Source: Los Angeles Times
On August 9, 2000, the Los Angeles Times, reported that "Campaign 2000: Senator's Life Took Same Path as His Faith; Profile: Lieberman's Rise Encapsulates the Change in Circumstance of American Jews in the Last 50 Years." The change in the American public's attitude towards Jews over the past fifty years is apparent with the candidacy of Joseph Lieberman for vice president. When he was born in 1942, "American Jews still could not buy property in many places in the United States. When he was growing up in the more sophisticated parts of Connecticut, Jewish businessmen still couldn't borrow money locally and had to drive into New York City to find friendly bankers. When Lieberman arrived at Yale in the early 1960s, the university still limited the number of Jewish students it accepted...On Tuesday, Lieberman stood next to Al Gore on a sweltering Tennessee afternoon to be formally announced as the Democratic candidate for vice president. The arc of Joseph Isador Lieberman's life neatly encapsulates the remarkable change in circumstance of American Jews over the last half-century--a rise to prominence, prosperity and acceptance in a non-Jewish society that is unlike anything in Jewish history. 'This is not a breakthrough, rather it's a culmination in a long process of integration,' said Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York."
Despite the praise he receives for his strong moral beliefs, in the "divided Jewish world, Lieberman's blending of strict observance of religious law with full engagement in modern society can make both traditionalists and secularists uneasy." But it was just this "no-apologies assertion of moral values that attracted Gore to him. Lieberman displayed those values Tuesday in a speech that cited God almost a dozen times in language more devout than any similarly prominent Christian political figure--and certainly any Democrat--had used in recent memory."Yet the question of how anti-Semitism might affect the campaign remains to be seen. Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, commented that "It made me realize my own internal anti-Semitism," he said, noting that his skepticism reflected an ingrained belief that a Jew could not possibly run for such high office. Then Monday when he heard it was true, he wondered if it was a good thing, if it wouldn't unleash all variations of hatred toward Jews. As the day advanced, he said, "I realized I was finally at 'home' in this country, that America has moved to this new place in which people don't have to leave pieces of themselves outside, to bifurcate their lives."