Daily Kickoff
FIRST LOOK — LongRead: “The Billionaires’ Loophole: A tax law helps David Rubenstein perform major patriotic philanthropic works. Is it fair?” by Alec Macgillis: “Rubenstein, with an estimated net worth of $2.6 billion, is one of the wealthiest people in Washington. He is an American-history buff, and practices what he calls “patriotic philanthropy,” on behalf of the national heritage… In 1987, after a short career in politics, Rubenstein founded Carlyle, building it around his Washington relationships and those of his partners—“access capitalism,” Michael Lewis called it… Until recently, relatively little attention had been paid to one source of Rubenstein’s wealth, which he has quietly fought to protect: the so-called carried-interest tax loophole.”
“David Rubenstein, who is sixty-six, grew up in Baltimore, in a two-bedroom row house in the city’s northwestern corner, which was then predominantly Jewish. His father sorted mail for the postal service, and his mother was a homemaker… One afternoon last October, Rubenstein and his mother gathered with several hundred other guests at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the Beaux-Arts main branch of the New York Public Library, rechristened in 2008 in exchange for a hundred-million-dollar gift. Rubenstein was there to receive the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy… In his acceptance speech, he said, “When I was told about this award, I thought there must have been a category for a Jewish boy from Baltimore, and that’s how I got it.” [NewYorker]
HEARD LAST NIGHT: Sanders: “I am very proud to be Jewish” — by Jerry Adler: “Cooper followed up by citing a recent newspaper article that he said claimed of Sanders that “you keep your Judaism in the background,” to the disappointment of some Jewish leaders. “I am very proud to be Jewish, and being Jewish is so much of what I am,” Sanders replied. “Look, my father’s family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust. I know about what crazy and radical and extremist politics mean. I learned that lesson as a tiny, tiny child, when my mother would take me shopping, and we would see people working in stores who had numbers on their arms because they were in Hitler’s concentration camp. “I am very proud of being Jewish, and that is an essential part of who I am as a human being.” [Yahoo; Vox; JI]
Jeffrey Goldberg: “Small programming note: The Holocaust should not define Jewishness. That is all.” • Atlantic’s Molly Ball: “Agreed, it should be about frizzy hair and weird soup.” • Jeffrey Goldberg: “I was thinking more about the radical egalitarianism of the Jewish idea, Torah study, liturgy, language. But also soup.” • Molly Ball: “I forgot the funny hats.” • CNBC’s John Harwood: “You and your inside jokes #BeInclusive” • Molly Ball: “Thousands of years of oppression, y’all can stand to miss a joke.” • Jeffrey Goldberg: “John, don’t take her little blast of Semitic hostility personally.” [Twitter]
“Agency Rivalries and Satire Show Up in Latest of Hillary Clinton’s Emails” by Mark Landler: “There are a series of tongue-in-cheek emails from her former spokesman, Philippe Reines, lampooning a White House request that she coordinate her message during a visit to Israel with that of President Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, who had been in the country just days before her… Mrs. Clinton, he wrote, planned to issue a statement after her arrival in Tel Aviv in which she said she hoped “Donilon doesn’t leave the toilet seat up in the King David’s Presidential Suite — which I assume he’s trying on for size.”
“Mr. Reines also wrote that the Jerusalem police had retrieved a prayer that Mr. Donilon had left in the Western Wall, after it had slipped out. He even attached a fake copy of it to the email. “Mr. Donilon shouldn’t be in such a rush as he speeds around our city and does a fly-by of our Wall,” Mr. Reines quoted an unnamed, fictitious Jerusalem police official as saying. “He should take his time, learn our history, fold his notes tighter, and wedge them in better. He will not truly understand why we face an existential threat until he does.” [NYTimes]
BIDEN VISIT — White House: no diplomatic breakthrough expected during Biden’s Israel trip: “On Friday, the White House said “no breakthroughs” on the Israeli-Palestinian track were expected during Biden’s visit… ‘There have been those who have already predicted the collapse of this relationship – but that is not the case,’ prime minister says ahead of vice president’s visit.” [JNS; Haaretz]
“New Proposal to Divide Jerusalem Unites People Against It” by Isabel Kershner: “A new plan on how to divide Jerusalem’s Jewish and Arab neighborhoods has had the peculiar distinction of uniting people against it. The contentious plan, promoted by a group of liberal Israeli Jews and adopted in principle by the center-left Labor Party, would unilaterally fence off most of East Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods and transfer responsibility for their 200,000 residents from City Hall to the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank.” [NYTimes]
2016 WATCH: “Rubio Turns to National Security in Crucial Campaign Stretch” by Josh Rogin: “The Rubio campaign plans to roll out its National Security Advisory Council Monday. The group includes.. former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former Undersecretary of Defense Dov Zakheim, former State Department official Paula Dobriansky and Ambassador Kristen Silverberg. Former Senator Norm Coleman, who was with Lindsey Graham’s campaign, has signed on… Dan Senor, former adviser to Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, has been informally advising Rubio since last year.”[BloombergView]
CPAC Jews Choose Cruz — by Jacob Kornbluh: “Team Cruz was on full display throughout the Shabbaton weekend. At the morning meal, attendees heard from Glenn Beck, a prominent conservative radio host who endorsed Cruz for president. Radio host Mark Levin and Cruz’s senior advisor Nick Muzin stopped by on Friday to schmooze and Cruz’s Jewish chief of staff, Paul Teller was spotted mingling with the group after dinner on Friday night.” [JewishInsider]
–Spotted at Young Jewish Conservatives: Joseph Raskas, Yitz Tendler, David Milstein, Nick Muzin, Paul Teller, Martin Sweet, Mark Levin, Jason Bedrick, Eytan Laor, Michael Ledeen, Harold Rhode, Howie Slugh, Dr. Mark Young, Malky Young, Dr. Alan Berger, Jonathan Schreiber, Phil Rosenthal, Ariana Kaufman, Joel Mowbray, Ari Werth, Nachman Mostofsky, Ben Packer, Joel Griffith, Joshua Kelley, Hyman Drusin, Perry Bloch, Devorah Chana Goldman, Talya Elisa, and Eric Golub.
