Bernard “Bernie” Sanders

Bernard “Bernie” Sanders, born September 8, 1941, is a Jewish-American politician who served as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and as a United States senator. He became the longest-serving independent member of Congress in American history and one of the most recognizable voices of the American progressive movement. His importance lies not only in the offices he held, but in his ability to move ideas once considered marginal—universal health care, stronger labor rights, accessible education, and limits on concentrated wealth—into the center of national debate.

Jewish roots, Brooklyn, and the civil rights movement

Sanders was born and raised in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn in a Jewish lower-middle-class family. His father, Elias Sanders-Gutman, immigrated from Poland to the United States in 1921. His mother, Dorothy Glassberg, was the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia. Many members of his father’s family were murdered in the Holocaust. The family’s economic insecurity, combined with the memory of persecution, formed part of the background to Sanders’s social outlook: a democratic society should be judged by how well it protects people without wealth or power.

After a year at Brooklyn College, Sanders graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in political science in 1964. While a student, he became active in the civil rights movement through the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In January 1962, he led a protest against the university’s segregated student housing policy. Sanders and 32 other students occupied the administration building and held a sit-in outside the president’s office. The protest helped lead to an investigation of discrimination and, after further demonstrations, to the end of segregation in university housing. In 1963, Sanders attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

In 1963, Sanders and his first wife volunteered for several months at Kibbutz Sha’ar HaAmakim in Israel, in cooperation with the socialist-Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair. The experience became part of his Jewish and social biography, even as his later public career focused mainly on American issues and on a foreign policy centered on diplomacy and human rights.

From Burlington to national politics

After college, Sanders worked in a variety of occupations, including carpentry, teaching, writing, and filmmaking. He moved to Vermont in 1968 and during the 1970s ran for office as a candidate of the Liberty Union Party, which opposed the Vietnam War. He lost those races, but the experience established his identity as an independent politician outside the established party system.

In 1981, Sanders was elected mayor of Burlington by a handful of votes, defeating an incumbent who had served six terms. He was reelected three times and served for eight years. Although his Progressive Coalition never held a majority on the city council, he built working alliances and governed in opposition to both major parties.

His administration balanced the city budget, helped attract a professional minor-league baseball team, and made Burlington one of the first American cities to support community-trust housing. His administration challenged the local cable television franchise and won lower rates for customers. He also led the redevelopment of Burlington’s Lake Champlain waterfront. Instead of allowing the industrial shoreline to be converted primarily into private condominiums, hotels, and offices, he supported a mixed-use plan including housing, parks, and public spaces. The result helped make Burlington a testing ground for socially oriented urban policy and public participation.

Sanders also treated culture and community media as part of public life. From 1986 to 1988, he hosted and produced the local-access program Bernie Speaks with the Community. In 1987, he recorded the folk album We Shall Overcome with approximately 30 Vermont musicians. These projects reflected his belief that politics does not belong only to government buildings; it also grows in the spaces where residents tell their stories and participate in the life of their communities.

An independent voice in the House and Senate

In 1990, Sanders was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as Vermont’s sole representative. He was the first independent elected to the House in decades and the first self-described socialist elected to it in a similarly long period. During 16 years in the House, he remained independent of the Democratic Party while working with members of both parties when cooperation could produce results.

In 1991, Sanders helped found the Congressional Progressive Caucus and chaired it during its first eight years. The caucus became a lasting congressional home for lawmakers who emphasized labor rights, social protection, environmental policy, civil rights, and limits on the political power of wealth. Sanders supported national health insurance long before it became a central Democratic issue, opposed trade agreements he believed harmed workers, and consistently defended the right to organize.

His work in the House also included practical, targeted initiatives. He sponsored legislation establishing cancer registries to collect public-health data, supported community health services, opposed expanded government access to library and book-buying records under the Patriot Act, and voted against authorizations for the 1991 and 2002 wars against Iraq. His career demonstrated how a legislator outside the majority party could influence policy through coalitions, amendments, and persistence.

Sanders was elected to the Senate in 2006 and took office in January 2007. He was reelected in 2012 and 2018, continuing as an independent who caucused with Senate Democrats. Among his most important committee assignments was chairing the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs from 2013 to 2015. Working with Senator John McCain, he helped advance the Veterans’ Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act, signed into law in 2014 and designed to address serious failures in access to veterans’ health care.

