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MIDTERMS BEHIND THE SCENES: “Marc Elias Represents Nearly Every Senate Democrat: Roll Call profiles Marc Elias, a partner at Perkins Cole and the go-to election lawyer for Democrats. “Over the past decade, since Kerry hired him as his campaign counsel, Elias has risen to become an indispensable figure in the party. He has a second office in the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee headquarters, where he’ll spend most of Election Day “pacing around” Executive Director Guy Cecil’s office “and driving him nuts for most of the day.”.. As chairman of the political law practice at Perkins Coie, Elias oversees 18 attorneys and represents nearly every Democratic senator. The firm’s client list also includes the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Governors Association.””The 45-year-old was born in New York City, grew up on Long Island and attended high school in Suffern, a small town in suburban Rockland County. He’s one of two sons to a stay-at-home-mom and a father who worked on Wall Street before becoming a small-business owner. They were “New Deal Democrats, Jews from New York,” Elias said, laughing. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1990 with a degree in government before going to Duke, where he earned both a law degree and a master’s in political science in 1993. He joined Perkins Coie and quickly moved into the political law practice under Bob Bauer, who would go on to become campaign and White House counsel to Barack Obama, and Judy Corley, who became in-house counsel to Richard Gephardt after Republicans won the House majority in 1994.” [Roll Call; Jewish Insider]

MIDTERMS ROUNDUP: Shmuel Rosner on the trail – “does a Republican majority impact Israel?” [JewishJournal] • “J Street tries to shape Senate races’ take on Israel” [Politico] • Marc Benioff, Sheryl Sandberg, and Wayne Berman back Ro Khanna [Fortune] • “The Sean ‘Simcha’ Eldridge catastrophe comes full-circle” [Politico]

2016 WATCH: “After Election Day, the Isolationists Will Be Back” [Politico] • “Democratic mega-donors: ‘To 2020 and Beyond'” [Politico]

Haaretz — “Sheldon Adelson discovers the limits of his power – in Israel”: “In the United States Adelson has plowed in recent years over a $100 million into the campaigns of Republican candidates. But Israeli law imposes a cap on political donations and many claim that [Adelson’s paper] Israel Hayom has simply been Adelson’s convenient loophole to support Benjamin Netanyahu… legislators from the right, left and center all see his paper as a political threat. Israel Hayom has gone into crisis mode, devoting entire spreads daily to the campaign against the law. On Monday it printed the phone numbers of seven co-sponsors, calling upon its loyal readers to swamp their offices with protest calls… Whether the law is indeed the brainchild of the shadowy local tycoon, the wily political operator Cabel or both, these Israelis may succeed where the entire U.S. Democratic Party machine has failed in curbing Adelson’s power to use his money to influence politics.” [Haaretz] • In a staff editorial, this morning’s Jerusalem Post takes a different angle alltogether, calling the proposed bill “bad, undemocratic legislation” which flies in the face of freedom of press. [JPost]

DEEP DIVE: “Sheldon Adelson Is a Philanthropist Like No Other” by Nathan Guttman:“When a storm wreaked havoc on East Coast air travel last winter, among the thousands of travelers stranded were several dozen Israeli-American teens from Washington and Philadelphia. But these youths, who were en route to the annual meeting of the Tzofim, the Israeli scouts, were luckier than the many others forced to mill about air terminals. Soon after their flight was canceled, a private executive jet landed at Baltimore-Washington International Airport to take them directly to their destination in Los Angeles. For most of the excited teens it was their first trip on a private jet. Some told their parents it was the highlight of their winter camp. All they were asked in return was not to take any photos.”

“The private jet’s owner was billionaire Sheldon Adelson. And it was an act that mirrored, in its small way, the broader goal of Adelson’s philanthropy and high-profile political giving, of which Tzofim is just a part: to be not just supportive, but also transformative… “Sheldon is an example of the new kind of philanthropy that is emerging,” said Jay Ruderman, president of the Ruderman Family Foundation who, as head of a significant fund himself, follows trends in Jewish philanthropy. “It will benefit the community, but the community won’t necessarily have a say.” [Forward]

STARTUP NATION: 5 Reasons Israeli Startups Are So Successful [Tech Cocktail] • Crime Pays for Radware as Cyber-Attacks Increase: Israel Markets [Bloomberg]

BUSINESS PROFILE: “The Maestro of Midwest Revival” Matt Kaminski interviews Dan Gilbert: “Despite the rich-man accessories (sports teams, Warren Buffett as BFF), Mr. Gilbert is a no-apology, third-generation Detroit kind of guy. Employees include a few of his elementary-school pals. He speaks with a slight rasp. He stands 5-foot-7, wears his mostly dark hair slicked back and sports a grayish stubble. He has a thin smile and a warmly dry sense of humor. Joe Pesci might play him in a movie—if Joe Pesci could do working-class, Jewish self-made billionaire.” [WSJ]

Uber investors, Justin Bieber manager raise $2 million for Adam Braun’s charity “Most venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs typically don’t spend tons of time in New York, but a bunch of them filled the giant ballroom at swank Wall Street fixture Cipriani for a charity gala last week. With at least four Uber investors amongst the attendees, the benefit raised more than $2 million for Pencils of Promise, a nonprofit that builds schools and trains teachers in Laos, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Ghana.”

