Daily Kickoff
SCENE LAST NIGHT: Less than a mile or so from Chabad Lubavitch’s HQ at 770 Eastern Parkway, around 80 Hillary for America supporters gathered at the home of former White House Jewish Liaison Jarrod Bernstein and Hildy Kuryk, currently communications director at Vogue, to hear from the Clinton campaign’s senior advisors including manager Robby Mook, vice chairwoman Huma Abedin and finance director Dennis Chang. SPOTTED: Recent Chairman of the Conference of Presidents Bob Sugarman, Obama mega-bundler Sarah Kovner, Tusk Ventures’ Seth London, Anya Hoerburger of Intermedia Partners, Samantha Maltzman, Jill Strauss, Samantha Vinograd of Goldman Sachs and formerly at office of the NSC under Tom Donilon, and head of Cyber Security Practice at Dentons’ Andy Roth.
DRIVING THE DAY: At 10am, Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew testify at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the Iran nuclear agreement and its enforcement. [CSPAN; AP]
SCOOP — On The Hill: According to an email invitation obtained by JI, Senator Ted Cruz is planning to host a closed door roundtable meeting in his Senate office this afternoon with top Conservative and Jewish leaders to discuss “how grassroots groups can work together during the summer recess to stop the Iran deal.” The invite, which highlights the strategy Cruz used in previous summer recesses to energize the grassroots in opposition to the Affordable Care Act, states “Our office believes that August should be a referendum on Iran.” Over 40 groups are expected to be represented at the meeting, which will also feature Rep. Lee Zeldin, with a 4:30PM press conference following the roundtable.
Likely attendees include… Heritage’s Jim DeMint, Gary Bauer, CWA’s Penny Nance, ACU’s Matt Schlapp, Tea Party Patriot’s Jenny Beth Martin, RJC’s Matt Brooks, ZOA’s Mort Klein, Emet’s Sarah Stern, JINSA’s Michael Makovsky, Frank Gaffney, OU’s Nathan Diament, TIP’s Omri Ceren and UANI’s Alan Goldsmith.
At 11:45am, the Hudson Institute hosts a panel discussion on “Can the P5+1’s Vienna Deal Prevent an Iranian Nuclear Breakout?” featuring Senator Tom Cotton, Michael Doran, William Tobey, Hillel Fradkin, and Lee Smith. [Hudson]
“Obama eyes next diplomatic steps with Iran” by Michael Crowley: “Obama’s potential for working with Iran could be limited, given that Iran is sure to insist on preserving its supply link through Syria to Lebanon-based Hezbollah. That might be a deal-breaker for Sunni states — and for Israel, which battles Hezbollah on its northern border.” [Politico]
Leon Wieseltier: “The Iran Deal and the Rut of History: Has the Obama administration’s pursuit of new beginnings blinded it to enduring enmities?” [TheAtlantic]
Tisha B’Av Scene — according to a JI reader: Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer, sitting on the floor at Kesher Israel in Georgetown on Saturday night, listening to Leon Wieseltier provide commentary on the Book of Lamentations.
TOP TALKER: “Mike Huckabee Won’t Apologize: ‘I Have Stood at That Oven Door'” by Matt Berman: “If we don’t take seriously the threats of Iran, then God help us all,” he said in response to a question from Dana Perino. “Because the last time—it’s Neville Chamberlain all over again. We’re gonna just trust that everyone’s gonna do the right thing. Three times I’ve been to Auschwitz. When I talked about the oven door, I have stood at that oven door. I know exactly what it looks like.” [NationalJournal; Politico]
More Huckabee: “He can say whatever he wants to, but he puts more pressure on Israel for someone building a bedroom onto a house in Judea or Samaria than he does on the Iranians who are trying to build a bomb for God’s sake,” Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says of President Obama in interview on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.” [Bloomberg] • “Huckabee’s Iran comments spark ire – but not from Iowa’s Jewish Republicans” [TheGuardian]
BuzzFeed Oppo — by Andrew Kaczynski: “Huckabee Channeled Obama In ’07, Called For Engagement With Iran” [BuzzFeed]
Other 2016 Candidates: “Santorum Agrees With Huckabee: “I Think It Is Clear That This Is Iran’s Intent”” [BuzzFeed] • “Clinton repudiates Huckabee’s comments on Israel as ‘over the line'” [CNN] • “Scott Walker On Huckabee “Oven” Comment: “I’m Certainly Not Gonna Say It” [BuzzFeed] • “Jeb Bush: ‘We Need to Tone Down the Rhetoric’ on Iran Deal” [Bloomberg]
Ron Dermer weighs in on Huckabee: “These are not words that I would use or that I think are appropriate.” [USAToday]
Rabbi Marvin Hier on CNN asked if Huckabee’s language was appropriate? — “No, it’s not. It’s very harsh. And the only way we’re going to win this is with bipartisan support. And what the governor said, he’s a great supporter of Israel, is hardly the way to achieve that bipartisan support. I think it was over the top and I don’t agree with it… I would advise that no president of the United States should be compared in any way to Adolf Hitler.” [CNN]
Aaron Keyak emails… “As a Jew, what if you believed Huckabee was right. What if you believed Obama was Hitler or at least helping perpetuate something close to the next Holocaust. How far would you go to stop him? It’s just so unbelievably irresponsible — especially now that Huckabee standing by what he said. We know he’s playing politics, but what about the one or two or three people out there who take what he says seriously?”
