Tag Archives: Democrat

Jew of the Week: Chuck Schumer

America’s Top Senator

Charles Ellis Schumer (b. 1950) was born in Brooklyn to a Jewish family with Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish ancestry. He scored a perfect 1600 on his SAT and went to Harvard, where he first studied chemistry before switching to law. He passed the bar in 1975, but went right into politics, having once been inspired when volunteering on a presidential campaign. Schumer was elected to the New York State Assembly straight out of law school. After three terms, he won a seat on the US House of Representatives. He served on the House for nine terms until 1998, when he ran for a Senate seat instead and won again. He has since been re-elected to the Senate three times, with consistently high approval ratings. In 2016, he was voted head of the Senate Democrats, making him the minority leader. Earlier this year, when the Democrats took control of the Senate, he became the majority leader. In both cases, Schumer became the first Jew (and first New Yorker) to hold the Senate leader title. Impressively, Schumer visits every single one of New York’s 62 counties every year to meet with his constituents. He has been praised for helping average New Yorkers deal with even minor issues that are not the role of a senator to address. Over the years, Schumer has worked hard to keep jobs and factories in America, and has been fiercely critical of China. In 2017, he tried unsuccessfully to get Trump to impose a ban on Chinese buyouts of American companies. (This week, he finally pushed through a massive $250 billion “China competition bill”.) Schumer has also been praised for his assistance to veterans and for lowering healthcare costs. In 2001, together with John McCain, he introduced a bill to open the prescription drug market to more generic, cheaper versions, resulting in savings of billions of dollars. Schumer has fought for net neutrality, and criticized Republicans for allowing the FCC to pass new internet restrictions in 2018. While Schumer is pro-choice, he has also supported Efrat, an Israeli anti-abortion organization. He is currently trying to push legislation to ban BPA, cadmium, and other toxins. Over the years, Schumer has fought for tougher sanctions on Iran, Russia, and North Korea, and is one of the few Democrats that continues to oppose a nuclear deal with Iran. He is a huge supporter of Israel, defending both its blockade of Gaza, and its settlements. Schumer cosponsored a 2017 bill making it illegal to boycott Israel. He praised Trump for finally moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. Schumer has voted for more gun control and more college tuition credits, as well as stricter regulation of Wall Street. He has developed a “Marshall Plan for Teachers” to revamp education in America. Schumer is an avid cyclist. He has never lost an election in his life, and has always sought to be a balanced voice of reason in Congress.

Words of the Week

You can be a Jew and care about Israel and it does not make you any less American. You can be a Jew and lobby for Israel and it does not make you any less American. You can be, all at once, completely Jewish, completely pro-Israel and completely American.
– Chuck Schumer

Jew of the Week: Joe Lieberman

Joe Lieberman

Joseph Isadore Lieberman (b. 1942) was born in Connecticut, the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Austria-Hungary. He was the first in his family to graduate from college, and earned degrees in political science, economics, and law from Yale. After working at a successful law firm, Lieberman was elected to the Connecticut Senate and served as a state senator for 10 years. Following this, he served as Connecticut’s Attorney General. He then ran for the U.S. Senate and won a seat, serving for three full terms as a Democrat, and another term as an independent, for a total of 24 years of service on the U.S. Senate. Over those years, Lieberman chaired and was a member of a wide range of committees, including Homeland Security, Environment and Public Works, as well as Armed Services. Despite being a Democrat for so long, Lieberman has a reputation for being quite conservative. He supports a strike on Iran, and has criticized Obama for avoiding terms like “Islamic extremism”. He has always been fervently pro-Israel, and it has been said that “there is nobody who does more on behalf of Israel than Joe Lieberman”. This is most likely because Lieberman is actually a practicing Orthodox Jew. In 1967, after his grandmother’s death, Lieberman returned to his Jewish roots, and has kept kosher and Shabbat ever since. When Al Gore ran for president in 2000, Lieberman was selected as his running mate, making him the first Jew to run for vice-president of the U.S. Although Gore and Lieberman actually won the election in terms of popular vote, Bush and Cheney were awarded the presidency after a long legal battle. In 2008, Lieberman received an award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected Official. He has been called a “national treasure” and “one of the greatest Senators we’ve ever had…” Lieberman has also written 7 books, one of which is The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath.

UPDATE: Sadly, Joe Lieberman passed away on March 27, 2024.

Words of the Week

Whoever saves a single life, is as though he saved an entire world.
– Talmud, Sanhedrin 37a

Jew of the Week: Frank Lautenberg

Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg

Frank Raleigh Lautenberg (1924-2013) was born in New Jersey to a poor family of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia. His father died young from cancer, leaving his mother to support the family by selling sandwiches. After high school, Lautenberg fought in World War II, serving in the army until 1946. At the time, returning war veterans had their education financed by the government, so Lautenberg got an economics degree from Columbia Business School. He first worked for an insurance company, then as a salesman, eventually rising to the rank of CEO. In 1978 he became New York’s Port Authority, managing the area’s vast transportation infrastructure. That brought him closer to politics, and in 1982 he ran for the Senate as a democrat. One of his first major moves as senator was bringing into effect a minimum drinking age, set at 21 years since 1984. In 1990 his ‘Lautenberg Amendment’ passed into law, making it easier for refugees to immigrate to the US, thus opening the doors to thousands of Jews fleeing the collapsing Soviet Union. Since then, countless refugees from around the world have been able to find asylum in the US due to this law. Lautenberg’s second famous amendment passed in 1996, banning the sale of firearms to those convicted of domestic violence. After winning two more re-elections, Lautenberg decided to retire in 2000. However, he quickly regretted the decision, and came back in 2002, winning re-election again in 2008. Lautenberg wrote legislation that banned smoking on airplanes and in federal buildings. He voted consistently for more stem cell research, gun control, and peaceful foreign policies, making him a hero among liberal democrats. Sadly, he passed away this Monday from viral pneumonia after a previous battle with lymphoma. At 89 years of age, he was the oldest-serving senator, and the last to have fought in World War II.

Words of the Week

Are you as careful with what comes out of your mouth as you are with what enters it?
– Chassidic Proverb