Political Quotes

“Thank you so much for your eloquence, Ms. Berkley, and for acknowledging that a lot of people think about the arrival of Jews in America as really being an infusion after World War I, an infusion after World War II; but we have 353 years of Jewish life in this country. And, unfortunately, much of our arrival followed persecution in other parts of the world: after the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms in Russia--that's when my family came initially in the 1800s--and then in the early 1900s fleeing Poland for a better way of life here. And it's so incredibly important that we tell our story. Jewish American Heritage Month allows us to do that now. President Bush proclaimed it 5 years ago. We had 250 cosponsors, of which you were one, of the original legislation that urged him to do that. And one of the things that I really think is important to acknowledge is there is so much partisanship here in the House of Representatives. I was the most proud at the time that we passed that resolution unanimously out of the House. With over 400 Members voting for it, we had 250 cosponsors, bipartisan cosponsors, and then we had a bipartisan effort across the Jewish community in this country to urge the President at the time to proclaim the first Jewish American Heritage Month. And they did so willingly, put aside party differences because they knew that it was incredibly important. And we have continued to be able to mark the occasion every year.”