner,” and in a way based on “common sense and common decency.”

The new rules require that only an officer with the rank of at least a one-star general or admiral can initiate a fact-finding inquiry or other proceeding, or order any discharge under “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The guidelines raise the standard for evidence, an effort to prevent “malicious outing” by a third party or a jilted partner. Information provided by a third party must be given under oath.

Also prohibited would be information provided to lawyers, clergy members or psychotherapists, as well as to doctors involved in the person’s medical treatment or gathered in a security clearance investigation, in accordance with current policies.

“This looks like a good step forward on the administration’s promise to end discrimination against gays in the military,” said Richard Socarides, a lawyer who served as the Clinton administration’s special assistant for gay rights issues. “My only question is, What took them so long?”

Any open cases now must be reviewed under the new guidelines. Jeh C. Johnson, the Defense Department general counsel, told reporters that 428 service members were separated from duty last year under the law. He declined to predict how many cases under review might be thrown out under the new guidelines.

Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an advocacy organization, said, “The regulatory changes announced today are another major step forward in making the 1993 ban less draconian.” The repeal of the ban, he said, appears “inevitable.”

In Subway Ads on Abortion, a Pretense of Neutrality

In Subway Ads on Abortion, a Pretense of Neutrality
By SUSAN DOMINUS

The woman in the ad is young and has a short, hip haircut, the kind you see all over the East Village. Her solemn face is half in shadow. “I thought life would be the way it was before,” the copy reads. And then: “Abortion changes you.”

The campaign, which has run in New York subways for the past month, makes a sweeping claim, but as anti-abortion strategies go, it is relatively oblique — a far cry from a brick in the window or a death threat to a member of Congress. A young woman pondering a difficult choice might check out the Web site abortionchangesyou.com, highlighted on the ad, which would lead her to the personal narrative of a woman troubled by her own abortion.

“We feel it’s really important for women and their families to have a safe place to experience their own range of emotions, apart from the controversy and debate,” said Michaelene Fredenburg, the source of that narrative and the founder of the Web site.

Especially since the recent abortion-fueled fight over the health care bill, we could use some more safe places to experience our own range of emotions apart from the controversy and debate. The numerous grim testimonials on the site, though, represent a somewhat limited range of perspectives —from depressed to tormented by guilt. It seems patently against women having abortions. So why not say so?

In its purported neutrality, the site, along with Ms. Fredenburg’s insistent representation of it as an apolitical “safe space,” undermines recent efforts by the poles of this most polarizing issue to find common ground.

To their credit, some who support abortion rights have, in recent years, allowed for more honest discussions about the range of emotions that can accompany terminating a pregnancy. Exhale, a postabortion hotline based in San Francisco, states on its Web site that for women who have had abortions, feelings of “happiness, sadness, empowerment, anxiety, relief or guilt are common.” It is also states that of the five founders, most support abortion rights and some have had abortions.

“To acknowledge that some people will feel remorse or shame but that it’s also all right not to — that’s what our movement has to do much better,” said Kelli Conlin, president of Naral Pro-Choice New York. That kind of conversation is a crack in the armor of abortion rights advocates that is long overdue, and Web sites like Ms. Fredenburg’s make evident why such advocates have long been wary of having it.

Nowhere on the site does abortionchangesyou.com mention an anti-abortion agenda. But when I clicked the “Find Help” button and typed in a Manhattan ZIP code, the first thing that popped up was Project Rachel, an initiative of the Roman Catholic Church to “present the truth of the impact and extensive damage abortion inflicts on the mother, father, extended family and society.”

So much for no judgment.

Ms. Fredenburg, who has collaborated with Feminists for Life, a group with an anti-abortion legislative platform, declined to name her financial backers. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, however, said the ad had been bought by the Vitae Caring Foundation, which seeks, according to its Web site, to “reduce the number of abortions by using mass media education.” Ms. Fredenburg said the group merely handled logistics of the purchase.

