Al Franken Hid Under A Table To Throw Cory Booker A Surprise Birthday Party
Surprise! Sen. Al Franken hides under a table to surprise Sen. Cory Booker on his birthday. Image by @weprogressives/Twitter
By Aiden Pink April 28, 2017
Al Franken is known in Washington for his ability to forge friendships with his fellow senators. The Minnesota senator hosts annual Secret Santas and is often seen laughing with other politicians while riding the congressional subway underneath the Capitol.
But he outdid himself on Thursday, corralling his Democratic Senate colleagues into holding a surprise birthday party on Thursday for Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who turned 48.
So glad my staff got this on video. A HUGE thanks to @senfranken for putting forth the HUGE effort to surprise me on my birthday. pic.twitter.com/kzlkOHHzqb
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) April 27, 2017
Franken jumped from under a table to surprise Booker, who was greeted by his staffers and many fellow senators. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York served cake, and Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey sang “Happy Birthday” to Booker in Spanish.
Despite not being Jewish himself, Booker is one of the most Jewishly-literate politicians in Washington. He served as the co-president of a Jewish club while studying at Oxford University, and, as Jewish Insider noted on Thursday, he is “perhaps the only Senator who regularly and publicly recites verses from the Torah in Hebrew.”
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter at @aidenpink.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Dive In
-
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
-
Fast Forward Trump nominee Ed Martin, who praised a Nazi sympathizer, also compared Biden to Hitler
-
Fast Forward Heavy police presence blocks anti-Israel protest in Brooklyn from reaching Jewish neighborhood
-
Fast Forward Ben-Gvir says he met with 4 members of Congress, rebuffed protesters at US Capitol
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
- 2
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
- 3
Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
- 4
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion The secret cost of Israel’s wars ravaged my family. It’s only getting worse
-
Yiddish מחשבֿות פֿון אַן אַהיים־געקומענעם (אַ מלחמה־טאָגגבוך)Reflections of a soldier after returning home (a wartime diary)
דער מחבר איז אַ סטודענט אינעם ירושלימער העברעיִשן אוניווערסיטעט, אינעם צווייטן יאָר ייִדיש־לימוד
-
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
-
News At Harvard, reports on antisemitism and anti-Palestinian bias reflect campus conflict over Israel
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.