I

t’s Friday afternoon, and in the office of Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, there’s a commotion.

It’s getting late in the day, and his aides are nervously eyeing his list of appointments for the week, racing against time to squeeze in a meeting or two before sundown.

“We might have to continue this interview by phone at the beginning of the week,” he tells me. “In another half hour I have to get ready for Shabbos.”

Around town, there are many Democrats feeling down about the current resident in the White House. But not Eisen. Sunny by nature, Eisen, who served as ambassador to the Czech Republic during the Obama administration, says his life has taught him never to despair.

“How could I not be an optimist?” he says. “I’m the child of a Czech- American Holocaust survivor who sent me back to live in a house that was once occupied by the Nazis, a house where I kept kosher, put up a mezuzah, and lit the Shabbos candles every week. If that doesn’t make you an optimist, nothing will.”

It’s classic Eisen, who, at 58, isn’t resting on past accomplishments. In fact, it seems like he’s just getting started.

First, there’s his newly released book, The Last Palace: Europe’s Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House, an account of the struggle between democracy, communism, and fascism over the past 100 years.

Then there’s his work at Brookings, where he studies the intersection of ethics and politics, along with his regular appearances on CNN to discuss political developments in Washington. Finally, there’s his job as founding member of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), a watchdog group he cofounded that focuses on exposing corruption and ethics violations among public officials. CREW filed a lawsuit against President Trump in January 2017, claiming that he violated the Foreign Emoluments Clause (which forbids presidents from taking any gifts from foreign officials) since he owns properties that collect rent. The suit was dismissed in December 2017 but an appeal is pending.

The Last Palace is also a veiled Trump critique. In it, he traces the history of the house where he lived as US ambassador, a mansion built by a Jewish coal magnate that was the Nazis’ command center in Prague during World War II. The US maintained its ambassador’s residence there during Czechoslovakia’s communist years and after the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Just as the house lived through democracy, then fascism, then communism, and then returned to democracy, so too will the world persevere through this anti-democratic moment, when rightists are on the rise in the United States, South America, and across Europe. As Eisen told the Washington Post in September: “In the case of Trump, we are only in the sixth or so round of a 15-round heavyweight battle, and the worst is yet to come.”

For someone so outspoken, it’s a bit surprising that Eisen is so consistently ebullient. Then again, maybe not. He learned to persevere early on, flipping burgers at his father’s hamburger stand. (Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 739)