Someone seeking a safe space truly clear of the abortion debates might look, for a very different example, to the Doula Project, an organization based in New York that offers free emotional support and information both to women who want to continue with their pregnancies and to those who choose to undergo an abortion. Such a person might see progress in a consortium of abortion clinics that have started counseling women more fully about adoption options. She might be encouraged by the work of ProLife, ProObama, a group that aims to support social programs reducing the need for abortion, as opposed to pursuing a legislative agenda, which, its Web site says, “has intensified the division and partisanship around this issue, but has little effect at reducing the abortion rate itself.”

Cristina Page, who runs an online discussion for people seeking common ground in the abortion debate, said she found the abortionchangesyou.com campaign all the more disturbing for Ms. Fredenburg’s pretense of not taking sides. “What better way to destroy common ground than to make it meaningless?” she said.

Ms. Fredenburg claims the merely intends to help women who are suffering emotionally as a result of an abortion. But a site that seems to convince women that there’s only one appropriate emotional response, exquisite pain, is troubling — especially when its founder claims to be creating a judgment-free space.

An “Abortion Changed Me” campaign — that might be therapeutic. But “Abortion Changes You” — that sounds like propaganda masquerading as therapy.

Playtime Is Over

Playtime Is Over
By DAVID ELKIND

Medford, Mass.

RECESS is no longer child’s play. Schools around the country, concerned about bullying and arguments over the use of the equipment, are increasingly hiring “recess coaches” to oversee students’ free time. Playworks, a nonprofit training company that has placed coaches at 170 schools from Boston to Los Angeles, is now expanding thanks to an $18 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Critics have suggested that such coaching is yet another example of the over-scheduling and over-programming of our children. And, as someone whose scholarly work has consistently reinforced the idea that young people need unstructured imagination time, I’d probably have been opposed to recess coaches in the past. But childhood has changed so radically in recent years that I think the trend makes sense, at least at some schools and with some students.

Children today are growing up in a world vastly different from the one their parents knew. As the writer Richard Louv has persuasively chronicled, our young people are more aware of threats to the global environment than they are of the natural world in their own backyards.

A Nielsen study last year found that children aged 6 to 11 spent more than 28 hours a week using computers, cellphones, televisions and other electronic devices. A University of Michigan study found that from 1979 to 1999, children on the whole lost 12 hours of free time a week, including eight hours of unstructured play and outdoor activities. One can only assume that the figure has increased over the last decade, as many schools have eliminated recess in favor of more time for academics.

One consequence of these changes is the disappearance of what child-development experts call “the culture of childhood.” This culture, which is to be found all over the world, was best documented in its English-language form by the British folklorists Peter and Iona Opie in the 1950s. They cataloged the songs, riddles, jibes and incantations (“step on a crack, break your mother’s back”) that were passed on by oral tradition. Games like marbles, hopscotch and hide and seek date back hundreds of years. The children of each generation adapted these games to their own circumstances.

Yet this culture has disappeared almost overnight, and not just in America. For example, in the 1970s a Japanese photographer, Keiki Haginoya, undertook what was to be a lifelong project to compile a photo documentary of children’s play on the streets of Tokyo. He gave up the project in 1996, noting that the spontaneous play and laughter that once filled the city’s streets, alleys and vacant lots had utterly vanished.

For children in past eras, participating in the culture of childhood was a socializing process. They learned to settle their own quarrels, to make and break their own rules, and to respect the rights of others. They learned that friends could be mean as well as kind, and that life was not always fair.

Now that most children no longer participate in this free-form experience — play dates arranged by parents are no substitute — their peer socialization has suffered. One tangible result of this lack of socialization is the increase in bullying, teasing and discrimination that we see in all too many of our schools.

Bullying has always been with us, but it did not become prevalent enough to catch the attention of researchers until the 1970s, just as TV and then computers were moving childhood indoors. It is now recognized as a serious problem in all the advanced countries. The National Education Association estimates that in the United States, 160,000 children miss school every day because they fear attacks or intimidation by other students. Massachusetts is considering anti-bullying legislation.

While correlation is not necessarily causation, it seems clear that there is a link among the rise of television and computer games, the decline in peer-to-peer socialization and the increase of bullying in our schools. I am not a Luddite — I think that the way in which computers have made our students much more aware of the everyday lives of children in other countries is wonderful, and that they will revolutionize education as the new, tech-savvy generation of teachers moves into the schools. But we should also recognize what is being lost.

