On Thursday evening, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s two oldest children joined their parents and assorted other Trump family members, dignitaries, and hangers-on in the East Room of the White House to perform the traditional Hanukkah blessing. The children, ages 6 and 4, held a long white candle up to a gold menorah as a rabbi roused the room with a traditional song typically saved for one of the holiday’s eight nights. Hanukkah wouldn’t officially start for another five days, but the White House put on a celebration nevertheless. (Latkes were fried for the evening, though Christmas trees remained out for display.) The timing, after all, was perfect for the president, who had recently announced his administration’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel—a controversial campaign promise that was immediately greeted by worldwide condemnation and protests from Jerusalem to Beirut, Malaysia and Turkey, Indonesia and Iraq. The decision, which was presumably decreed to assuage his base, made Kushner’s efforts to oversee the peace process in the region that much harder.

But Kushner’s forthcoming labors seemed like a burden for another day. According to two people in attendance, Kushner, an Orthodox Jew who reportedly supported the decision, was greeted heroically. “There were lots of handshakes and pats on the back,” one attendee said. “He was very well received,” another said. The couple glowed as their two oldest children lit the menorah set up in the East Room. The evening evidently buoyed the Kushner-Trumps, one person who talked to them at the event told me. But it was largely a brief reprieve from what has been a fresh onslaught of headaches amid the familiar double-barreled parlor game of A) how much the couple appears to fear the outcome of the Robert Mueller probe and B) when the two political neophytes will decide that they’ve had enough of the swamp and return to New York.

At the Hanukkah party, according to the person who spoke to them, the couple was shaking their heads about the circumstances that had come to surround the presidency—the constant scrutiny from the media and the special counsel’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russians in the 2016 election and obstructed justice in order to cover it up. Less than a week earlier, former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to F.B.I. investigators about conversations with the Russian ambassador and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s team. The plea agreement noted that Flynn was directed by a “very senior member” of the presidential transition team, reportedly Kushner, to discuss a United Nations resolution involving Israeli settlements. Critics have suggested that these could have violated the Logan Act, an obscure 1799 law that has never been prosecuted. Kushner has denied any collusion or wrongdoing, but some of the couple’s New York friends have since started talking amongst themselves about “how long Jared has,” according to three people.

The couple may also face more immediate dangers. The attention that Kushner received for his role in the Jerusalem decision, in addition to the praise Ivanka received for criticizing Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, could irritate Trump, according to the person who spoke with them at the party and recently talked to the president. Trump has a well-documented history of free-basing off attention and recoiling when his name suddenly drops from the conversation. (“One former top adviser,” noted a recent New York Times story, “said Mr. Trump grew uncomfortable after two or three days of peace and could not handle watching the news without seeing himself on it.”) An attendee of the party warned of this outcome. “Everyone knows that all glory goes to him,” this person said. “When you work with him, you don’t make it about you. They broke rule No. 1.”

Ivanka caught heat for this not long ago, when she publicly addressed the allegations against Moore. “There’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children,” she told the Associated Press last month, after women came forward alleging that Moore had behaved inappropriately toward them when they were teenagers (Moore has denied any wrongdoing). “I’ve yet to see a valid explanation and I have no reason to doubt the victims’ accounts.” The comments contradicted her father, who endorsed Moore and railed against his Democratic opponent, Doug Jones. Jones quickly turned Ivanka’s words into a campaign ad, which irked President Trump, according to two people familiar with the matter.