On Wednesday evening, December 2nd, select students, faculty, and other guests braved the rainy weather and trickled in to Yagoda Commons on the Beren Campus to hear from former U.S. Senator and current Yeshiva professor, Joe Lieberman. The talk, focused on the status of the Middle East after the Iran nuclear deal, was part of a series of speeches Lieberman has been giving throughout the semester.
Joseph Luders, chair of the Political Science department at Stern College, opened the event. He welcomed Lieberman, listing his impressive political credentials including his terms in the Connecticut state senate, U.S. senate, vice presidential bid, and service in the Armed Services and Homeland and Government Security committees.
Luders presented the topic at hand, explaining that the stakes around the deal are very high, and that there are lots of questions and issues that require the government to keep a watchful eye on a regime that needs to be approached with suspicion.
Lieberman then took the podium. But before he addressed the situation in the Middle East, he gave a heartfelt pitch for Yeshiva University. He stated that it is his second year in which he has been teaching at YU, and he is particularly happy to be at Stern College because his daughter, an alum of SCW, told her father he “spent too much time at Yeshiva College.”
He continued to list numerous reasons why he was happy to be at Yeshiva University, and that the university is a testament that the Jewish people are living in an extraordinary time in Jewish History.
Lieberman opened up his main topic by explaining that for the twenty-four years he served in the senate, he was very involved in the American-Israeli relationship. He said that through every presidency in which he served in some capacity, there were times when the commander-in-chief was deemed to be very pro-Israel, and times where the same president was said not to have been. Now Lieberman is particularly worried that there are ruptures and divisions exposed by the Iran nuclear agreement that will challenge some of what he had observed over that time.
Lieberman said he felt as though the agreement was a terrible one. He could not understand how the Obama administration and world powers could negotiate with a country like the Islamic powers of Iran that gave no reason to trust them.
The agreement was a result of ongoing negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 and was met with a lot of scrutiny and criticism when it was released this past summer. This was the position taken by many pro-Israel groups such as AIPAC and the OU, as well as the position promoted by YUPAC, the on-campus, pro-Israel action club at Yeshiva University.
Additionally, Lieberman expressed dismay over the partisan nature of the vote in favor of the nuclear deal. He relayed his assessment that the Obama administration pushed harder to get this agreement passed than any other bill or initiative throughout the President’s two terms.
Lieberman said he was still in the senate when Obamacare was being pushed through, and the president obviously wanted it to be passed. Yet Lieberman has heard from his democratic colleagues that the pressure Obama put on fellow democrats then was nowhere near the intense pressure he put on Democrats to be supportive of the bill this summer.
Despite the setback the deal may have caused in the U.S.-Israel relationship, Lieberman is confident that politicians on both sides of the house will work even harder to prove their support and allegiance towards Israel in the coming months. While politicians may have supported the agreement, they did not do so to spite Israel—many thought it was in the country’s best interest and will work to strengthen the relationship post agreement.
Lieberman closed the evening by fielding questions from students, including inquiries regarding ISIS, the Republican Presidential primaries and the Syrian refugee crisis.
Finally, he closed off the evening the way he started it: discussing the greatness of Yeshiva University.
“YU is about Torah U’ Madda,” he said. “You are lucky enough whether you stay in the United States, or make aliyah to Israel, to live in countries where your commitment to religion will not block you in any way.”
Judging from the former Senator’s exemplary track record as a politician and his strong words of Jewish theology that night, it is clear that he has truly embodied the YU pitch that he relayed so well throughout the evening.