We have to adapt to childhood as it is today, not as we knew it or would like it to be. The question isn’t whether recess coaches are good or bad — they seem to be with us to stay — but whether they help students form the age-old bonds of childhood. To the extent that the coaches focus on play, give children freedom of choice about what they want to do, and stay out of the way as much as possible, they are likely a good influence.

In any case, recess coaching is a vastly better solution than eliminating recess in favor of more academics. Not only does recess aid personal development, but studies have found that children who are most physically fit tend to score highest on tests of reading, math and science.

Friedrich Fröbel, the inventor of kindergarten, said that children need to “learn the language of things” before they learn the language of words. Today we might paraphrase that axiom to say that children need to learn the real social world before they learn the virtual one.

Playground’s Jail Theme Is Gone, but Perplexity Lingers

Playground’s Jail Theme Is Gone, but Perplexity Lingers
By ELISSA GOOTMAN and CARA BUCKLEY

Building a playground is not as simple as installing a set of vertigo-inspiring monkey bars: These days, the world of playground design is rife with debate over how high the slides should be, whether the equipment should be brightly colored (kids say yes) or blend in with the environment, and whether themes like castles and rocket ships stimulate or stifle the imagination.

But those who think about playgrounds for a living, as scholars, manufacturers and children’s advocates, were united in their bafflement on Thursday over a playground at a Brooklyn housing project featuring a pretend jail with bars and a cell door.

“In my 14 years’ experience on thousands of playgrounds, I actually have never seen one,” said Darell Hammond, the founder and chief executive of Kaboom, a nonprofit group that has created more than 1,700 playgrounds in poor neighborhoods. “So the good news is, I don’t think it’s a major problem.”

On Wednesday, three days after a photograph and article criticizing the jail jungle gym were published on the Web site Black and Brown News, the New York City Housing Authority began removing the “jail” sign and the bars, on a playground at the Tompkins Houses development in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

On Thursday, the authority was at a loss to explain how the decision to order the play set was made: Sheila Stainback, a housing authority spokeswoman, said the agency was still looking to see if it had written accounts of the decision. She said such decisions typically involve tenant contributions and approval.

The authority had earlier believed that there was a second jail play set elsewhere on its properties, but late Wednesday, officials said they believed that the Tompkins set was the only one. Ms. Stainback said no complaints about the set were recorded before this week, though the playground was built in March 2004.

On Thursday, Landscape Structures, the Minnesota company that the authority said produced the equipment, declined to comment when asked whether versions of that particular play set had been sold elsewhere. “We don’t give out information about every product we have everywhere,” a spokesman said.

A statement from Lynn Pinoniemi, the company’s director of public relations, said it provided “a broad range of products to provide for a wide variety of customer needs and choices.”

Representatives of four major playground equipment companies said they did not offer jail-themed equipment, and two suggested that the Tompkins Houses set had been custom-ordered.

Tom Norquist, the senior vice president for marketing and innovation at GameTime, a playground equipment company based in Alabama, said that in his 27 years in the business, he could not recall ever seeing the word “jail” on a piece of equipment. “I suspect this was probably, from what I saw, a custom panel that was made,” he said. “I’m not aware of it being a standard panel.”

Mr. Norquist said he was “disappointed that someone would put the word on a play panel.”

“To a child, that could be a treehouse, so why not let it be that for the child?” he added.

So what would Mr. Norquist do if a client were to request a jail panel? “I’d say, ‘What are you trying to do?’ ” he said. “Help me understand what you’re trying to accomplish here, because our company believes in promoting the physical, the emotional, the cognitive and the social skills of children.”

Mike Sutton, the director of sales at the Miracle Recreation Equipment Company in Missouri, said his company offered more than 100 playground panels. “We offer castles, Old West themes, we offer a treehouse or a forest-type theme, we’ve done pirate ships or sailing ships, we’ve done lighthouses,” he said. “We do not offer any kind of jail.”

Mr. Hammond, of Kaboom, said: “We should be having space playgrounds, so they dream of being an astronaut. You know the game Operation? Imagine how many people played that, then wanted to be a nurse or doctor.”

