Hours before the first — and perhaps only — presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, hundreds of Washingtonians gathered in a theater at the Library of Congress for a special screening of a new documentary about former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who died earlier this year. 

It was a fitting tribute to the 2000 Democratic vice-presidential candidate who later left his party after facing a primary challenge over his support for the Iraq war: Officials and activists from across the political spectrum gathered together for one final lesson in civility and bipartisanship from Lieberman, before they went home to cheer on two vastly different candidates for president.

In “Centered: Joe Lieberman,” a feature-length documentary, filmmaker Jonathan Gruber set out to tell the story of a politician who relished taking an independent stand, often against the wishes of party leaders, during his decades in public office, first in the Connecticut state Senate, then as Connecticut attorney general and finally as a four-term U.S. senator. 

“Joe’s approach and his vision for how to accomplish things is sorely needed today,” Gruber told Jewish Insider. 

The Library of Congress event, held in September, and a spate of other early screenings before the documentary’s official premiere at the D.C. JCC in November, are meant to highlight Lieberman’s approach to politics: rooted in compromise and focused on solving problems. But the events are bittersweet, because Lieberman was supposed to be there. He had seen the final cut of the film just days before he died in March.

Most of the content in the documentary didn’t change after Lieberman’s death. But the ending, of course, had to change. Lieberman’s wife, Hadassah, gave the filmmakers permission to film his funeral, and some moments from that day appear in the film. 

“Everyone’s missing him now,” Hadassah Lieberman told JI this week. “It was beautiful, very strong, and a real record of times that — whether it was 9/11 or the wars they were going through, or the bipartisan back-and-forth struggles, Joe’s story parallels all that, is very involved with the turbulence and being a calm, straightforward man.” 

Hadassah Lieberman’s praise for the film and her eagerness to work with the filmmakers, particularly at such a sensitive personal moment, were not guaranteed. She and her husband at first said no when approached about the project by executive producer Rob Schwartz, founder of Hidden Light Institute, a nonprofit that supports Jewish films. (Schwartz also served as Lieberman’s chief of staff when he was the Connecticut Senate majority leader in the late 1970s.)

“We didn’t need another ego-boosting thing. And we realized shortly thereafter, in this time of back-and-forth turbulence, we need to talk about things that are points of how we work together with people, and how my husband has said a great deal about what we must do next to pull our country together,” Hadassah Lieberman said. “We did it with pride.”

Schwartz and the Hidden Light Institute plan to screen the documentary at schools and universities, with the hope of teaching young people that politics doesn’t have to be so vitriolic.

“He viewed it not as a vanity project, but to create an educational tool,” Schwartz said of the late senator. “When I told him what we wanted to do with the documentary, the other piece was not just to talk about his life, but about the sanctity of democracy, the importance of bipartisanship and the need to have a civil discourse in this country, something that doesn’t exist anymore.” 

The film covers the arc of Lieberman’s life, from him attending the March on Washington in 1964 to his failed run for Congress in 1980 to his lifelong hawkish worldview, which eventually led him to become a pariah within his own party and eventually leave the Democratic Party to become an independent. Toward the end of his life, he was the co-chair of the bipartisan organization No Labels as it pursued a controversial and much-criticized move to mount a third party candidate in the 2024 election. Despite Lieberman’s involvement in the film, it did not only focus on his successes.

“We had to be credible, and being credible is being even-handed about it. So were there issues of contention in the film? The answer is yes,” said Schwartz. “Lieberman never inserted himself in terms of lobbying for one point or another.”

Lieberman sat for several hours of interviews with the filmmakers, including scenes shot on location in his synagogue and at Yale, where he received a bachelor’s degree and attended law school. But despite the filming at the synagogue, “Centered” is not a documentary about Lieberman’s legacy as a Jewish politician. It is about an accomplished politician who happened to be Jewish. 

Yes, Lieberman was the first Jewish person to appear on a major party ticket; and as someone who observed Shabbat, he was an inspiration for Jewish Americans who saw him stick to his religious traditions even when political responsibilities made that difficult. But the story at the heart of “Centered” is about the lessons Lieberman can teach all Americans, not just Jewish ones.

“It’s a huge part of the film, but it’s not a defining part of the film. In my mind, it’s more about what he accomplished for the country,” said Gruber.

One scene shows the senator wrapping himself in a tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl, and reciting the corresponding blessing. Here, too, Hadassah Lieberman wasn’t sure that including this moment was the right thing. 

“I didn’t know that that should be part of this documentary. But you know what? I was probably wrong, because they showed it in a very easy, important way, and it’s part of his story,” she said. 

It was a non-Jewish cameraman who convinced Lieberman to let the team film him at prayer. 

“He said, ‘From my standpoint, not being Jewish, it’s important to show this is part of who you are.’ And that convinced them,” Gruber recounted. “It’s about the work that he did as a Jewish politician and leader for the country that I think is what people should take away from this, but also his uncompromising faith.”