How a Rochester rabbi became part of the political lore of Lieberman's bid for national office

Apr. 2—ROCHESTER — Joe Lieberman was a gifted storyteller, his wit capable of conjuring the perfect story for the moment.

Lieberman, who died at 82 on March 27, 2024, is being remembered as a political leader who was as comfortable in the pews of the synagogue as in the halls of power. One of his stories had a Rochester connection.

Years after his vice presidential campaign as the first publicly observant Jew fell short, Lieberman told the story of how a rabbi from Rochester, Dovid Greene, helped him balance the demands of politics and religion.

Soon after Al Gore and Lieberman won the 2000 Democratic presidential and vice presidential nomination in Los Angeles, the two planned to campaign by steamboat down the Mississippi River. They would start in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.

But the campaign faced a new kind of hurdle for the first time in presidential history. The Sabbath was approaching, and the campaign needed kosher food.

According to Lieberman's telling, Greene rode to the rescue "driving all the way himself" to deliver food that followed Jewish dietary laws to the campaign in La Crosse.

"He provided everything," Lieberman told an audience of Chabad emissaries in beards and black hats in New York in 2013, who responded with warm applause at the mention of Greene's name.

The story, while charming, wasn't entirely accurate. It had elements of truth, just not all of them.

The problem was that Greene didn't deliver the food.

"My whole experience with the Liebermans was an argument, because they kept on saying, 'Thanks for bringing the food,' and I kept on saying, 'I wasn't the one who brought the food,'" Greene told an American-Jewish publication later. "Two Jews together, it's an argument! It was typical."

In truth, both Greene and Lieberman's campaign were in need of kosher food at the same time, and their intersecting paths ended up producing a compelling, if not entirely factually accurate, political story.

Greene, co-founder and executive director of Chabad of Southern Minnesota, said his wife was away on that particular Sabbath and the task of preparing the food had fallen on him. Feeling somewhat insecure in the endeavor, Greene reached out to a kosher meat market in Postville, Iowa for help. The woman proprietor, feeling overwhelmed, said she was in the process of filling a big order "with all the trimmings" for the Lieberman campaign

LaCrosse being closer to Rochester than Postville, Greene said he would pick up his order when her driver arrived in La Crosse.

But when the van driver arrived in LaCrosse, a Lieberman staff member looked at the vast quantity of food and uttered, "it's too much, it's too much." The van driver, being a Gentile, didn't know what to do. So Greene made a command decision. He told the staff person to take what the campaign needed and send back the rest "on my responsibility."

Later, Greene got a call from an effusively thankful Hadassah Lieberman, Joe's wife. "Thanks so much for bringing the food," she told Greene. Greene tried to tell her that he didn't bring the food. That he was there to pick up his food. But his explanation wouldn't stick.

So when Lieberman thanked him a third time, Greene relented. As a favor, he asked Lieberman that the staff person who questioned the need for all that food — a secular Jewish woman — "light the candles before the Sabbath."

Things snowballed from there. Lieberman was so moved and overwhelmed by the idea, at Greene's thoughtfulness and generosity that she made a vow. "That's what I like about Chabad," she said. "I like it so much I'm going to do it for the duration of the campaign."

Greene said despite the misunderstanding, it resulted in a happy outcome: Lieberman's commitment that others in the campaign would light candles for Sabbath.

"It was an opportunity to bring more light into the world," Greene said.