Anecdotal recollections of invitations to President Clinton and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for Rosh Hashanah services

4.2.12 WC: 191694 Getting back to my invitation to President Clinton to attend Rosh Hashanah services, this was not the first such invitation I had extended to a head of state. In 1990, I had invited Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to join me at Rosh Hashanah services in Moscow, where I had been invited to the Kremlin to speak at a conference on law and bilateral economic relations in September of 1990. It was a time of transition, but the Soviet Union was still in existence and Gorbachev was still running it. Gorbachev attended the closing dinner, having just come from an emotional meeting of the Supreme Soviet at which he had sought emergency powers to confront the ongoing crisis. I introduced myself to him as he was eating dinner and we had a lengthy conversation in which I asked him to come with me to the synagogue and denounce anti-Semitism as Pope Paul had done when he appeared at the Rome Synagogue and deplored “the hatred, persecutions, and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time and by anyone.” Gorbachev smiled and asked me rhetorically, “Are you here to help bring down my government ?” He said he could not go to the synagogue but he promised me that he would condemn anti- Semitism. Shortly thereafter, he announced that “the Democratic Russian public denounces anti- Semitism and will do everything in its power to uproot the phenomenon from our society.” In 2008, I met Gorbachev again. This time, under the most unusual of circumstances. He was in Israel at the invitation of President Shimon Peres to help celebrate Israel’s 60" birthday. I was there for the same reason. I had just appeared on a panel with Vaclav Havel and with Natan Sharansky, both of whom who had been imprisoned by Communist regimes, and both of whose cases I had worked on as a defense attorney. After the completion of the panel, in a remarkable turn of fate, the four of us ended up in the same elevator. (Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: Gorbachev, Havel, Sharansky and Dershowitz meet in an elevator in Jerusalem...) Gorbachev recognized the three of us and turning to me said, “You’re the big shot lawyer for all the dissidents.” I extended my hand to him and reminded him of our meeting in Moscow. He then turned to Havel and Sharansky and said, “He may be a good lawyer but it was I who got you out of prison.” I smiled and replied, “It’s always more important to have a good judge than a good lawyer.” Sharanky turned to Gorbachev and said, “Why didn’t you let us out sooner?” to which Gorbachev responded, “You overrate my power.” We all had a good laugh. 366 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017453