WATCH: Cory Booker Responds to Trump’s ‘Disloyal Jews’ Comment – With A D’var Torah

Cory Booker Image by Getty Images
Cory Booker lambasted Donald Trump’s comments that American Jews would be “disloyal” for voting for Democrats in what amounted to an off-the-cuff d’var Torah, or sermon, while on the campaign trail in Iowa Wednesday.
Reporters asked Booker, a U.S. Senator from New Jersey who had a close connection to Jewish life at his university, about Trump’s recent anti-semitic comments comments.
Booker began by asserting his Jewish bona fides: He is “the guy who studied the Torah since [he] was 20 years old and had a really good Afro.” He continued on to discuss core Jewish values, mentioning “tzedakah” (charity), “chesed” (compassion) and the ideals of justice, equality and respect, while touching on Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement.
.@CoryBooker responds to a question about Trump’s “disloyal” comments on Jewish Americans pic.twitter.com/mj7nRHKJvZ
— Iowa Starting Line (@IAStartingLine) August 21, 2019
He then directly attacked the President, invoking the Jewish prophet Micah’s demand: “Do justice and love mercy.” Those ideals, Booker said, were “not being evidenced by the President of the United States.” He stressed that he “find[s] it stunning that we tolerate a person in the highest office in the land who continues to try to divide us against each other, to demean and degrade us.”
He reminded voters that “this election is not a referendum on Donald Trump” but rather “a referendum on us, our values and ideals.” To Booker, the most important values in this election are those of “goodness, decency, civility and kindness, more importantly… justice”
He rounded back to the notion of tzedakah and noted how the word not only invokes “charity, decency and mercy” but “justice” as well. “We need to get back to that, to being good to each other and standing in common cause to make this a nation of justice for all,” he said.
“Thus endeth this d’var torah,” he concluded.
This is not the first time Booker has shown off his knowledge of Judaism. Earlier this year, he quoted the Torah in Hebrew a during a CNN presidential town hall.
Alexandra Wells is a news intern at the Forward. Contact her at [email protected]
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.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
-
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
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.