But Susan G. Solomon, who wrote the book “American Playgrounds,” argued against even seemingly innocuous equipment like boats, cars and trucks, saying, “Abstraction encourages much more creativity.”

“I’m less offended by the idea of the jail than I am by the idea that it’s yet another piece of equipment that tells a kid what they should play,” she said. “A jail may be sort of extreme, but it’s really I think representative of the fact that too often, the playground manufacturers and the people who are commissioning them are thinking too literally, and they’re not looking at how much abstraction really benefits kids.”

Roger Hart, a director of the Children’s Environments Research Group at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, was so incredulous that he wondered whether the company had really produced the equipment. “It couldn’t be some artist’s gig, as a way of making a story?” he asked. “Some kind of political theater, as a way of raising an issue?”

Dr. Hart called the set “ridiculous,” saying that even if children wanted to play cops and robbers, they would not need their equipment labeled. “Three- to 7-year-olds are much more sophisticated than any adult improv theater group,” he said.

At the playground on Thursday, the offending play set was empty of children, the “jail” sign covered in red paint.

Carmen Maldonado, 24, who lives in the Tompkins Houses, said she often took her two children, Destiny Garcia, 5, and Christopher Garcia, 3, to other jungle gyms, lest they think jail was something to aspire to.

But Destiny said she liked the fake jail: It reminds her of her father, who, Ms. Maldonado said, was in jail for gun possession. Shaqueena Howard, 16, reminisced about pretending to be a police officer — years before the jail set was installed. “We were young,” she said. “We thought anything was fun.”

Legal-Marijuana Advocates Focus on a New Green

Legal-Marijuana Advocates Focus on a New Green
By JESSE McKINLEY

SAN FRANCISCO — Perhaps only in California could a group of marijuana smokers call themselves fiscal realists.

And yet, faced with a $20 billion deficit, strained state services and regular legislative paralysis, voters in California are now set to consider a single-word solution to help ease some of the state’s money troubles: legalize.

On Wednesday, the California secretary of state certified a November vote on a ballot measure that would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana, a plan that advocates say could raise $1.4 billion and save precious law enforcement and prison resources.

Indeed, unlike previous efforts at legalization — including a failed 1972 measure in California — the 2010 campaign will not dwell on assertions of marijuana’s harmlessness or its social acceptance, but rather on cold cash.

“We need the tax money,” said Richard Lee, founder of Oaksterdam University, a trade school for marijuana growers, in Oakland, who backed the ballot measure’s successful petition drive. “Second, we need the tax savings on police and law enforcement, and have that law enforcement directed towards real crime.”

Supporters are hoping to raise $10 million to $20 million for the campaign, primarily on the Internet, with national groups planning to urge marijuana fans to contribute $4.20 at a time, a nod to 420, a popular shorthand for the drug.

The law would permit licensed retailers to sell up to one ounce at a time. Those sales would be a new source of sales tax revenue for the state.

Opponents, however, scoff at the notion that legalizing marijuana could somehow help with the state’s woes. They tick off a list of social ills — including tardiness and absenteeism in the workplace — that such an act would contribute to.

“We just don’t think any good is going to come from this,” said John Standish, president of the California Peace Officers Association, whose 3,800 members include police chiefs and sheriffs. “It’s not going to better society. It’s going to denigrate it.”

The question of legalization, which a 2009 Field Poll showed 56 percent of Californians supporting, will undoubtedly color the state race for governor. The two major Republican candidates — the former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman and the insurance commissioner, Steve Poizner — have said they oppose the bill.

Jerry Brown, the Democratic attorney general who is also running for governor, opposes the idea as well, saying it violates federal law.

And while the Obama administration has signaled that it will tolerate medical marijuana users who abide the law in the 14 states where it is legal, a law authorizing personal use would conflict with federal law.

Supporters of the bill say the proposal’s language would allow cities or local governments to opt out, likely creating “dry counties” in some parts of the state. The proposed law would allow only those over 21 to buy, and would ban smoking marijuana in public or around minors.

