The White House Chanuka party Wednesday night featured a first for America’s chassidishe community — it marked the first time a chassid was honored with lighting the menorah at the annual event.

Moshe Margeretten, who first conceived the idea of prison reform which culminated in President Donald Trump signing the bill into law last year, lit eight candles, flanked by the first family and phalanx of friends and supporters. The White House hosted the Chanukah party two weeks early due to the year-end vacation season.

“I got a call from the White House a month ago, saying that they’re considering me,” Margaretten said. “They asked for some information. The speechwriters called me. The White House encouraged me to invite some of my supporters.”

Maregeretten, a Williamsburg yungerman, was invited to speak. Instead, he invited Zvi Boyarski of the Aleph Institute to present the address, in honor of the advocacy that prison reform group was in getting the First Step Act passed in 2018. “I felt he truly deserved the honor,” Margaretten said.

Rabbi Boyarski’s speech lasted for under three minutes and focused on the theme of redemption. He also recited the Shema, encouraging the audience to say it along with him in memory of the kedoshim killed Tuesday in Jersey City.

The people honored with lighting the candles at the White House are usually chaplains or secular Jews meant to further the president’s goals. Under former President Barack Obama, for example, a Jewish girl and an Arab girl who attended a school in Israel together lit the menorah.

The story of the night was played out in the menorah, however. The White House, as previous administrations have done, initially tried getting a menorah that had been used by Jews during the Holocaust, Maregeretten said.

“We then got a message from the White House that they wanted a menorah that had been from prison,” he said. “I told them that a menorah from prison costs between $2 and $7. They said that that is the beauty of it, that inmates keep their faith even in prison.”

Maregeretten reached out to Rabbi Avrohom Richter, the chaplain of Otisville Correctional Center, and asked if he had a menorah that had been used by inmates. Rabbi Richter responded that all prisoners’ possessions technically belongs to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

“Don’t worry,” Maregeretten told them. “You’ll soon be hearing from their boss.”

The White House called the bureau and ordered them to release a menorah. The first menorah found was a small and cheaply made menorah. The White House was agreeable to it, until a larger one made by a few prisoners out of copper piping was discovered. That will be the one being lit on Wednesday evening.

Rabbi Richter was at the party along with the menorah.

Prior to the public gathering, the president received several of the guests privately in a room. Margaretten and Boyarsky were pushed to the head of the line, a move that underscored Trump’s respect for “the rabbis.”

“I came away from the night knowing that we have a true friend in the Oval Office,” Margaretten said. “He is truly the best president for the Jews in history.”

Maregeretten’s interest in prison reform began in 2009, during a visit to a prisoner. It was shortly before Pesach, and waiting alongside him for an inmate to emerge was a mother with her young children. When the husband and father came out, the mother nonchalantly removed a bag full of Haggadas and proceeded to arrange a mock seder for the benefit of the father, who would not be home for yom tov.

“The father was listening to his son say the Mah Nishtana and other things,” Maregeretten recalled. “All of a sudden, the mother realized how sad the situation was and burst out crying. Everyone else there also started crying. It was horrible.”

That image gave him the impetus to reform the way criminals are treated. When Trump became president in 2017, Maregeretten allied with the president’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, whose own father spent some time in prison, and pushed through the bill.

Maregeretten says that the experience was surreal for him, a simple person who had a far-reaching vision.

“This story,” he noted, “started in prison and ended in the White House.”