His legislative record includes an $11 billion provision for community health centers in the Affordable Care Act, funding for programs serving veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries, expanded autism treatment under the military health program, support for senior services, and a ban on imported goods made with child labor. Even when his broad proposals could not pass on their own, Sanders often used amendments and bipartisan agreements to place parts of his agenda into larger legislation.

Presidential campaigns and the making of a movement

In 2016, Sanders sought the Democratic presidential nomination. Initially treated as a long-shot candidate, he built an energetic national campaign, particularly among young people and working families. He won 23 states and approximately 46 percent of pledged delegates. His campaign attracted attention because it relied heavily on small donations rather than corporate contributions or Super PACs. The average contribution was about $27, demonstrating that a national campaign could be financed through broad civic participation rather than a small circle of wealthy donors.

After leaving the race in July 2016, Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton and urged his supporters to continue the “political revolution” his campaign had begun. The campaign’s influence continued after the election. It changed how Democrats discussed wages, health care, tuition, climate change, corporate power, and labor rights. It also returned the terms “democratic socialism” and “economic democracy” to the center of American political debate.

In 2019, Sanders launched a second presidential campaign. The 2020 campaign recruited more than a million volunteers within weeks, again relied heavily on small-dollar donations, and briefly made him the national front-runner in a large Democratic field. On April 8, 2020, he suspended the campaign and later endorsed Joe Biden. Once again, his influence extended beyond the electoral result: elements of his proposals entered party platforms and broader debates about public policy.

Jewish identity, Israel, and the relationship between morality and policy

Sanders describes himself as Jewish in cultural and family terms, although he does not regularly participate in organized religious life. He attended Hebrew school, celebrated his bar mitzvah at Kingsway Jewish Center in Brooklyn, and observed Passover with his family. He has explained that his Jewish identity is connected not only to ancestry but also to responsibility toward others. In his public language, turning away from hungry children, elderly people, or homeless veterans is a moral failure.

As mayor of Burlington, Sanders supported the placement of a Chabad public menorah at City Hall and participated in its lighting. His support helped normalize and strengthen the public celebration of Hanukkah in the city. The decision reflected his broader view that public institutions should make room for the religious and cultural identities of their residents.

Regarding Israel, Sanders has affirmed Israel’s right to exist and the importance of American support for its security, while also criticizing Israeli policies toward Palestinians. He has supported a two-state solution, economic assistance to both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and diplomacy aimed at reaching an agreement. During the Gaza war that followed the October 7 attacks, he condemned Hamas’s assault and the killing of Israeli civilians, called for the release of hostages, and simultaneously demanded protection for civilians in Gaza and scrutiny of American arms transfers. His position reflects a continuing tension between Jewish identity and concern for Israel’s security on one hand, and a universalist commitment to human rights on the other.

Writing, public education, and lasting influence

Sanders has published books that turn his political experience into tools for education and organizing, including Outsider in the White House, The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class, Our Revolution, Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution, and It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism. These books are more than political memoirs. They explain inequality, encourage civic organization, and ask readers to view political participation as an ongoing responsibility rather than an occasional vote.

His eight-hour-and-34-minute Senate speech in December 2010, later published as The Speech, illustrated his method: using the congressional platform to make inequality and the distribution of wealth visible even when he could not stop legislation by himself. Proceeds from the book went to nonprofit organizations in Vermont.

Why this legacy belongs in Moreshet

Bernie Sanders merits inclusion in Moreshet because he spent decades expanding the practical meaning of democracy. For him, democracy meant not only the right to vote but also the ability to obtain health care, earn a dignified living, join a union, receive an education, and influence public institutions. He moved from student protest against racial segregation, through city leadership that reshaped Burlington, to national legislation and presidential campaigns that mobilized millions of citizens.

His Jewish legacy appears in the combination of family memories of immigration and the Holocaust, a formative connection to Israel, public celebration of Hanukkah, and a strong ethic of mutual responsibility. People may disagree with particular positions he has taken, but his contribution to debates about human dignity, solidarity, and social justice is substantial. For these reasons, Moreshet and Moreshet.com preserve his story as that of a figure who influenced Jewish and American life not through one office alone, but through ideas, institutions, and movements that continued to shape public life beyond his campaigns and terms in office.