Friends, family, and both former political allies and rivals paid respects to longtime Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman at his funeral on Friday, held at Congregation Agudath Sholom, a Modern Orthodox shul in Stamford, Conn.
Mourners included Connecticut’s current Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, and former senator Chris Dodd, as well as former Vice President Al Gore, who tapped Lieberman as his running mate in 2000. That made Lieberman the first Jewish-American on a major party’s presidential ticket.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, who defeated Lieberman in a bitter 2006 Democratic Senate primary before losing to him in the general election, joked about how the two met.
“Friendship with Joe Lieberman started in different ways. Mine started on sort of an inauspicious note,” he said.
Despite their differences over the Iraq war, Lamont had grown to have an enormous respect for Lieberman’s integrity and faith, he said.
“I last got to see the senator at the Alfalfa Club,” Lamont said of the Capitol Hill social club. “He said, ‘I think, governor, there’s one war we could agree on. Let’s work together in making sure America stands up and helps the Ukrainian freedom fighters.’ And I said, senator, ‘Let’s do that together. Let’s get together.’”
Lieberman died on Wednesday at the age of 82 from complications due to a fall.
During the funeral, friends and family touted his decades of political accomplishments in the Senate, working to improve civil rights, national security and the environment—all while maintaining his faith as one of the most prominent, observant Jews in American public life.
‘He was a giant to me’
Dodd, who represented Connecticut in the U.S. Senate alongside Lieberman for 22 years, said he and Lieberman divided their respective Sabbath calendars in order to continue meeting with constituents.
“Joe Lieberman recommended that I should be responsible for all community events from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday,” Dodd said. “In short, I became his Shabbos goy.”
“On the other hand, Joe would assume all the similar responsibilities for me on Sundays,” he said. “One day I did the math. The Shabbos goy was responsible for 24 hours, and the new altar boy, Joe Lieberman, was on duty for four or five hours on Sunday.”
All of the speakers at the funeral said Lieberman had a rare devotion to faith, family and public service, as well as a decency that he extended to those he knew best and those he barely knew.
“He was a giant to me growing up and entering Connecticut politics,” Murphy said. “He came to campaign for me when I was a longshot candidate for the state legislature at age 25 because he believed in mentoring young people who had a kind of vision for the world like he did.”
“For years, my official headshot was a cropped photo of me standing next to Senator Lieberman during that campaign event,” added the Connecticut senator. “You could just see Joe’s shoulder in the picture. But I chose that picture because of the transparent joy that was on my face, caused by the thrill of Joe Lieberman coming to campaign for me.”
“It was the best picture anybody had ever taken of me,” he said.
Gore, who was the last politician to speak at the funeral, addressed the falling out that he and Lieberman had had over the Iraq War, which led Gore to endorse Howard Dean over Lieberman in the 2004 presidential primary. Just four years earlier, Gore and Lieberman had come 537 votes shy of winning the White House together.
“Joe and I went our separate ways after 2000,” Gore said. “Joe and I had some deep and sometimes bitter disagreements on policy and political matters. No matter how hard I tried or how hard Joe tried, we could not convince the other of the merit of our positions.”
“I, for one, was tempted to anger at times, frustrated at Joe’s stubbornness and disappointed that he was taking a path that I thought was wrong,” Gore said. “I know his disappointment in my turning away from him was surely just as profound.”
“Here the story could have ended,” Gore recounted. “If it had, we would have reached a dead end in a once loving and fruitful friendship.”
“But it did not end there. We had another turn,” Gore added. “Both of us knew deep down that the strong foundation of our friendship, and what we shared in common, was so much larger and so much stronger than what was driving us apart in those years.”
“Joe had that wisdom,” he said., JNS
