In 2014, former President George W. Bush stepped up to the lectern in the Detroit Marriott Renaissance Center — the same place his wife, former First Lady Laura Bush, stood two years earlier — and in front of a sold-out crowd, began to speak.
This was not a campaign event for the former president, but rather the annual dinner of Michigan’s prominent Jewish day school, Yeshiva Beth Yehudah, for which Bush was giving the keynote address.
The dinner, which is not an inherently political event, is annually attended by over 2,000 guests and consistently attracts high-profile government officials. In 2020 alone, despite being virtual due to the pandemic, viewers heard from then-President Donald Trump, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden (who gave the keynote in 2011 when he was vice president) and United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the U. S. Yousef Al Otaiba —…
