Orangeburg, SC – Cory Booker showed off his Hebrew at a CNN Town Hall on Wednesday night.
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Asked by a pastor how his faith would influence him as president, the New Jersey senator and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate talked about how he was raised by a Christian mother who taught Sunday school and said “Christ is the center of my life.”
But then Booker said, “Can I quote some Hebrew to you?”
“I studied the Torah, too,” he said. “There’s a song sung during the High Holidays: ‘Ki beiti beit tefillahyikarei l’chol ha-‘amim’ — ‘May my house be a house of prayer for many nations.’
“We are the United States of America. We were not formed as a theocracy. We were formed on the ideal that many of us in our diversity can come together and create one strong whole. And if I am president of the United States, I will fight every day to put more indivisible into this one nation under God.”
This isn’t the first time Booker has recited some Hebrew in a speech — he displayed the same skills for Yale’s 2013 graduating class. That same year Jeffrey Goldberg, now the editor in chief of The Atlantic, said Booker knows more Torah than most of the Senate’s Jewish members.
Booker’s love for Judaism can at least partially be traced back to the roots of his friendship with the prominent rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whom he met while studying at Oxford. Boteach was a spiritual leader for Oxford students at the time.
“I would give him Baldwin and DuBois,” Booker told The New York Times in 2002 during his first run for Newark mayor, describing his relationship with Boteach, “and he would give me Hillel.”
I wonder if his mother taught him that abortion is a sin?
When Yitzchak Shamir was Prime Minister of Israel in the 1990’s, he met with General Colin Powell, who was then the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces; when they met, Powell stated to Shamir in fluent Yiddish, that they should both speak Yiddish to each other. Shamir seemed surprised, and stated “How do you know Yiddish”. Powell stated that he worked at a Jewish bakery in the Bronx, and learned Yiddish there.
He should speak to his anti Israeli friends in Hebrew
It’s too bad that he voted for Obama’s Iran nuclear deal.
Sn Booker is so dangerous to Jews, Israel, America. He’s much worse than Obama.
Spartacus is a backstabbing liar, supporter of anti Israel Jew hating activists, he still hasn’t condemned omars Jew hating remarks.
the Kenyan messiah also PRETENDED to like jews when not listening to jeremiah wright, Farrakhan and jackson
A trained parrot can speak Hebrew as well. That doesn’t make it a friend of israel or the Jews
Nice try at pandering, but you’ll never win the nomination!
Such a phony! In the past few months he has shown himself to not be a friend of Jews. Are we stupid enough to fall for his pandering? I hope not. If Omar spoke Hebrew, would that make her a friend?