New Jersey Senate Candidate Cory Booker Knows His Torah. So What?
A Baptist, Booker became the unlikely co-president of Boteach’s L’Chaim Society in 1992, recruiting students into the organization and delivering the weekly d’var Torah. Booker then co-founded a Jewish society at Yale with another Hasidic rabbi, Shmully Hecht. After moving to Newark and entering politics, Booker kept up regular chavrutot with his rabbinic mentors, expanding his Torah knowledge to the point that he now comfortably drops religious references without notes. As Jeffrey Goldberg recently wrote, “I’ve met most of the Senate’s other Jews, and I can say, with a high degree of certainty, that Booker knows more Torah than they do.”
These contrasting origin stories are evident in how Obama and Booker relate to the Jewish community. When Obama addresses Jewish audiences, he comes across as a liberal rabbi. He presents Jewish values as synonymous with progressive politics and draws heavily upon American Jewish history, name-dropping noted civil rights rabbinic activists like Abraham Joshua Heschel and Joachim Prinz. The American story, he seems to say, is the Jewish story—an ever-advancing universalistic ethic.
Booker, on the other hand, though committed to similarly liberal ends, presents more like his Orthodox mentors. He leans on traditional texts, from the weekly Torah portion to the Pirkei Avot, and is more likely to reference Hillel than Heschel. He keeps a stack of religious books on his desk, including an Artscroll Tanakh—the imprint of Orthodoxy’s most prolific publisher. When speaking Hebrew, his pronunciation sometimes slips into Ashkenazic, rather than the Sephardic-inflected tones of Modern Hebrew favored by non-Orthodox Jewry. And like his Chabad companions, Booker does not conflate Judaism with one particular political platform but rather plays up its spiritual uniqueness.
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/140767/cory-bookers-jewish-story