On the same day that 15 Jews were murdered on Bondi Beach in Australia, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) lit Hanukkah candles at home for the first time.
Booker, who is black and not Jewish, married real estate agent Alexis Lewis, daughter of a black father and a Jewish mother, in an interfaith ceremony on Nov. 29. The two agreed to practice some Jewish traditions in their household, like lighting candles for Shabbat at least monthly.
That also included lighting the menorah during Hanukkah.
“In my professional life, I’ve lit Hanukkah candles often, but I’ve never done it in my own home,” Booker told JNS in an interview at the U.S. Capitol. “It was very meaningful, very emotional in fact, to light them with her.”
“I know the beginning of the prayer, but I don’t even know the whole way through, so for her to sort of lead me in that ceremony, it was amazing,” the senator said. “I have to say it was very moving, very emotional to me to light the candles.”
Booker frequently quotes the late reverend Martin Luther King Jr. on the campaign trail and in speeches before groups.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that,” he says, using King’s words. “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.”
Following the mass shooting in Australia, Hanukkah candles lighting up Booker’s home brought that saying to life, “because of the idea of the marathon of lights, the idea that light can banish darkness, the idea that good can overcome evil,” Booker told JNS.
“In this season especially, the idea of Hanukkah is more meaningful to me, especially the time where we saw such horrific antisemitism rage again,” he said. “It made the purpose of the holiday even more compelling to me and more emotional to me.”
So has the rise in Jew-hatred following the Hamas-led attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, culminating in the mass shooting in Australia.
“Look, the fight against antisemitism for me has always been a fundamental urgency to my life because of the infectiousness of hate,” he told JNS.
“My parents sort of told my brother and I about the ancient evil of antisemitism and the urgency to fight against it,” he said. “But now that I’m married to a Jewish woman and we’ll—God willing, b’ezrat Hashem, have Jewish children, it’s taken on an even deeper, more personal sense of urgency.”
“There is no bystander in hate. You’ve got to be an activist, or in many ways you become complicit in the end, the moral obscenity of hatred and of bigotry,” he added. “In no way does my marriage make me more in this fight, but it does make it a lot more personal.”
Booker began studying Torah while at Oxford University, and continues his studies with a Chabad rabbi from the Philadelphia area, Rabbi Baruch Shalom Davidson.
“I have a deep affection, deep love for the faith, and I think God has a sense of humor,” that “I would meet this extraordinary woman, who’s also Jewish,” Booker told JNS. “We decided as we were dating and beginning to talk about marriage that we were going to have a household in which we celebrated Jewish holidays and even honor Shabbat.”
Booker said that he and Alexis also would honor his traditions and heritage.
“But as someone who, even before I knew Alexis, truly had a great love and admiration for Torah and for the faith, it was just a natural thing that when we decided to get married, that we would honor Jewish traditions in our home as well,” he said.
“I just feel very blessed that I’m on this journey with Alexis,” he added. “I feel so much more whole, but also I feel the blessing of, as we bring our traditions together. You know, b’ezrat Hashem, our marriage in and of itself can maybe bring some more light into the world.”
Follow The Post’s coverage on the Bondi Beach mass shooting
He said that he has never forgotten the role Jews played in the civil rights movement, including the lawyer who helped his parents integrate a New Jersey municipality and the two Jewish activists, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who joined the civil rights activist James Chaney to register blacks to vote in Mississippi and were killed for doing so.
There was Julius Rosenwald, the Jewish president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, who joined Booker T. Washington in building schools across the American South for black children, and Joel Spingarn, who was Jewish and one of the founders and a former president of the NAACP, whose name adorns the iconic civil rights organization’s highest award.
“Here in the United States, deep in the core of the black experience, has been Jewish alliances, whether it’s the Rosenwald Schools that helped educate so many African Americans at a time of segregation to the shared blood in Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner’s death,” Booker said.
“That’s something I’ll never forget,” he told JNS. “I know that even the highest award for the NAACP is named after a Jewish man. So I honor that tradition and legacy that I’ve inherited, and it’s yet another reason why I think this alliance is so important.”
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