“It helped that Pencils of Promise founder Adam Braun is the brother of Scooter Braun, best known as pop star Justin Bieber’s talent manager. On top of guiding the career of the Biebs, Scooter is an angel investor and has lately backed startups including Uber, Spotify, and Pinterest through his firm SB Projects…Pencils of Promise has a unique appeal in Silicon Valley. Several venture capitalists have accompanied the organization on school-building trips abroad, including Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital as well as health insurance startup Oscar, who traveled to a school in Guatemala.” [Fortune]

REAL ESTATE ROUNDUP: Canyon Provides Construction Loan to an affiliate of The Lightstone Group for Gowanus Development [Commercial Observer] • Real estate investor Bernard Spitzer, father of former Governor Eliot Spitzer, has died [NY Times; Bloomberg; NY Daily]

“Beauty is Power” — Helena Rubinstein exhibit set to open today @ the Jewish Museum: “In many ways, the beauty magnate, philanthropist and style icon Helena Rubinstein set the bar for the modern career woman. A contemporary of Coco Chanel, whom she often tapped for fittings and custom designs, Rubinstein was part of a wave of 20th-century entrepreneurs who encouraged women to take control of their destinies through carefully curated self-invention. With the first major retrospective of her life, “Beauty Is Power,” opening today at the Jewish Museum, the immigrant from a Polish shtetl who went on to radically alter the beauty industry will finally receive the closer look she deserves.” [NYTimes] • “Screenings honor thy Jewish film festival” [BostonGlobe]

TALK OF OUR NATION — Jews in Middle America fret about attracting Millennials: “Nearly 80% of Jews live in the 20 largest metro areas, compared to 38% of Americans on the whole, said Ira Sheskin, a geographer at the University of Miami in Florida. And while Des Moines has a lot going for it — this year Forbes magazine ranked it America’s best city for young professionals — many of the students attracted by a state-of-the-art Hillel house “aren’t going to find in Des Moines what they could find in a New York or a Chicago,” Sheskin said. Still, investing in attracting college students with a house stocked with games, television, free laundry and food in addition to Jewish-themed activities could pay off in the long term, said Steven Bayme, director of contemporary Jewish life at the Washington-based American Jewish Committee.” [USA Today]

The Town Built Out of Jewish Headstones:“Belarusian native Regina Simonenko is the go-to woman when a new headstone is discovered. Head of the Holocaust Center in Brest, Simonenko arranges the pickup driver every time there is a new find. “Each headstone tells a story,” she told me. “One headstone was found in the garden of a village house. It had been used to grind flour and a hole had been worked into it over the years. Another grave we found recently was dedicated to a woman named Golda. It was badly damaged and the dates of her life were missing, but there were clear tracings of gold in the engraving of her name.” Simonenko and the Together Plan hope to create a memorial out of the headstones “so they won’t be used for anything else in the future,” or at least to construct a protective fence to secure the graves preserved by the fortress. So far, the Together Plan has managed to pay for 400 headstones to be carefully relocated. But until more money is raised, the ultimate fate of the stones remains unclear.” [Vice]

Gate of Dachau Concentration Camp Stolen: “Security officials noticed early Sunday morning that the gate measuring 190 by 95 centimeters (75 by 37 inches) – set into a larger iron gate – was missing, police said in a statement. Whoever stole it during the night would have had to climb over another gate to reach it, they added.” [AP]

REVIEW — “The Talmud: A Biography” by Harry Freedman: “A biography of the Talmud—call it a bibliobiography—is welcome. Such a book could explain how the Talmud came to be and who reads it and why. Perhaps most important, it would explain to the uninitiated how to understand the Talmud’s complicated logic. Harry Freedman ’s “The Talmud: A Biography” addresses almost all of these subjects. But reading it is a lot like reading the Talmud, which is not necessarily a compliment.” [WSJ]

LONGREAD: “The Outcast” by Rachel Aviv in the November 10th issue of the New Yorker:“After a Hasidic man exposed child abuse in his tight-knit Brooklyn community, he found himself the target of a criminal investigation.” [NewYorker]

That’s all folks; have a great day!