Today, Newark mayor Cory Booker is expected to win New Jersey’s Democratic nomination for Senate in a landslide. The 44-year-old politician is well-known for his larger-than-life feats—from saving a constituent from a burning building to going on a 10-day hunger strike to call attention to local crime and corruption. But before he attained celebrity status, and before he compiled his sterling resume at Oxford and Yale, Booker notched another unlikely credential: the first African-American Christian president of a Chabad House.
And that’s the least of Booker’s remarkable Jewish exploits. We’ve taken the liberty of compiling some of the mayor’s best Jewish moments into one convenient supercut. Watch him enthuse about the weekly parsha, quote Pirkei Avot, and tell the story of his personal Jewish journey to everyone from Yale graduates to Yeshiva University students. And when you’re done, read what Booker’s enthusiasm for Judaism says about his political philosophy.
Yair Rosenberg is a senior writer at Tablet. Subscribe to his newsletter, listen to his music, and follow him on Twitter and Facebook.