By Bill Simons

By temperament and action, former President Biden stands within the Catholic social justice tradition in opposition to bigotry and intolerance. Throughout his long life, Biden has had many Jewish friends and colleagues. His three children all married partners of Jewish descent – Beau (Hallie Berger Olivere), Hunter (Melissa Cohen), and Ashley (Howard Krein) – leading Biden to quip at his daughter’s nuptials: “The dream of every Catholic father that she married a Jewish doctor.” And to the 15 Cabinet positions, Biden appointed four Jews (Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas), a mark exceeded only by Bill Clinton. Prior to Biden, Jews never simultaneously headed diplomacy, finance and justice. 
Cabinet portfolios came late to Jews. In 1906, President Teddy Roosevelt made the first Cabinet appointment of a Jew, Oscar Straus, as secretary of commerce and labor. Not until 1934, with the selection of Henry Morgenthau as secretary of the treasury by President Franklin Roosevelt, did a second Jew attain Cabinet rank. As of January 20, 28 Jews have served in the Cabinet, with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger probably the most impactful and controversial. 
President Harry Truman once observed that it takes at least a generation to pass before perspective can supplant passion sufficiently to allow objective history. While deferring to Truman, an initial assessment of Blinken, Yellen, Garland and Mayorkas is in order, mindful that journalism constitutes but the first rough draft of history.
Blinken, like his three Jewish colleagues, served from the formation of the Biden administration to its end. State, like Treasury and the position of attorney general, possesses a venerable legacy, dating back to the first Washington administration. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton were, respectively, the first secretaries of state and of the treasury. Conspicuously polite and tireless, Blinken, the son of an ambassador and stepson of a Holocaust survivor, came to State after decades of diplomatic experience and collaboration with Biden. An internationalist, Blinken is an advocate of a robust U.S. foreign policy based on law and principle, buttressed by arms when necessary. 
Tragically, the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan turned chaotic and led to the re-ascent of the Taliban and a shaky start for Biden-Blinken statecraft. Through weaponry, military intelligence and advocacy, the Biden-Blinken foreign policy facilitated Israel’s blunting of Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi and Iranian threats. Although American pressure was largely ineffectual in delimiting civilian casualties in Gaza, a fragile Israel-Hamas truce, accompanied by prisoner exchanges, was achieved prior to the end of the Biden-Blinken tenure. During their time in office, U.S. military aid, though at times delayed and restrictive, enabled Ukraine to survive the Russian invasion that began on February 24, 2022. Moreover, Blinken played a pivotal role in the release of U.S. hostages Brittney Griner and Evan Gershkovich from Putin’s gulag, albeit those prisoner exchanges came at a high cost. In addition, U.S. efforts under Biden and Blinken facilitated the ratcheting up of cooperation amongst the legacy democracies of Western Europe and strengthened NATO. 
A native of Brooklyn and descended from a Polish Jewish family, many of whose members perished during the Holocaust, Yellen, a brilliant economist and scholar activist, has rotated between academic and government service. Unique in successively holding the three highest federal finance positions – chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, chairman of the Federal Reserve and secretary of the Treasury, she was the first woman to hold the latter two portfolios. A Keynesian, the secretary herself provided the best case for the achievements of Biden-Yellen economic stewardship. 
Upon receiving the William F. Butler Award for economic leadership on January 15, Yellen presented a summary of her tenure as secretary of the Treasury. While acknowledging long-term trends that challenge the middle-class standard of living, Yellen emphasized the following: the rebound from the pandemic, jump starting supply chains, ratcheting up production of critical items, tempering inflation and enactment of an American Rescue Plan that increased demand and provided safety nets. The 2024 elections, however, evidenced that many Americans judged Biden-Yellen economics by prices at the supermarket and the tenuousness of home ownership. 
A Conservative Jew by upbringing and the grandson of immigrants who escaped antisemitic pogroms, Garland established a brilliant record at Harvard Law before receiving accolades as a corporate attorney, federal prosecutor and chief judge for the DC circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. In 2016, partisan delay prevented confirmation of President Barack Obama’s nomination of Garland as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. 
A centrist and a resolute defender of the rule of law, Attorney General Garland won convictions against the terrorists who sought to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election, suspended federal executions, protected civil liberties and civil rights, and survived politically motivated Republican attempts to find him guilty of contempt of Congress. Upholding the independence of the Justice Department, Garland appointed special prosecutors in cases involving then former President Donald Trump and President’s Biden’s son Hunter. 
A Jew of Sephardic and Ashkenazi heritage, Mayorkas’ parents came to the U.S. as refugees from Communist Cuba. After receiving his J.D. degree from Loyola Law School, his professional ascent included stints as U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and deputy secretary of Homeland Security. During Mayorkas’ tenure as secretary of Homeland Security, no major terrorist attacks occurred on American soil. However, Mayorkas lacked the statutory and material resources to deter illegal immigration at the border, prompting an abortive partisan attempt to remove him from office. 
The apparent trajectory of President Trump’s administration – unbuckling support for Israel from restraints, ending military aid to Ukraine, possibly unleashing a tariff war that might spiral inflation upward, weaponization of the Justice Department, pardoning insurrectionists and mass deportation of illegal immigrants – may eclipse the benchmarks of Blinken, Yellen, Garland and Mayorkas. However, the heat of the moment will pass. Time and deliberation often leaven history’s judgments. Ultimately, historians will link assessment of Biden and his Cabinet. As a practitioner of the craft myself, I believe that history will gift Biden, Blinken, Yellen, Garland and Mayorkas with good grades.