Al Franken Hid Under A Table To Throw Cory Booker A Surprise Birthday Party
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
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.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
