Stuart Eizenstat, who served as chief domestic policy advisor to President Jimmy Carter, touted the 39th president’s outreach to American Jews and called his “most lasting achievement” the negotiation of the Camp David Accords and 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in a eulogy delivered on Thursday morning at Carter’s funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. 

“Jimmy Carter’s most lasting achievement, and the one I think he was most proud of, was to bring the first peace to the Middle East through the greatest act of personal diplomacy in American history, the Camp David Accords,” Eizenstat, the highest-ranking Jewish official in the Carter White House, said at the funeral.

“For 13 days and nights, he negotiated with [Israeli Prime Minister] Menachem Begin and [Egyptian President] Anwar Sadat, personally drafting more than 20 peace proposals and shuttling them between the Israeli and Egyptian delegations.” 

“He saved the agreement at the 11th hour, and it was the 11th hour, by appealing to Begin’s love of his grandchildren,” Eizenstat said, referring to signed photographs of the three leaders that Begin had requested for each of his eight grandchildren. The photographs helped turn failing discussions around. 

Eizenstat went on to say that the Egypt-Israel peace treaty “lay the foundation for the Abraham Accords,” the bilateral agreements on Arab-Israeli normalization signed in 2020 during President Donald Trump’s first term. 

Carter, who died on Dec. 29 at 100, had a complex relationship with Israel in his post-White House years. He wrote dozens of books after leaving office, including, in 2006, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which generated criticism over its characterization of Israel’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza. Three years later, he met with senior Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh in the Gaza Strip during a trip to the region.

In his eulogy, Eizenstat also lauded Carter’s involvement with Jewish community — both at home and abroad. “He was the first president to light a Hanukkah menorah, he created the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, he had a kosher Shabbat dinner at Camp David for the Israeli delegation [and] came to our house for a Passover Seder only weeks after he negotiated the treaty between Israel and Egypt,” Eizenstat recalled. 

“Jimmy Carter laid the building blocks for a better world,” Eizenstat continued, “tripling the immigration of Soviet Jews.” 

Carter, a state legislator and naval officer who went on to serve one term as Georgia’s governor, served as president from 1977 to 1981 before losing the 1980 election to then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan. 

Carter’s funeral was attended by all five of the nation’s living presidents. 

Jewish Insider’s Executive Editor Melissa Weiss contributed reporting.