Just in case anyone wasn’t yet paying attention, US Senator Cory Booker proclaimed, “Hineni,” I am here, 19 hours into his marathon speech on the Senate floor Tuesday, deploying his famous facility with Hebrew to protest President Donald Trump.
The Hebrew word, which appears multiple times in the Bible when Abraham and Isaac heed God’s call, was one of several Jewish references Booker dropped during his speech, which he began at 7pm on Monday and which was still going as of Tuesday afternoon.
Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, said the speech was meant to rally opposition to Trump and to demonstrate that his party is able to take bold action as the Trump administration moves aggressively to enact its agenda.
Shortly before 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Booker recited a litany of criticisms of the Trump administration, capping it with the biblical verse.
We have to say to history where we stood, where we stood when they were coming after our constitutional principles, where we stood when they were threatening judges to impeach them for making just decisions. Where we stood when they were taking law firms and threatening their business unless they came and kowtow to the big leader. Where we stood when they were disappearing people from America without the due process that even Antonin Scalia said they should have. Where were you when they came after the health care of the disabled, the health care of the children, the health care of the expectant mothers, the health care of seniors? Where were you when they attacked veterans, laying them off for no justifiable reason and attacking the VA services that they rely on? Where were you when we turned our back on Ukraine? Where were you when we turned our back on our alliances? Where were you when they took the economy down with tariffs, when they took the economy down by threatening it so consumer confidence drops. Where were you?
How many things are going on before we answer the question, as it says in Hebrew, hineni. Hineni. Behold Lord, here I am.
Shortly afterwards, Booker invited a comment from Senator Jacky Rosen, who is Jewish and represents Nevada, where his mother lives. Booker praised Rosen as having had “one of the hardest jobs in all of the United States, which is to be president of a shul,” before listening to her comment. After hearing from her, he added a yellow ribbon pin symbolising the plight of the Israeli hostages in Gaza to his lapel.
“I’m grateful that we were founders of the Black-Jewish Caucus. … The Juneteenth seder’s coming up,” Booker told Rosen, referring to a group that formed in 2021. “I’m going to put this on as you have it on, as I think about Edan Alexander and all those who are suffering. I’m just so grateful for our friendship and what we’ve done against antisemitism, what we’ve done for the Abraham Accords.”
Alexander is one of the 59 hostages remaining in Gaza who were taken when Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. He grew up in New Jersey before moving to Israel and joining the army.
Booker’s speech is not a filibuster because it is not intended to block the passage of a bill. Still, it delayed Senate operations and is approaching the record length of a Senate speech set in 1957, when the Republican Strom Thurmond held the floor for more than 24 hours to block passage of a civil rights bill. In keeping with Senate rules, Booker has been standing without interruption since he began speaking.
The Hebrew citation in Tuesday’s speech was not Booker’s most extensive. In 2020, he recited a seven-word line from Jewish liturgy on CNN. The previous year, he cited the Jewish values of “chesed” and “tzedakah” when responding to Trump’s claim — reiterated many times since — that Democrats are disloyal to Jews and Israel. The senator’s affinity for Judaism came from his association with the L’Chaim Society at the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and its former director, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, with whom he later split over politics.