Stephen Gutwillig, the California state director for the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based group that plans to raise money in favor of the measure, said he expected “a conservative implementation,” if passed.

“I think most local jurisdictions are not going to authorize sales,” Mr. Gutwillig said.

Local opt-out provisions are part of a strategy to allay people’s fears about adding another legal vice and to help capture a group considered key to passing the bill: non-pot-smoking swing voters.

“There’s going to be a large sector of the electorate that would never do this themselves that’s going to sort out what the harm would be versus what the supposed good would be,” said Frank Schubert, a longtime California political strategist who opposes the bill. “That’s where the election is going to be won.”

But Dan Newman, a San Francisco-based strategist for the ballot measure, said he expected broad, bipartisan support for the bill, especially among those Californians worried about the recession.

“Voters’ No. 1 concern right now is the budget and the economy,” Mr. Newman said, “which makes them look particularly favorable at something that will bring in more than $1 billion a year.” Opponents, however, question that figure — which is based on a 2009 report from the Board of Equalization, which oversees taxes in the state — and argue that whatever income is brought in will be spent dealing with more marijuana-related crimes.

Mr. Standish said: “We have a hard enough time now with drunk drivers on the road. This is just going to add to the problems.”

He added: “I cannot think of one crime scene I’ve been to where people said, ‘Thank God the person was just under the influence of marijuana.’ ”

Advocates of the measure plan to counter what is expected to be a strong law enforcement opposition with advertisements like one scheduled to be broadcast on radio in San Francisco and Los Angeles starting on Monday. The advertisements will feature a former deputy sheriff saying the war on marijuana has failed.

“It’s time to control it,” he concludes, “and tax it.”

Not everyone in the community is supportive. Don Duncan, a co-founder of Americans for Safe Access, which lobbies for medical marijuana, said he had reservations about the prospect of casual users joining the ranks of those with prescriptions.

“The taxation and regulation of cannabis at the local or state level may or may not improve conditions for medical cannabis patients,” Mr. Duncan said in an e-mail message. He added that issues like “police harassment and the price and quality of medicine might arise if legalization for recreational users occurs.”

Still, the idea of legal marijuana does not seem too far-fetched to people like Shelley Kutilek, a San Francisco resident, loyal church employee and registered California voter, who said she would vote “yes” in November.

“It’s no worse than alcohol,” said Ms. Kutilek, 30, an administrator at Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco. “Drunk people get really belligerent. I don’t know anybody who gets belligerent on marijuana. They just get chill.”

The Obama Seder Tradition

The Obama Seder Tradition
By JODI KANTOR

WASHINGTON — One evening in April 2008, three low-level staff members from the Obama presidential campaign — a baggage handler, a videographer and an advance man — gathered in the windowless basement of a Pennsylvania hotel for an improvised Passover Seder.

The day had been long, the hour was late, and the young men had not been home in months. So they had cadged some matzo and Manischewitz wine, hoping to create some semblance of the holiday.

Suddenly they heard a familiar voice. “Hey, is this the Seder?” Barack Obama asked, entering the room.

So begins the story of the Obama Seder, now one of the newest, most intimate and least likely of White House traditions. When Passover begins at sunset on Monday evening, Mr. Obama and about 20 others will gather for a ritual that neither the rabbinic sages nor the founding fathers would recognize.

In the Old Family Dining Room, under sparkling chandeliers and portraits of former first ladies, the mostly Jewish and African-American guests will recite prayers and retell the biblical story of slavery and liberation, ending with the traditional declaration “Next year in Jerusalem.” (Never mind the current chill in the administration’s relationship with Israel.)

Top aides like David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett will attend, but so will assistants like 24-year-old Herbie Ziskend. White House chefs will prepare Jewish participants’ family recipes, even rendering chicken fat — better known as schmaltz — for just the right matzo ball flavor.

If last year is any guide, Malia and Sasha Obama will take on the duties of Jewish children, asking four questions about the night’s purpose — along with a few of their own — and scrambling to find matzo hidden in the gleaming antique furniture.

That event was the first presidential Seder, and also probably “the first time in history that gefilte fish had been placed on White House dishware,” said Eric Lesser, the former baggage handler, who organizes each year’s ritual.

