Marco Rubio Dons a Kippah and Wishes You a ‘Boot Shabbos’

Marco Rubio Image by Getty Images
Marco Rubio spent last week dashing across Iowa, shaking hands, kissing babies (do people still do that?), persuading voters and… learning some Yiddish?
In preparation for Monday night’s Iowa caucus, Marco Rubio ran across Yarmulke entrepreneur and peace-loving loving Jew, Marc Daniels, who offered to give Rubio the bump in the polls he so needed.
He handed Rubio a red yarmulke that had Rubio’s name emblazoned in gold on it and asked the GOP candidate to wish the camera a “Gut Shabbos.”
But Rubio, who is not learned in the ways of Yiddishkeit, was stumped by the phrase.
“Boot Shabbos?” he asked Daniels.
The entire moment was captured by a bystander on video and immortalized in the New York Times’s coverage of the Iowa campaign.
‘Gut’ Shabbos or ‘Boot’ Shabbos? You decide. #2016 #Iowa @mikiebarb pic.twitter.com/7Z3W6s12RB
— Lauren Selsky (@LJSelsky) January 31, 2016
Rubio did finally get the phrase right, and, may we say, the red yarmulke suited him well.
Wearing my yarmulke
Posted by Marc Daniels on Friday, January 29, 2016
While Marco Rubio did not win the Iowa caucus, he did much better than he or anyone expected, trailing a little over a percentage point behind Donald Trump. So maybe Daniels did give him that little bump he had been praying for.
Rubio is definitely winning some Republican Jewish hearts, including the endorsement and support of Jewish billionaire Paul Singer.
As for Daniels, he ended the Iowa caucus at a party for Bernie Sanders.
You can still buy your custom candidate yarmulkes on Daniels’s site for a mere $10. Quite a steal, really! No Trump-kippahs, though, because, as Daniels once yelled at a Jeb Bush rally, “Trump is a putz!”
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
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
- 3
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 4
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
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.