About 15 minutes or so into a new documentary on the late U.S. senator and statesman Joe Lieberman, viewers are treated to a moment of prophecy when the Connecticut politician could see everything about to snap into place.
Coming off his first big loss—a run for Congress in 1980—and then a divorce, the former state senator set about figuring out his political future. Around that time, he was introduced to a woman named Hadassah. Both had been married once already and both were looking for someone who matched their own level of Jewish observance. Passover sealed the deal.
“For Passover, you’re supposed to cover all your surfaces in some way, and change all your dishes,” Lieberman’s sister, Ellie, recounts in the film. “And Hadassah did it all like my mother and my grandmother, but even more so.” And here Ellie takes on a serious tone as the camera zooms in. “She put tinfoil in the sink.”
“It was love at first sight when he saw that,” adds Hadassah’s son, Rabbi Ethan Tucker.
Tinfoil in the sink, and the rest is history. Lieberman saw in her a kindred spirit with whom he could build a life. In 1982, he decided his make-or-break run for office would be the state attorney general election, and he won.
In truth, Lieberman’s successful career and his joy at seeing tinfoil in the sink were two sides of the same coin: That he was so moved by the patient and meticulous practice of Judaism came from the same part of him that insisted, throughout his career, on saying only what he believed to be true and doing only what he thought was right, even if that was the more demanding path.
Centered, directed by Jonathan Gruber, had a limited opening in theaters this week. It finds the right balance between Lieberman’s spiritual life and his public life, though he never hid one from the other. His mentor in politics was Connecticut Gov. Abe Ribikoff, who was both Jewish and a bipartisan dealmaker.
After six years as attorney general, Lieberman, who died in March 2024, set his sights on the U.S. Senate. He managed to defeat Republican incumbent Lowell Weicker by running to Weicker’s right, cementing his persona as an independent-minded representative of all the voters. The win meant a great deal to Hadassah, the Prague-born daughter of Holocaust survivors. “I know I am an American citizen,” Hadassah says, “but I always think of myself as an immigrant, as a refugee.”
That would be a recurring theme for the couple. After Lieberman was chosen to be Al Gore’s vice-presidential nominee in 2000, he said at a campaign stop in Nashville: “The American dream is alive, and it is well.”
But the decade before that campaign put him in the crucible of the Senate. In 1991, Lieberman was one of just 10 Democrats to back the authorization of force against Saddam Hussein. “I think that incident set the stage for his entire career for being a different kind of Democrat,” said Michael Lewan, Lieberman’s former chief of staff.
There would be several more such moments. Lieberman was an early supporter of Bill Clinton’s winning campaign in 1992, but after the Lewinsky scandal broke, Lieberman felt it would have been hypocritical to stay silent. He gave a floor speech criticizing Clinton’s conduct.
After 9/11, Lieberman and John McCain began working together on foreign policy, eventually finding Lieberman back in Iraq. This time, however, his support for military action against Saddam Hussein would cost him dearly within his own party. In 2006, he was defeated in the Democratic Senate primary by Ned Lamont, who hammered Lieberman on his support for the war. Lieberman then registered as an independent and ran in the general, splitting the Democrats but winning statewide once again.
“I was absolutely liberated,” he said of his ability to run as an independent. “I could say whatever I wanted, I didn’t have to worry about offending the power structure in my party, which I had already nonetheless done a pretty good job of offending.”
Some of his former allies had begged him not to do it, and he would hear those same voices of disapproval from his side two years later when loyalty and honesty compelled him to support his friend and colleague—and Republican—McCain against Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. He even spoke at the Republican National Convention. In retaliation, Democrats stripped him of his chairmanship of a Senate subcommittee.
But that wouldn’t be the end of what Democrats considered their “Lieberman problem.” President Obama and other left-wing Democrats wanted a public option included in what would become the Obamacare health-insurance reform. Lieberman understood that the purpose of including a public option was to eventually crowd out the private market and make American healthcare government-run, a disastrous socialization of the industry. He endured obnoxious smears that he was sabotaging reform on behalf of healthcare companies in Connecticut. (It is hard to forget liberal “wonk” Ezra Klein’s accusation that Lieberman was “willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.”) But the White House needed his vote. The public option was dropped, and Obamacare passed.
Even after retiring from the Senate, Lieberman stayed active in public life. It is jarring, in fact, to watch the later parts of this documentary and be reminded of just how recently he was alive. The scenes about his death and funeral are devastating in that way, with everything still so fresh. But the film is a reminder we were lucky to have him as long as we did. And it gives us a reason to think of Joe and Hadassah as we begin to prepare for the upcoming Passover holiday and lay down those reams of tinfoil. Maybe even in the sink.