Spotted Sunday: Eric Trump and Jason Lyons at Trump National Doral in Miami [Facebook]
“The RJC’s Quandry: To Trump or Not to Trump” by Laura Goldman: “I then surveyed the many RJC board members that I know if the organization’s plan was not to endorse Trump. All of them gave me a variation of Fred Zeidman’s answer-“You heard it before I did.” Most of them demurred from definitively saying they would vote for Trump if he was their party’s nominee. One Rubio supporter said,”I am still hoping that it doesn’t come to that.” When pressed on whom they would vote for in a Trump-Clinton match up, most admitted they could not envision voting for Hillary Clinton under any circumstances. Many said that the conversion of Trump’s daughter Ivanka to Judaism and marriage to a Jew assuaged their fears that he was really a racist.” [LauraGoldman] • “Major GOP Donors Are Turning Their Hopes Toward A Contested Convention” [BuzzFeed]
–Pamela Rafalow Grossman: “Don’t Go Gaga Over Ivanka — a Nice Jewish Daughter Doesn’t Atone for the Sins of the Father” [Forward]
Haim Saban: Trump is a ‘clown,’ and would be ‘dangerous’ for Israel: “Saban, an entertainment magnate best known for producing the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, is one of the biggest backers of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. He told Channel 2 in an interview aired Saturday night that the GOP candidate was “dangerous for the world, and since Israel is part of the world, therefore he’s dangerous to Israel. He’s unpredictable. It’s very hard to know what he’s really thinking,” Saban explained.” [JI; ToI]
DONOR PROFILE: “Cherna Moskowitz of Miami Beach is definitely not average. She is Florida’s biggest political donor in the 2016 presidential race. The wife of Irving Moskowitz, the noted doctor who has donated millions from his hospitals and his legalized gambling interests to establish a Jewish majority in east Jerusalem, has given $30,700 to Cruz. That is more than what federal law allows, which has forced the campaign to refund some and have Cherna reallocate some of it as coming from her husband. She also donated $2,700 to Mike Huckabee last June.” [NewsPress]
“Michael Bloomberg Moved His Website as Speculation About Intentions Grew” by Jeremy Merrill: “In a technical move that could be viewed as a prerequisite to announcing an independent bid for the presidency, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s personal website was recently transferred to an independent web server — away from servers run by his company.” [FirstDraft]
ON THE TRAIL: “Millennial Reporters Grab the Campaign-Trail Spotlight” by Sridhar Pappu: “When the last presidential race was in its early stages, Katie Glueck was a senior at Northwestern University. Now covering the Ted Cruz campaign for Politico, Ms. Glueck, 26, belongs to a select group of millennial reporters who have a front-row seat to the greatest political show on earth. Rosie Gray, 26, who covers the campaign for BuzzFeed, said that her age is only occasionally a factor. “Honestly, the times I feel the most young is when I’m talking to a voter on the trail and I sound like a pipsqueak saying, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, can I ask you a question?’” she said. “A lot of that had to do with how you present yourself and how you act. You can either act like a young little thing or not.”… Between Jan. 10 and the last days of February, Zeke Miller, a 26-year-old reporter for Time, said he spent a total of three hours in his New York apartment.” [NYTimes]
BUSINESS BRIEFS: “Chinese Investors Finance Trump-Branded Kushner Tower in Exchange for Visas” [Gawker; Bloomberg] • “The Mystery Madoff Victims Who Left $2.5 Billion on the Table” [Bloomberg] • Profile: “Shelley Zalis, the founder of the Girls’ Lounge, is aiming to advance the interests of businesswomen” [NYTimes] • “Alan Tisch’s shopping app Spring is linking with Kim Kardashian’s mobile game” [DigiDay] • “Billionaire VC says he’ll shut down his firm to help Mike Bloomberg win US presidency” [BusinessInsider] • Ralph M. Baruch, TV executive and a founder of Viacom, dies at 92 [WashPost]
TALK OF THE TOWN: “If It’s March, It Must Be Miami: When Home Changes With the Season” by Robert Frank: “Oren Alexander, the Miami-based real estate agent to the rich, no longer thinks of his clients as second-home buyers. Today’s ultrawealthy, he says, are often looking for “the four-pack” — a pied-à-terre in New York, a beach house in the Hamptons, a ski villa in Aspen and a winter condo in Miami.” [NYTimes; Gothamist]
