page_title: Joe Lieberman
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Joe Lieberman / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: Senator Joseph Lieberman and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz at the 2011 Brooklyn Book Festival.
context_page_description: Joseph Isadore Lieberman is an American politician, lobbyist and attorney who served as a United States Senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was its nominee for Vice President of the United States in the 2000 election. During his final term in office he was officially listed as an independent Democrat and caucused with and chaired committees for the Democratic Party.
  Lieberman was elected as a "Reform Democrat" in 1970 to the Connecticut Senate, where he served three terms as Majority Leader. After an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980, he served as state Attorney General from 1983 to 1989. He narrowly defeated Republican incumbent Lowell Weicker in 1988 to win election to the U.S. Senate, and was re-elected in 1994, 2000, and 2006. He was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in the 2000 United States presidential election, running with presidential nominee and then Vice President Al Gore, and becoming the first Jewish candidate on a major American political party presidential ticket.
context_section_description: Lieberman met his first wife, Betty Haas, at the congressional office of Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT), where they worked as summer student interns. They married in 1965 while Joe Lieberman was in law school. They have two children – Matt and Rebecca. Betty, who is also Jewish, later worked as a psychiatric social worker. In 1981, the couple divorced. When asked about the divorce in an interview with New York Magazine, Lieberman said, "one of the differences we had was in levels of religious observance", adding, "I'm convinced if that was the only difference, we wouldn't have gotten divorced."
  In 1982, he met his second wife, Hadassah Freilich Tucker, while he was running for Attorney General of Connecticut. Hadassah Tucker's parents were Holocaust survivors. According to Washington Jewish Week, Lieberman called her for a date because he thought it would be interesting to go out with someone named Hadassah. (Hadassah is the name of the Women's Zionist Organization of America). Since March 2005, Hadassah Lieberman has worked for Hill & Knowlton, a lobbying firm based in New York City, as a senior counselor in its health and pharmaceuticals practice. She has held senior positions at the Hospital of Saint Raphael in New Haven, the American Committee for Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials-International (APCO), Pfizer, National Research Council, Hoffmann-La Roche, and Lehman Brothers.
  Joe and Hadassah Lieberman have a daughter, Hani. Lieberman also has a stepson from Hadassah's previous marriage, Ethan Tucker. Lieberman's son, Matt, graduated from Yale University in 1989, and from Yale Law School in 1994. He is the former Head of School of Greenfield Hebrew Academy in Atlanta, GA. Rebecca, Lieberman's daughter, graduated from Barnard College in 1991, and from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1997. She is married to Jacob Wisse. Ethan Tucker, son of Gordon Tucker, graduated from Harvard College in 1997 and received his rabbinic ordination from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Lieberman is also related to Disney Channel star Raviv Ullman of Phil of the Future.
  Lieberman describes himself as an "observant" Jew. In 1965 he married Betty Haas, a Reform Jew. Since the death in 1967 of Lieberman's grandmother, a deeply religious immigrant, he found renewed interest in religious observance. His second wife, Hadassah, is also an observant Modern Orthodox Jew. "Hadassah calls herself my right wing", says Lieberman. In Lieberman's 1988 upset of Republican Party incumbent Senator Lowell Weicker, Lieberman's religious observance was mostly viewed in terms of refusal to campaign on the Jewish Sabbath. This changed when Gore chose Lieberman as the running mate; a Lieberman press officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said:
  He refers to himself as observant, as opposed to Orthodox, because he doesn't follow the strict Orthodox code and doesn't want to offend the Orthodox, and his wife feels the same way.
  The Liebermans keep a kosher home and observe the Jewish Sabbath. In one notable instance, then Senator Lieberman walked to the Capitol after Sabbath services to block a Republican filibuster.
  Lieberman has said that there is currently "a constitutional place for faith in our public life", and that the Constitution does not provide for "freedom from religion". He attends Kesher Israel Congregation in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. and Beth Hamedrosh Hagodol – B'nai Israel, The Westville Synagogue, New Haven, Connecticut. He also attends Congregation Agudath Sholom in his hometown Stamford.
  Lieberman is an admirer of the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. He has said of Schneerson, "I was impressed by this man, by his obvious spirituality, by his soaring intellect, by the extent to which he was involved in the world."
  He was the first Jew to run on a major party Presidential ticket.
caption: Lieberman with Marty Markowitz at the 2011 Brooklyn Book Festival to discuss the role spirituality played in his life.
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