One of the perks of a career in journalism is meeting people of prominence. And, I like to tell people, one of the downsides of a career in journalism is getting to meet people of prominence — seeing the real person, unfiltered, without their PR advisors guiding every spoken word.
The late Sen. Joe Lieberman in his moment of glory after he was nominated for vice-president on the Democratic ticket in 2000. He and Al Gore lost in a razor-close election to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney that was ultimately resolved by the US Supreme Court. (IJN file photo)
These people — politicians and professors, athletes and academicians — sometimes turn out to be, pardon the vernacular, jerks. People one would like to forget.
Then there was Joseph Lieberman.
I had the chance to interview him several times, on the phone and in person, before and after his unsuccessful run for the second-highest elective office in the US.
He was always accessible and gracious — traits not to be taken for granted from someone who, because of his political prominence, could have saved his time for the TV networks, The New York Times and well-connected authors. I was a small fry, but he always returned my calls.
In person, his speaking style was the same as it was behind a podium; the same while speaking to one person as to a crowd — soft, deliberate, pausing to weigh his words, no shouting or preaching.
How, I would ask myself, was a person so unpretentious able to survive in the shark tank of national politics?
The probable answer — voters, Senator Gore, even political opponents — recognized integrity.
It wasn’t without reasons that he was known as “The Conscience of the Senate.” I never asked Sen. Lieberman about his speech rebuking President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, or about his political positions, or about his liberal votes that sometimes conflicted with traditional Jewish beliefs, or about his fierce independent streak, or about his vice presidential campaign, or about his “Three Amigos” friendship with Republican senators John McCain (AZ) or Lindsey Graham (SC).
Our time together was taken up discussing religion, family, his books, and his love of Israel.
Though he had strong, well-documented opinions about many political topics and many politicians, many of whom criticized him over the years, I never heard him utter a negative word about anyone.
He took the prohibition about avoiding lashon hara seriously.
A fellow journalist who also had the opportunity to interview Sen. Lieberman described what it was like to speak with him. “It was like speaking with my grandfather.”
Warm, heimish Sen. Lieberman asked about my friend’s life and talked about his grandchildren. My friend, he told me, almost forgot that he was interviewing a very famous, very powerful person.
I called Sen. Lieberman about a decade ago, when he was a former Senator, having retired after four terms to return to private legal practice (“lawyering”), working at a prestigious firm in mid-Manhattan.
I reached him at the office with no problem. He was hard at work on a case. He was then in his 70s, an age at which many men and women with his record of accomplishments begin to take it easy.
“You are a very educated man,” I said, leading into a rhetorical question. “Don’t you know the word ‘retirement’”?
“That’s funny,” he answered. “My wife asks me the same question.”
“I have a compulsive side to me,” he said. “By nature, I continue to work.”
Another time I interviewed him about books he wrote about Shabbat, The Gift of Rest (2012), and Shavuot, With Liberty and Justice: The Fifty-Day Journey from Egypt to Sinai (2018).
Each book showed his comfort in sharing the precepts of Torah with the non-Jewish reading public.
On his office shelves were busts of Churchill and JFK, a Koren siddur and an English translation of the Book of Isaiah; on one wall was a framed Electoral College tally of the contested 2000 race (it was, he said, a thoughtful gift from a colleague who figured he would treasure it as a keepsake); on other walls, photographs of him with presidents and members of his family
I had another interview with him — I continued to call him “Senator Lieberman” — a few months ago. I brought him a draft of an article I had written on leadership lessons. Would he add his thoughts, explaining which Torah teachings and teachers had shaped his life? He agreed, but sadly did not get to it before he died.
Surprisingly, during our interview as I sat across from him in a small table in his office, he made some knowledgeable comments about my writing career. My long-time job as a staff writer at the Jewish Week in New York had ended three years earlier, a victim of COVID, and I was keeping busy as a freelancer. I didn’t expect him to know anything about what I was doing, but he did.
We moved on to other subjects, including the dangerous situation in Israel following the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7. He was clearly worried about Israeli’s security.
And we kept talking.
My interview done, I put down my notebook and took a deep breath.
“I have an entirely different subject to discuss,” I said. I described the visit that my parents had made to my Queens apartment in 2000 when Gore, the Democrats’ nominee to succeed Clinton in the Oval Office, had not yet selected his running mate — and Lieberman was reportedly in the running. I was in my bedroom, listening to New York City’s all-news 880-AM radio station. The announcement came over that Gore had selected Lieberman. Big news — a Jew on a major party presidential ticket.
I came out of my bedroom and said two words: “It’s Lieberman.”
Mom beamed. She jumped so high — in her eighties then — that, as I remember, her head almost hit the ceiling. The daughter of Jewish immigrants from a shtetl in Poland, she never thought she would live to see the day when a Jew would make history as Lieberman was doing. She took particular pride in the fact that a non-Jewish candidate for president had chosen an Orthodox Jew for such an historic, high-visibility, powerful position.
I told all this to Senator Lieberman.
Then, making a personal request, the type that, as a professional journalist who did not cross the line with a celebrity to the personal, I did exactly that.
“My mother would love to speak with you,” I said. Mom was then 102, living in the Houston area in a rehab center, having suffered an accident a few months earlier. “Would you be willing do that?”
I told him a little more about my mother’s background and her current situation.
Senator Lieberman agreed immediately.
I dialed Mom’s number. She answered.
“Remember when you and Dad were visiting me when Gore picked Joseph Lieberman and how excited you were?” I asked.
Of course she remembered.
“I’m in Senator Lieberman’s office right now, doing an interview, and he would like to say hello. May I put him on the phone?” Of course she said yes.
“Hello, Mrs. Lipman,” he began.
Then he thanked my mother for her “support,” asked about her health, and engaged her in conversation about her life and family, and about the “honor” he had had as a candidate for vice president and about other topics for several minutes. Like he was speaking with an old friend.
I could sense Mom smiling.
He wished my mother good health, said goodbye, and handed me back my phone.
I thanked him and went home.
For the next several days Mom would thank me for setting up the conversation, and asked me, “What famous person are you going have speak with me today?”
She was kidding; she was delighted to have had the chance to speak with someone like the Senator, someone she admired so much, someone who — unlike other machers who rarely if ever would reach out to people who cannot help them — took the time to talk to a widow in a rehab center in Texas.
After a few days, I sent an email message of thanks to Senator Lieberman: “My mother wanted me to tell you how much she appreciated you taking a few minutes to speak with her this week,” I wrote. “She says she remembers the commercial that showed your mother lighting Shabbos candles.”
Senator Lieberman emailed me back a few days later.
“Thanks Steve,” he wrote. “Any day I can make someone’s mother happy is a good day.”
