Joseph Isadore Lieberman (born February 24, 1942) is the senior United States Senator from Connecticut. Lieberman became senior senator from Connecticut when Christopher Dodd left the senate in January 2011. First elected to the Senate in 1988, Lieberman was elected to a fourth term on November 7, 2006. In the 2000 United States presidential election, Lieberman was the Democratic nominee for Vice President, running with presidential nominee Al Gore, becoming the first Jewish candidate on a major American political party presidential ticket. The Gore–Lieberman ticket won the popular vote but ultimately failed to gain the electoral votes needed to win the controversial election. Lieberman ran for re-election to the U.S. Senate while he was also Gore's running mate, and he was re-elected by the voters of Connecticut.[1] He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2004 presidential election.
--Wikipedia contributors, "Joe Lieberman," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joe_Lieberman (accessed February 25, 2011).
Following Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman's nomination as the running mate of Al Gore in the 2000 United States presidential election, the Jewish community responded. Michael Granoff set out to collect sermons documenting this response. The rabbinic community responded with both pride and concern. Joseph Lieberman was an active Orthodox Jew, who walked to Congress when votes conflicted with the Sabbath. While many rabbis made a point of noting that they could not endorse a political candidate, they supported and applauded what the nomination meant for the position of the practicing Jew in American society. Most sermons were given during the high holy days at the end of September, 2000.
From the guide to the Joseph Lieberman Candidacy Sermon Collection, 2000, (The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives)
