This Week

Walking The Line

For Joe Lieberman, Jewishness is key but it doesn't tell the whole story.

MATTHEW E. BERGER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Conco;x1, N.H.

IV

hen Joseph Lieberman
was 10 years old, bounc-
ing a basketball through
the house, the family
rabbi told his mother, "He will never
amount to anything."
"I laughed at him," Marcia Lieberman
recalls. "What would you say to your
rabbi who said that?"
On the day Sen. Joseph Lieberman
officially submitted his name for the
Democratic primary ballot in New
Hampshire, his 89-year-old mother was
the center of attention, holding court
across the street at a small pub and
telling stories that would make any son
blush.
The presence of a stereotypical Jewish
mother on the campaign trail is perhaps
the most Jewish aspect of a campaign
that is trying to downplay the candi-
date's religion.
Lieberman's Jewishness has made
headlines since he was selected as Al
Gore's vice presidential running mate on
the Democratic ticket in 2000, and now
that Lieberman is running for the top
job himself, defining the role his her-
itage plays has become a challenge for
the candidate.
"I'm running for president as an
American who happens to be Jewish,
not the other way around," Lieberman
says. "I'm proud of my heritage, but I
am absolutely confident that the
American people are ready to choose
whoever they think is the best candidate
for president, regardless of religion,
nationality, race, gender, etc."
He grows visibly upset as he is pep-
pered with questions about his religion
and its impact on his campaign, and he
jokingly threatens to strangle the inter-
viewer if the topic doesn't change.
The frustration is understandable.
Lieberman's campaign is, after all, about
a lot more than being Jewish. A car in
his motorcade bears a Jesus fish just
below a sticker saying "Joe Lieberman
2004." And non-kosher pepperoni pizza
will be served that evening at the home

Editor's note: This is the first in a JTA
special series on the presidential candi-
dates.

11/28

2003

16

of a Greek-Americari state repre-
sentative who has endorsed
Lieberman.
But in many ways, it is
Lieberman's Judaism — or, more
specifically, his devout beliefs and
actions — that has helped the
senator emerge as more than just
one of the 100 men and women
in the Senate, positioning him for
his current bid for the White
House.
Lieberman's refusal to drive on
Shabbat led then-Senator Gore to
offer a bedroom in his Capitol
Hill home to Lieberman for
Friday nights and weekends when
the Senate was in session, spark-
ing a friendship partly responsible
for Lieberman's selection as Gore's
running mate in 2000.
And it was his faith, and the
milestone of becoming the first
Joseph
Jew on a national party ticket,
that helped give him celebrity sta-
tus on the campaign trail in
2000, winning him a following that no
unsuccessful vice presidential candidate
has gotten since Geraldine Ferraro broke
the gender barrier in 1984.
Lieberman's faith has also gotten him
into some trouble. Some Jewish groups,
including the Anti-Defamation League,
publicly rebuked Lieberman's discussion
of his faith on the campaign trail.
Lieberman's complaints about violence
in the media, in which he joined with
former Education Secretary William
Bennett, cost him support and fund-
raising dollars in Hollywood.

Role Of Faith

Lieberman makes no apologies for who
he is, and he notes that the last two
Democrats to win the presidency —
Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — were
men who felt comfortable speaking of
their faith in a broad, inclusive way.
And when it is advantageous,
Lieberman wears his religion on his
sleeve. Appearing last month at a Ft.
Lauderdale, Fla., synagogue located in a
senior citizen's center, Lieberman spoke
Yiddish and accepted a lulav for Sukkot.
But he remains defiant that he is not the
"Jewish candidate" — even if his
Concord office is on top of a bagel shop
— and that religion will not be a factor

Lieberman: A politician who is a Jew.

in the voting booth.
Lieberman is disappointed that more
Jews are not supporting his candidacy,
the way other minority groups have ral-
lied around their candidates in the past.
But he says he knows that the American
Jewish community is diverse.
"If somebody in the Jewish communi-
ty thinks that one of the other
Democratic candidates will make a bet-
ter president than I, or that George
Bush will make a better president than I,
then they should, notwithstanding the
fact that I am Jewish, support those
other candidates," he says.
"But what I have said is: Don't not
support me because I'm Jewish, because
that is anti-Semitism."
Lieberman says his sluggish showing
in the New Hampshire polls — the lat-
est American Research Group survey has
him running a distant fourth with 5
percent of the vote — is irrelevant,
because other polls show him having
one of the best chances at beating
President Bush in the general election.
And he is expending a lot of time and
energy in New Hampshire, bypassing
the Iowa caucus, hoping to succeed in
the first state primary on Jan. 27.
Outside analysts say Lieberman's reli-
gion probably isn't that big a factor in
this race, and that his poor showing is
based more significantly on his conser-

vatism relative to the other candidates.
"It's not that I don't think there are
bigots anywhere in America; its just that
I know we're in a country that is so per-
vasively accepting and tolerant that they
don't speak out publicly very much,"
Lieberman says. "I remain totally confi-
dent that America is ready to vote for a
Jewish candidate for president if they
think he or she is best suited to be the
president they need."

Biography

Joseph Isadore Lieberman was born on
Feb. 24, 1942, in Stamford, Conn., and
grew up in one of the most religiously
observant Jewish families in the area.
One of his mother's earliest memories of
Joe is tying her 2-year-old to a banister
outside of the house so he could play
outside without supervision. "Now I
would be called an abusive mother," she
says.
The fact that the Liebermans did
things differently — keeping kosher and
observing the Sabbath in a community
with few observant Jews — taught Joe
discipline, his mother says. "Now she
tells me," Lieberman says.
• "Well, she's probably right. There's no
question that a part of what shaped me
is that I grew up in a largely non-Jewish
community in which I vas religiously