Holocaust Education: “Should Palestinians Visit Nazi Concentration Camps? “We are breaking a big taboo. We are challenging the collective narrative of the Palestinians regarding the Holocaust.” Dr. Mohammed Dajani has become known worldwide as the Palestinian professor who led a group of students to visit the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp.” [DailyBeast]
RISING STAR: “Israel’s Best Diplomat Offers Hope to the Entire Middle East” by Adi Schwartz: “When George Deek uses the word “we” in a conversation, it is not entirely clear whether he means “we Palestinians,” or rather “we Israelis,” or perhaps “we Westerners,” or even “we Arabs.” At the age of 30, with a constant five-o’clock shadow compensating for his baby-face and thin silhouette, he is both an Israeli diplomat, representing the Jewish state, and a descendant of a Palestinian family who fled its home during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.” [TabletMag]
2016 WATCH: Trump’s Michael Cohen to Daily Beast reporters: ““I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen said. “So I’m warning you, tread very f***ing lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f***ing disgusting. You understand me?”… “You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up…for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet…you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it,” he added.” [DailyBeast]
PROFILE: “How an art historian became Ted Cruz’s foreign policy guru” by Nora Caplan-Bricker: “Coates came onboard soon after Cruz arrived in Washington in 2013, which put her in the middle of the senator’s infamous filibuster of Chuck Hagel’s nomination as Defense secretary—an episode that got the Texan labeled “McCarthyite” by many for his attacks on his fellow Republican. At first, Cruz wanted help with talking points. Now, Coates is not only Cruz’s senior national security adviser in the Senate, she’s also his campaign’s main international strategist.” [NationalJournal]
SCOOP: Scott Walker will participate in a breakfast fundraiser and foreign policy discussion on Thursday morning at the offices of Steve Tananbaum of Goldentree Capital Management. The event is hosted by Dr. Michael Doran, Laurence Zuriff, Devon Cross and will also feature Walker’s foreign policy advisor Mike Gallagher. [Invite] • On Wednesday, Nira and Ken Abramowitz, among others, will host Walker for breakfast in Connecticut [Scribd]
Mazel Tov! — “Lauren Bush Lauren is expecting her first child with husband David Lauren, the power couple revealed on Sunday — but we hear GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush earlier broke the baby news to a group of VIPs in the Hamptons over the weekend.” [PageSix]
BUSINESS BRIEFS: “Ryan Kavanaugh’s debt-ridden Relativity Media set for bankruptcy court” [NYPost] • “Here’s why billionaire fund manager Leon Cooperman thinks the MBA is worth it” [BI] • “Hamptons Scene: John Paulson wore his shirt untucked” [Bloomberg] • “Billionaire private-equity CEO David Rubenstein explains how rich kids are at a ‘disadvantage'” [BI] • “How Indian families took over the Antwerp diamond trade from Orthodox Jews” [Quartz] • “Only Nick Denton could seize a media calamity like the one currently roiling his Gawker Media empire and turn it into a public relations triump” [Politico]
REAL ESTATE ROUNDUP: “Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg buys £17m seven-bed Thames-side mansion in London” [DailyMail] • “Hamptonites up in arms over loud construction at Barry Rosenstein’s $147M mansion” [NYPost] • “Ruth family spending $35M on Meatpacking building” [RealDeal] • “Battle continues between Lord & Taylor and, Lerner family, owners of White Flint Mall” [FoxDC] • “Nassau’s Industrial Development Agency is slated to vote on granting developer Bruce Ratner more than $4.4 million in tax breaks for rehabbing the county Coliseum” [Newsday] • “Martin Selig plans 2016 construction start for downtown Seattle high-rise project” [BizJournals] • “Shorenstein’s planned $25M renovation of Center Plaza in downtown Boston” [BizJournal] • “Aby Rosen’s RFR pays $26M for Soho homeless shelter” [RealDeal]
