It happened around the time President Donald Trump announced that the nation would observe its 250th birthday by, among other things, holding an Ultimate Fighting Championship match on the White House lawn.
“I was not a huge fan of that idea,” Michael Holzman, rabbi at Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation in Reston, told me. “I was really concerned that we were going to have a year of very, very partisan events” to celebrate the semiquincentennial of the United States. His fears seemed confirmed when Trump sidelined the bipartisan, congressionally authorized America250 committee and stood up a competitor, Freedom 250.
