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Newark Mayor Cory Booker smashes through all stereotypes. Whatever the 250 people at the Jewish Center in Princeton who came to hear him speak on "The Importance of a Strong U.S./Israel Relationship" on Feb. 8 might have expected him to say, he offered his own unique and surprising message.

Mayor Booker's connection to the Jewish people is strong and longstanding. It started when he was at Oxford University in England, studying modern history on a Rhodes scholarship.

A woman had invited him to dinner and told him to meet her at the Oxford L'Chaim Society. He found it, knocked, but received no response. When he finally just walked in, he found a big room, with lots of commotion and lots of black hats and "strings." "It was like one of those commercials for E.F. Hutton," Booker said. "When I walked in, everybody stopped. They wondered what this large black man was doing here."

Booker's dinner partner did not show up, and he was seated next to the 25-year old Chabad rabbi in charge of the affair. On the surface the two men, close in age, couldn't have been more different, as Booker explained, "He was white, I was black; he was short, I'm 6-foot-3; I'm very handsome, as you can see, and you couldn't tell what he looked like, there was so much hair on his face."

But when the two started to talk, they had a lot to say to each other and appearances didn't matter. "I call the moment, in retrospect, beshert," said Booker.

What brought the two men together at first was a shared belief in a very broad view of tolerance. Booker remembered describing to the rebbe, whose name was Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the content of an article he had written while at Stanford University (where he received a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in sociology) about the essence of tolerance. "It was not 'I'm going to stomach your right to be different,' but that we need to get to a deeper understanding," said Booker. "We need to embrace everybody; we need to grow." When Boteach responded in astonishment, "I wrote the same thing," the friendship was sealed.

Booker remained active in the L'Chaim Society, along with people from a broad range of religions and cultures, and eventually became its co-president.

During the year he and Boteach would talk and exchange books -- W. E. B. Dubois, James Baldwin, and Cornel West for Hillel, Maimonides, and Eli Wiesel -- and Booker was able to fulfill what mentors at Stanford had told him about his own religion, that "to be a real Christian you need to understand the true meaning of Judaism."

When he returned to the United States, Booker went on to Yale University Law School, where he linked up with Rabbi Shmully Hecht, introduced to him by Boteach, and they decided to create together a society at Yale based on Booker's experience at Oxford.

It was not just his experiences in Great Britain that connected Booker to Judaism but Jewish expectations about human potential parallel very similar to what he learned growing up as an African-American. "The story of Judaism is about humanity living up to the largeness of who it is," he said. He quoted, for example, the biblical Abraham who stood up to God and demanded mercy for Sodom and Gomorrah. He also offered an interpretation of God's question to Adam in the Garden of Eden -- "Where are you, Adam?" -- and suggested that what God was really asking was "Where is man who I created in my image? Why is he shrinking from who he really is?"

His mother and black leaders, he remembered, always used to look toward a future where America would fulfill its highest ideals. Despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution treated blacks as "fractions of beings" and that they faced "scars, struggles, and humiliating moments," maintained Booker, "we have never let them squelch the fire of what our nation must be about -- not black and white, but a larger conception of justice."

Booker sees this belief in fighting injustice not just as something that blacks and Jews share, but also as what the state of Israel embodies. "We as the people of America are not living just for ourselves," he said, "and I believe that Israel is not just about self-preservation but about elevating these values and ideas. This democracy must continue to exist. I believe the Jewish people have a higher calling, and I believe the ideals of Israeli democracy are critical for the long-term peace of our globe."

On his first visit to Israel Booker saw the Golan Heights and understood the vulnerability of the land below them. More recently he has also empathized with the Israelis who have to live with rockets from Gaza and next door to people who swear they will drive Israel into the sea.

Yet, Israeli democracy stands up to discrimination against its Muslim population. As an example, he noted how the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a call to exclude Arab parliamentarians who had called for violence against Israel out of the Knesset as entirely unacceptable in a democracy. "This is what at the end of the day Israel is about and America is about," said Booker.

Booker recognizes that the state of Israel is not perfect and may not always uphold its values, but this does not worry him. "The wonderful thing about Israel is that when mistakes are made, they are pulled into the public forum. From open, free, transparent, and honest debate they will get a higher product than totalitarian states that deny their own people's basic needs to exploit a larger fascist agenda."

Booker also responded to a number of questions from the audience. To a person concerned about whether reconciliation with Muslims is possible, he observed, "More people have been killed in the name of Christianity, and slavery was justified by an interpretation of Bible. Muslim leaders I know well are people of the highest ideals, of peace, justice, and truth, and there are so many exponents of true Islam on the globe. That said, I cannot in any way allow Islamoterrorists and people who teach hate to see the light of day in terms of allowing hatred to live. When we see evil and injustice, we must confront it."

Booker was also asked whether the policies of the Obama administration would affect support for Israel. The questioner noted that Ahmadinejad had suggested a potential reconciliation with the United States if it reconsidered its support for Israel. Booker responded, "I think Obama can be a powerful agent for good things to happen in the Middle East." But then he quickly added, "I think Ahmadinejad is a proponent of evil, and we should not be engaging with a man like that. We shouldn't be reaching out a hand to him unless he condemns the things he's said and done."

Booker also noted that he is still looking to bring together people of different backgrounds. He hopes to increase understanding between black and Jewish youth in Essex County, for example, by taking them together on a trip to Africa and Israel -- when the economy improves.

Jewish Center congregants were very enthusiastic about Booker's talk.

Naomi Vilko, co-chair of the Israel Affairs committee who brought Booker to the Jewish Center, said, "He was even better than I expected. He made a strong case for the need for America to have a closer relationship with Israel." On similar lines, Robin Hauer commented, "I hope he carries out his stated mission of educating Americans and the world about Israel and the importance of preserving democracy there."

Tirza Wahrman was impressed by Booker's unique perspective: "I think Cory Booker is an inspirational speaker and set a theme of shared interests and shared values of America and Israel that are not really talked about. He could speak critically about the state of things in Israel but point out that the vibrancy of their political institutions is cause for hope."

Jerry Neumann was taken with how Booker's perspective as an outsider could move the Jews of his community: "I never thought I would live long enough to hear an African-American Christian come into a Jewish audience and inspire the crowd -- both left, right, and center -- in the importance of a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. How great it is to have a political leader right here in our state who can articulate the issues regarding the U.S., Israel, and the Middle East in a way that frankly half the Congress couldn't. It was a real call to action. We in this community all love to argue and debate, and we spin our wheels. It takes someone from outside of our community to show us the way, to tell us that we have to get the word out."

Booker sees Judaism as issuing a positive challenge to all Americans. "What kind of life will we live? Will we succumb to the challenges around us and resign ourselves to the injustices of this world? Or will we say, 'Here I am; I will give of myself to protect those ideas, institutions, and nations that stand for something'? This is our calling. We can't hesitate, equivocate, or retreat when it comes to the cause of justice. This is for me what the relationship between America and Israel truly stands for -- remaking the world in the image of our creator, creating in this world a strength, a truth, a healing, a tikkun olam."