As in many Jewish households, the Obama Seder seems to take on new meaning each year, depending on what is happening in the world and in participants’ lives (for this group, the former is often the same as the latter).

The first one took place at the bleakest point of the campaign, the long prelude to the Pennsylvania primary, which was dominated by a furor over Mr. Obama’s former pastor. “We were in the desert, so to speak,” remembered Arun Chaudhary, then and now Mr. Obama’s videographer, who grew up attending Seders with his half-Jewish, half-Indian family.

No one led the proceedings; everyone took turns reading aloud. Mr. Obama had brought Reggie Love, his personal aide, Ms. Jarrett and Eric Whitaker, another close friend, all African-American. Jennifer Psaki, the traveling press secretary, and Samantha Tubman, a press assistant, filtered in. Neither had ever been to a Seder, but they knew the Exodus story, Ms. Psaki from Catholic school and Ms. Tubman from childhood Sundays at black churches.

Together they peppered the outnumbered Jews at the table with questions, which the young men sometimes struggled to answer. “We’re not exactly crack Hebrew scholars,” said Mr. Lesser, now an assistant to Mr. Axelrod.

Participants remember the evening as a rare moment of calm, an escape from the din of airplanes and rallies. As the tale of the Israelites unfolded, the campaign team half-jokingly identified with their plight — one day, they too would be free. At the close of the Seder, Mr. Obama added his own ending — “Next year in the White House!”

Indeed, the same group, with a few additions, has now made the Seder an Executive Mansion tradition. (No one ever considered inviting prominent rabbis or other Jewish leaders; it is a private event.)

But maintaining the original humble feel has been easier said than done.

Ms. Tubman and Desirée Rogers, then the White House social secretary, tried to plan an informal meal last year, with little or even no wait staff required. White House ushers reacted with what seemed like polite horror. The president and the first lady simply do not serve themselves, they explained. The two sides negotiated a compromise: the gefilte fish would be preplated, the brisket passed family-style.

Then came what is now remembered as the Macaroon Security Standoff. At 6:30, with the Seder about to start, Neil Cohen, the husband of Michelle Obama’s friend and adviser Susan Sher, was stuck at the gate bearing flourless cookies he had brought from Chicago. They were kosher for Passover, but not kosher with the Secret Service, which does not allow food into the building.

Offering to help, the president walked to the North Portico and peered out the door, startling tourists. He volunteered to go all the way to the gates, but advisers stopped him, fearing that would cause a ruckus. Everyone seemed momentarily befuddled. Could the commander in chief not summon a plate of cookies to his table? Finally, Mr. Love ran outside to clear them.

Mr. Obama began the Seder by invoking the universality of the holiday’s themes of struggle and liberation. Malia and Sasha quickly found the hidden matzo and tucked it away again, so cleverly that Mr. Ziskend, the former advance man, needed 45 minutes to locate it. At the Seder’s close, the group opened a door and sang to the prophet Elijah.

In preparation for this year’s gathering, Mr. Lesser and others have again been collecting recipes from the guests, including matzo ball instructions from Patricia Winter, the mother of Melissa Winter, Mrs. Obama’s deputy chief of staff.

“We like soft (not hard) matzo balls,” Mrs. Winter warned in a note to the White House chefs, instructing them to buy commercial mix but doctor it. Use three eggs, not two, she told them; substitute schmaltz for vegetable oil, and refrigerate them for a day before serving (but not in the soup).

The Seder originated with Jewish staff members on the campaign trail who could not go home, but now some celebrate at the White House by choice. Participants say their ties are practically familial by this point anyway. “Some of the most challenging experiences of our life we’ve shared together,” Ms. Jarrett said.

No one yet knows exactly what themes will emerge this year. Maybe “taking care of people who can’t take care of themselves and health care reform,” suggested Ms. Sher, now Mrs. Obama’s chief of staff.

The evening might also reflect a group that has settled into the White House and a staff more familiar with the new custom. Last week, Ms. Sher was leaving the East Wing when a guard stopped her.

“Hey, are you bringing macaroons again this year?” he asked.