“Semi-private planes are the new first class” by Michael Kaplan: “So many passengers get upgraded to first class [now] and usually you are sitting next to somebody horrible,” says Oren Alexander, 28, a Soho resident who works in real estate. Alexander is one of a growing number of wealthy — but not wealthy enough to own their own jet — New Yorkers booking seats on semiprivate planes in hopes of mingling with celebs, models and power brokers at 40,000 feet… Noah Traisman, 28, laments the fact that the only models on a recent JetSmarter flight were male models, but he says it was still a good party.” [NYPost]
“What’s Worse Than Getting Shot by Aaron Burr? Not Having Seen ‘Hamilton’” by Erica Orden: “Vice President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew have attended performances… Jonathan Rosen, one of Mr. de Blasio’s closest outside advisers, is so self-conscious about his deficiency that he tries to fake his way through the inescapable “Hamilton” chitchat.“When someone brings it up I have no choice but to pretend I know what they’re talking about,” Mr. Rosen said.” [WSJ]
TALK OF OUR NATION: “Biblical Nomads Will Return to the Holy Land, Thanks to a Canadian Farm” by Dan Levin: “Over thousands of years, they wandered from their homeland in the Middle East to Europe and finally traveled to North America, bound by a shared history and rigid dietary restrictions. But these nomads do not keep kosher. They are kosher. Known as Jacob sheep, named for the biblical patriarch who, according to the Book of Genesis, first selected the “speckled and spotted” ruminants as wages from his father-in-law, the woolly animals are now set to make their own return to the Holy Land — from Canada, of all places.” [NYTimes]
SPOTLIGHT: “On Shabbat, Giving Young People a Seat at the Table” by Kylie Ora Lobell: “Growing up in Colorado Springs, Aliza Kline remembers how she and her family celebrated Shabbat. Every Friday after her mother baked challah (most of which her brother would eat), she would set the table and her sister would welcome guests. With her fond memory of family traditions and her background working for such groups as the Hillel International Center and the Jewish National Fund, it’s no wonder that she was tapped to launch OneTable.” [Creator]
Out Today: “Introducing the Slingshot Class of 2016, the eleventh annual guide to North America’s most innovative Jewish organizations. ” [eJewishPhil]
DESSERT: “Rabbis with blowtorches: The business of kosher restaurants” by Aaron Elstein: “Keller isn’t the owner of Le Marais, nor is he the chef. Strictly speaking, he isn’t even employed by the popular steakhouse. But he is unquestionably in charge. Keller is a professional mashgiach. His job is to make sure that all the food brought into and prepared at Le Marais is kosher. It’s a crucial position, considering that in a city saturated with 80 pricey steakhouses, Le Marais owner Jose Meirelles and executive chef Mark Hennessey (both Catholics) have built a $7 million business by creating a restaurant where observant Jews can loosen their ties and devour dry-aged prime rib or tournedos with a dairy-free bearnaise sauce.” [Crains]
“Owning a kosher restaurant in Crown Heights presents some unorthodox challenges” by Hannah Dreyfus: “Gaining the stamp of approval, or hechsher, from a top kosher certifying agency is a hard-earned right of passage for restaurants catering to religious Jews. In the six years since Basil opened, the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Crown Heights has become a hot spot for fine kosher dining.” [Crains]
BIRTHDAYS: Disney CEO, Michael Eisner, turns 74… Academy Award winning actress, Rachel Weisz, turns 46… Biologist and Nobel laureate, David Baltimore, turns 78… Jake Hirth…
** Startup Nation to bring equity crowdfunding to Asia: Last week, Jerusalem-based OurCrowd, a world-leading equity crowdfunding platform, announced its partnership with UOB, the Singapore-based banking institution. Together, they are partnering to bring startup investing to Southeast Asia and beyond, highlighting Israeli startups in their initial offering to investors. Read more [OurCrowd] **
