ASHINGTON - And so it came to pass that one of the last stained-glass ceilings in American life was shattered.
Vice President Al Gore's selection of an Orthodox Jew, Joseph I. Lieberman, as his running mate will be remembered as an enduring landmark in both American and Jewish history.
The selection of a man who, except in extraordinary circumstances, does not work on the Jewish Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday and who has a wife named Hadassah is an emblem of national openness, a sign of cultural change - and a political gamble of the first order.
Simply by appearing today on the stage of Nashville's War Memorial with Gore, the Connecticut senator will be instantly transformed into a symbol of national diversity, placing him in the ranks of Jackie Robinson, John F. Kennedy, and Sally Ride as pathfinders in the search for a new high ground in American life.
Lieberman's selection comes in an age when political leaders of both parties are free to calculate that they will win credit, not opprobrium, for breaking the racial and religious barriers of American life; only two weeks ago, the Republican establishment hungered to place a black man, retired general Colin L. Powell, on its national ticket.
It comes, moreover, at a time when it may not be unrealistic to think that Americans of all flavors have grown less inclined to savor their differences than to celebrate the breakthrough of another of the groups that provide the American stew with its richness and spice.
That notion receives one of its greatest tests this autumn - one that Gore and the Democrats, with a double-digit disadvantage in the polls, cannot count on winning.
Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1928, but it wasn't for another 32 years that a Catholic won the White House. And to do so, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts had to appear before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association and argue that if the election of 1960 were decided on the day he was baptized, ''then it is the whole nation that is the loser.''
Jews, who account for 2.3 percent of the nation's population, are a far smaller minority than Catholics, and though Gore and the Democrats surely will get credit for nominating a Jew, they also may pay a price for it.
That already is the worry of some Jews.
''While anti-Semites and those on the fringe of society who subscribe to conspiracy theories may have a field day with the choice of Senator Lieberman, we remain confident that the American people will dismiss the extremists and consider him on his public record,'' said the Anti-Defamation League's national director, Abraham H. Foxman.
But a measure of the changing nature of American life is that the Lieberman selection is being evaluated not only as a cultural breakthrough but also as a political calculation.
Lieberman, 58, satisfied the Gore camp's greatest desires: He is a robust defender of the ''New Democrat'' brand of politics. He is a sober and respected political figure, a credible opponent to former defense secretary Dick Cheney in debate and in stature. He also possesses that rarest commodity in a Senate chamber where every Democrat voted to acquit President Clinton in last year's impeachment trial: distance from the president. Lieberman was perhaps Clinton's leading Democratic critic in the chamber, publically chiding the president for his comportment and saying his behavior was ''not just inappropriate'' but was ''immoral.''
Though the president surely will be discomfited by the repeated broadcast of Lieberman's speech on the hushed Senate floor, the Gore camp believes the vice president will benefit each time Lieberman is shown arguing that the president's conduct with Monica S. Lewinsky ''sends a message of what is acceptable behavior to the larger American family, particularly to our children, which is as influential as the negative messages communicated by the entertainment culture.''
The selection provides the Gore campaign, already burdened by a whiff of careerism and elitism, with a running mate who has two Yale degrees and has held public office for nearly three decades.
It also provides Gore with few geopolitical advantages. The Democrats have long counted Connecticut in their column. The state with the biggest Jewish population, New York (where one voter out of 11 is Jewish), is considered part of Gore's political base and is unlikely to be contested by Governor George W. Bush, the Republican presidential nominee.
The selection of Lieberman may make a small difference in some states, such as California, whose 52 electoral votes make it the biggest prize in November, and in Florida, a retirement haven for Jews and a state whose 25 electoral votes are not now so reliably counted by the Republicans. It may help slightly in Illinois, which has a large Jewish population in the Chicago suburbs and is considered one of the big autumn battlegrounds, and in New Jersey, where one voter in 17 is Jewish. New Jersey, however, is not considered to be as much of a swing state in 2000 as it was only a decade ago.
But the influence of the Jewish vote is tiny, not only because of its numbers but also because of Jews' affinity for Democratic presidential candidates in any case. No Republican candidate in the modern era has won a majority of the Jewish vote - a legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt's appeal to Jews during the Great Depression and of Harry Truman's willingness to recognize Israel shortly after it declared statehood. In both the 1992 and 1996 elections, the Clinton-Gore ticket won 78 percent of the Jewish vote.
Instead, the political importance of the selection of a Jewish vice presidential candidate may be in the support Gore might lose from other voters unwilling to support a ticket that includes a Jew.
That ''stealth effect'' is difficult to measure, even in confidential public polls, but the 1986 California gubernatorial campaign of Tom Bradley, who was black, may provide hints. Most polls indicated that the Los Angeles mayor would win the election; after the ballots were counted, George Deukmejian prevailed, perhaps, as many analysts suggested, a result of a quiet form of racism that did not show up in the polls.
There are indications, however, that at least overt anti-Semitism, once a staple of American life, has greatly diminished. There is, moreover, some persuasive evidence that many voters pay little attention to a candidate's religion.
Voters have sent 11 Jewish members to the Senate and 23 members to the House in the current Congress. In the period between 1960 and 1967, often regarded as the peak years of the struggle to break down barriers across American life, only two Jews, Jacob K. Javits, the New York Republican, and Abraham A. Ribicoff, the Connecticut Democrat, sat in the Senate.
But what is most significant is that nearly half of the Jewish senators now in office on Capitol Hill were elected from states where Jews accounted for less than 1 percent of the electorate.
Indeed, two Jewish Democrats, Russell D. Feingold and Herb Kohl, now serve in the Senate from Wisconsin, where Jews constitute 0.5 percent of the population. And for the past two decades, a Jewish senator has represented Minnesota, a state where Jews account for 0.9 percent of the population and a place once known as a fertile breeding ground of anti-Semitism.
For generations, American Jews have regarded the political arts as the wrench and pliers of national life, the tools that could help fashion a society where there is room for them and other minorities to survive free of oppression and, then, in a miracle of the American dream, actually thrive free of barriers.
Until the middle of the last century, Jews remained behind the scenes in American politics, often rallying for reform, especially in the wake of the 1911 fire in New York's Triangle Shirtwaist Co., which killed 146 people, many of them Jewish girls and women between the ages of 13 and 23. The fire led Jews to fight for, and help win, the passage of progressive labor laws, fire-safety codes, and workers' compensation plans. During the 1920s, Jews became more visible in politics, with figures such as Rose Schneiderman, a leader of the Women's Trade Union League, and Belle Moskowitz, a classic political insider, becoming prominent members of Al Smith's inner circle.
Jews have won enormous success in the financial and cultural worlds - indeed, it is possible to say that in the 20th century there was remarkable congruence between Jewish culture and American culture. Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, the Marx Brothers, Vladimir Horowitz, Chaim Potok, Bob Dylan - all are known as American cultural icons.
And yet the very top of political life always seemed a peak too far. Until now.
