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February 25, 2005/Adar I 16 5765, Volume 57, No. 26
Former N.Y. governor inspired by tikkun olam
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
Ask Mario Cuomo what's it all about, and he'll answer in two words.
Tikkun olam.
The seasoned pol and former governor of New York, who advanced a progressive social agenda and remains a standard bearer for the ideals of the Democratic party, has a simple explanation for what impelled him into politics and continues to animate him.
"God made the world and did not finish it," Cuomo says in an interview with Jewish News in advance of his keynote appearance here March 3 at the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix Women's Department Challenges lunch. "(And) we are the collaborators. We should finish it."
Cuomo, speaking from his New York offices, invokes another fundamental principle that has guided his political career - tzedakah - in his ruminations about national politics, international strife and America's role.
"Tzedakah is a matter of righteousness," he says. "(Treating each other) with dignity and respect."
Cuomo comes by his democratic roots - and his shared Jewish ones - naturally.
He was born Mario Matthew Cuomo on June 15, 1932, in S. Jamaica, Queens, N.Y., to Andrea and Immaculata Cuomo. He went to public school, served as an altar boy at the local parish church, and went on to receive both bachelor's and law degrees from St. John's University in New York.
He tells how a Jewish man, "Mr. Kessler," extended himself to Cuomo's parents during the depression when jobs were scarce. The Cuomos, Sicilian immigrants with little education and means, lived in an apartment behind Kessler's store.
"Mr. Kessler gave them work," recalls Cuomo.
He, in turn, became the "shabbos goy," the young boy who did work prohibited for the religiously observant Kessler on the Sabbath.
His exposure to both Jewish and Catholic beliefs informed who he is, both as a person and a politician, he says.
Cuomo was New York secretary of state from 1975-1979, lieutenant governor 1979-1983 and governor from 1983-1995, the first Italian-American to hold that office.
He is known as a defender of social causes and a passionate orator, best remembered for his fiery speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1984. He has practiced law with the New York firm of Wilkie, Farr & Gallagher since 1995.
Cuomo says he has had involvement with the American Jewish community for as long as he can remember.
Most significant was his participation as a member of the Second Vatican Council's Jewish-Catholic Relations Committee, which yielded the first church apology for 1,900 years of insensitivity. He laments that the resulting policy "never really worked well."
He has traveled to Israel several times, met with former Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, and helped to broker a research partnership between Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Syracuse University in New York.
Cuomo is optimistic about current developments in Israel.
"Things are moving most significantly," he says. And while terrorism and the Iraq war dominated the 2004 election campaign - and shored up increased Jewish support for President George W. Bush, he suggests - Cuomo believes that the mid-term elections will provide an opportunity for the Democratic Party to regain its strength.
He is "perfectly content" with the selection of Howard Dean as party chairman and confident that Dean will achieve party goals.
"He is a strong, strong spokesperson," says Cuomo. "He has proven that he can raise money, that he can organize young people, and he has committed to deliver the Democratic message."
Cuomo predicts the pendulum will swing in the Democrats' favor in 2006 with less preoccupation with foreign affairs and more concern about domestic issues.
"Middle income wages are not going up as fast as the cost of housing, transportation, health care," he says.
He feels strongly that it is the responsibility of government to assure a basic quality of life - and opportunity - for every American.
Asked about the role that faith should play in politics, Cuomo says that he is troubled by the Republican focus on "values."
"It makes me nervous," he says.
He voices concern about fundamentalists who are trying to co-opt government policy on a raft of social issues from stem cells to abortion to gay marriage.
"They are asking us to accept their (narrow) beliefs as public policy when they admit that they are issues of private belief."
Cuomo decries the absorption with the differences in religious and political outlooks and advocates concentrating on universal principles.
"We are basically a religious society," he holds. He suggests that there are underlying precepts, such as tikkun olam and tzedakah, that most Americans share.
He invokes both the Talmudic scholar Hillel and St. Francis Assisi, the patron saint of San Francisco, where Cuomo delivered his landmark 1984 call to action, as the ideal sources for law and government.
"Love one another, make the world a better place, make life better for all of us."
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