Forward 50 2018

Elaine Luria

By Helen Chernikoff November 30, 2018

Inspired By The Times

Seders tend to be noisy, but Elaine Luria’s Seder on an aircraft carrier in the Middle East took the kosher-for-Passover cake.

“We’re going through the Haggadah … having our little makeshift Seder there while we’re launching and recovering aircraft that are striking terrorist targets in Afghanistan,” Luria told the Forward about a month before she won a tight race — 51% to 49% — for a Virginian congressional district that includes several military facilities and the biggest naval base on the East Coast.

As a veteran, a woman and a Jew, the 43-year-old Luria boasted a profile that was valued among Democrat strategists.

She grew up in Alabama and ran as a moderate, telling the Forward that she was inspired to run by her daughter.

“I don’t want her to ask me that question in ten years, ‘What did you do in this trying time?’”

— Helen Chernikoff

Helen Chernikoff is the Forward’s News Editor. She came to the Forward from The Jewish Week, where she served as the first web director and created both a blog dedicated to disability issues and a food and wine website. Before that, she covered the housing, lodging and logistics industries for Reuters, where she could sit at her desk and watch her stories move the stock market. Helen has a Master’s of Public Administration from Columbia University and a BA in History and French from Amherst College. She is also a rabbinical school dropout. Contact her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @thesimplechild.

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