“Ronald Lauder hires DC firm to advocate the return of stolen Nazi art: Ronald Lauder, son of Estée Lauder, who is worth $4 billion has hired American Continental Group to help with his campaign to push museums to return art stolen by the Nazis to the descendants of their original owners. The firm’s Shawn Smeallie and Manus Cooney will be lobbying the federal government on behalf of Lauder.” [PoliticoInfluence]
STARTUP NATION: “Zerto CEO Is Creating A ‘Build To Last’ Company, Betting On The Cloud And IT Transformation” by Gil Press: “Zvi Kedem is the CEO and co-founder (with his brother, Oded) of Zerto, a data protection and recovery startup focused on cloud-based and virtualized data centers… The company, based in Boston and Herzliya, Israel, has operations in 40 countries. The Kedem brothers’ previous data protection startup, Kashya, was acquired by EMC in 2006 for $153 million in cash.” [Forbes] • “How Israel’s Hot Startup Scene Is Fostering Several Unicorns” [Inc] • “Wix’s Israeli Founders Put Their Heads Together to Create Thriving, Globally In-Demand Website Design Company” [Forbes] • “Haredi women, the abysmally underpaid backbone of the ‘start-up nation’” [ToI]
Sarah Adler, co-founder of Spoon University (started at Northwestern’s Hillel), writes: “Never Read the Comments: I’m the 24-year-old CTO of a startup that just raised $2 million. I built all of my company’s tech by myself for the first two years we existed. People often ask my cofounder and I if we ever experienced sexism while raising VC money. I proudly believe that we have never been refused anything that we deserved because we were women… But I was sitting on a train coming back to NYC from Philadelphia — I had spent the evening judging a pitch competition at UPenn — when a guy came to sit by me on the train. He looked over at my computer and saw that I was coding, and he leaned over and said, “No way, is that code!?” “Yea,” I said. “Damn, you don’t look like a coder.”” [Observer]
“Alex Blumberg’s Gimlet wants to become the ‘HBO of podcasting'” by Shan Wang: “Last summer, radio reporter Alex Blumberg made a decision that, by his own admission, was “crazy.” Blumberg — known for his work with Planet Money, which he co-founded with economics journalist Adam Davidson, This American Life, and for sounding exactly like Ira Glass — left public media and started a podcasting company called Gimlet.” [NiemanLab] • Flashback: “So, Why Are All Podcasters Jewish Anyway?” [Forward]
Speaking of Podcasts… Tablet Magazine has a new podcast called ‘Unorthodox’ where, according to Tablet’s Stephanie Butnick, “we’ll sound off on that week’s news of the Jews–everything from the presidential elections to Amy Schumer, Israel to Drake. (But mostly Drake). We’ll talk to interesting guests about their books and films and projects.” [TabletMag]
TALK OF THE TOWN: “Why is a thriving Boston-area synagogue spending $15 million – to downsize?” by Uriel Heilman: “Times are good for Kehillath Israel, the storied Conservative synagogue in this Boston suburb… Now the 98-year-old synagogue on Harvard Street is about to embark on a radical renovation plan that might seem counterintuitive: It is downsizing.” [JTA] • “Washington’s Best-Traveled Synagogue Gets Ready To Move Again” [Forward]
SPORTS BLINK: “At Maccabi Games, Jewish Athletes Vie for Medals While Mindful of Past” by Melissa Eddy: “When Nancy Glickman lights the torch for the 14th European Maccabi Games, being held for the first time in Berlin, she believes that her father, Marty Glickman, would have been proud of the honor — and the irony — of his legacy inspiring hundreds of Jewish athletes competing in the facilities that Hitler triumphantly presided over during the 1936 Olympic Games.” [NYTimes]
BIRTHDAYS: Jay Zeidman… Larry Gordon… Jeremy Deutsch, Chief of Staff to Cathy McMorris Rodgers (yesterday)…
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