By Joel H. Cohen
NEW YORK — The first Orthodox Jewish member of the U.S, Senate, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who ran for U.S. Vice President in 2000, has just published a book of philosophical essays related to counting the Omer. The book, With Liberty and Justice: The Fifty Day From Egypt to Sinai, (Maggid/OU Press), offers reflections on secular and Jewish law subjects, connected to the Exodus and the giving of the Torah on Shavuot.
Decades ago, I wrote a series of articles for a publication, CELEBRATE! All Things Jewish about celebrities’ reminiscences of their Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Among them, I had the pleasure of interviewing Senator Lieberman, who had a long career in the U.S. Senate and was the Democratic candidate for U.S. Vice President when Al Gore ran for President. That made Senator Lieberman (who later became an Independent) “the first person of the Jewish faith to run for the second highest office in the land.” (He has since left the Senate and joined the law firm of Kasowitz Benson Torres as senior counsel.
Flora Smithline, publisher and editor of CELEBRATE! has given permission to reprint the article about Senator Lieberman’s recollection of his 1955 Bar Mitzvah. It appears below. Please keep in mind that some of the information — such as his synagogue affiliations and how many times he has recited his Haftorah since his Bar Mitzvah – have undoubtedly changed.
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Sen. Joe Lieberman’s Bar Mitzvah Memories
Amalekites, Cufflinks, and Making Grandma Proud
By Joel H. Cohen
U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman’s Bar Mitzvah was a “big day in my life –as it’s supposed to be.” And though he’s sure he would have preferred playing football or baseball to attending Hebrew School two days a week and Sundays, he recalled, “I worked hard” preparing for the ceremony “to be able to lead the services and make my grandmother, as well as my parents, proud.”
The desire to be a source of pride to his late maternal grandmother, Minnie Manger, “a saintly woman,” was a major motivating force for him to do well, the Connecticut Democrat said. And he did.
At his Bar Mitzvah, young Joseph led the congregation in both Shacharis, the morning service, and Musaf, the additional service, besides chanting the Maftir and Haftorah, and giving a D’var Torah (a lesson based on the Torah), though he doesn’t recall its theme. He’s been told he also made a speech. (He’s done the Haftorah five or six times since.) [As of the years he was serving in the Senate.]
His Haftorah was “Zachor,” which deals with the admonition to “remember the Amalekites,” a ruthless people guilty of atrocities, and destroy them. When a fellow congregant [in later years] learned that this was the thrust of the Haftorah, he teased the Senator that he was predestined to end up on the Senate Armed Service Committee as a strong defense advocate.
Even his future role as a U.S. Senator was foreseen at his Bar Mitzvah, specifically at a reception the night of the event held in the Stamford (Conn.) Jewish Community Center. His cousin, Abe Hecht, a longtime teacher in the city’s school system, was the m.c. for the “traditional or not-so-traditional” candle-lighting ceremony, and called Joseph up as “the future senator from Connecticut.”
“So probably, in some subconscious way, it made its way into my brain,” Senator Lieberman commented.
As far as gifts were concerned, “My year was not so much “Today, I am a fountain pen’ as ‘Today I am a cufflink.’” He remembers receiving at least half a dozen sets of cufflinks as gifts.
While he made it through his Bar Mitzvah ceremony without vocal mishap, the Senator, now a baritone, suspects his voice was changing. Later that year, when his grandmother presented a Torah to the synagogue, Joseph sang, “and my voice was in full flight, from octave to octave, without reason.”
He studied for his Bar Mitzvah with Rabbi Joseph Ehrenkranz (“an inspiration”) at Cong. Agudath Sholom in Stamford, where he still retains membership and occasionally worshipped when in town visiting his late mother. The Senator’s main affiliations are Beth Hamedrosh Hagodol B’nai Israel, Westville Synagogue in New Haven, where he attended Yale University and later settled, and, when he’s in Washington, the Georgetown Synagogue -Kesher Israel.
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We hope this evokes pleasant memories of your own someone else’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah.
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Cohen is a freelance writer based in New York City. He may be contacted via joel.cohen@sdjewishworld.com