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MAZAL TOV! “Ivanka Trump Gives Birth to Baby Number Three” by Emily Jane Fox:“Donald Trump has a beautiful, babbling new reason to make America great again—an eighth grandchild. His 34-year-old daughter Ivanka, a successful entrepreneur in her own right, and her husband, Jared Kushner, welcomed Theodore James on Sunday evening. At the American Israel Public Affairs Committee convention on Monday, less than a week before Ivanka gave birth, Trump announced that his daughter, who converted to Judaism for her nuptials to Kushner, was “about to have a beautiful Jewish baby.”” [VanityFair; JI]

Top Tweet — Stu Loeser on baby Theodore James Kushner: “Cryin’ Ted, amirite?” [Twitter]

Shabbat Stroll: “Yesterday, Ivanka and her family were spotted heading to and from the local Synagogue with Kushner and their children, four-year-old Arabella and two-year-old Joseph. Prior to being spotted on her way to Synagogue with her family, Ivanka posted a SnapChat of herself dropping off Purim treats for her staff at the office on Tuesday.” [DailyMail] • “Ivanka Trump: The ‘Anti-Donald’ works to protect the billion-dollar brand” [WashPost]

Trump talks foreign policy with the NYTimes: “Now that I’m really into it, I’ve been a little bit surprised to hear that. I would’ve said, I would’ve said that maybe, maybe you know, maybe Israel never really wanted to make a deal or doesn’t really want to make a deal. They really want to make a deal, they want to make a good deal, they want to make a fair deal, but they do want to make a deal. And, almost everybody, and I’m talking to people off the record, and off the record, they really would like to see a deal. I’m not so sure that the other side can mentally, you know, get their heads around the deal, because the hatred is so incredible.” [NYTimes]

Showtime’s The Circus featured AIPAC’s Policy Conference last night: Cameo appearances include Paul Volosov, Edward Levy Jr., Eli Saulson, Kevin Luskin, and Steven & Janice Hefter. Notable quote from host Mark Halperin on Donald Trump’s AIPAC speech: “Trump walks into a huge, tough crowd, gives a well-crafted speech, he shifts on his positions on Israel, ticking the boxes on all the erogenous zones of the American Israel lobby, and walks out triumphant, where the expectations and scrutiny were sky high.” [TheCircus]

Hillary’s National Press Secretary Brian Fallon on ‘The Circus’: “On a world stage, where you need to communicate a steady hand, I think even Trump recognizes that, subliminally, at least as it pertains to commander-in-chief because the AIPAC speech he read from a teleprompter. I think that was a nod to the fact that you have to watch your words carefully when it comes to issues of diplomacy and foreign policy.” [YouTube]

Cory Booker: Boycott Israel Movement “An Anti-Jewish Movement” — by Christopher Massie: “During an interview on the Michael Medved Show, Booker was confronted by a caller who said that, though he was a Bill Clinton supporter, he would never vote for Hillary Clinton because of her relationship to Sidney Blumenthal, a former Clinton administration aide and longtime adviser, and Blumenthal’s son Max, a journalist who has been highly critical of Israel. The caller asked Booker to condemn Max Blumenthal. In response, Booker didn’t discuss the Blumenthals in his answer, but did criticize BDS. “I’m gonna go even further,” he said… “And call it for what it is. And I really do think it is an anti-Jewish movement.” [BuzzFeed; JI]

“Hillary Invited to Golda Meir Exhibition” by Jacob Kornbluh: “Limmud FSU officials confirmed that they have invited Hillary Clinton to be an honorary speaker at its New York area conference, April 1-3… Jeffrey Goldberg recently quoted Vice President Joe Biden telling President Obama during a discussion about Hillary’s foreign policy judgment regarding Libya, “Hillary just wants to be Golda Meir.”” [JewishInsider]

From the archives: Shalom Hartman Center published video of Hillary Clinton at the Jewish Federation’s Lion of Judah Conference in 1995. (Hillary Clinton begins at 26:20 into the video)[JewishInsider]

DEEP DIVE: “The Nazi Who Became a Mossad Hitman” by Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman: “Otto Skorzeny, one of the Israeli spy agency’s most valuable assets, was a former lieutenant colonel in Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS and one of Adolf Hitler’s personal favorites among the party’s commando leaders. The Führer, in fact, awarded Skorzeny the army’s most prestigious medal, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, for leading the rescue operation that plucked his friend Benito Mussolini out from the hands of his captors. But that was then. By 1962, according to our sources — who spoke only on the promise that they not be identified — Skorzeny had a different employer. The story of how that came to be is one of the most important untold tales in the archives of the Mossad.” [Forward]

TOP TALKER: “Israel Changes Tack Over Ambassador After Standoff With Brazil” by Isabel Kershner: “The office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, issued a brief statement saying that Mr. Netanyahu had decided to appoint the former settler leader, Dani Dayan, as consul general in New York… the standoff became increasingly embarrassing for Israel, and the reassignment of Mr. Dayan to New York provided a respectable way out.” [NYTimes; Haaretz]

TALK OF THE STATE: “Jewish Democrat withdraws joint authorship of Republican’s anti-BDS bill, plans to introduce same legislation” by Jared Sichel: “On Friday, the Journal learned that Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), a member of the Jewish caucus who had previously agreed to jointly author AB 1552 with Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach), plans to introduce his own, separate anti-BDS legislation this week in AB 2844, which Bloom confirmed Sunday. A comparison of AB 1552 obtained by the Journal with AB 2844 shows the new bill is currently on track to be virtually identical to the current version of Allen’s bill, which includes amendments previously proposed by Bloom as a condition of becoming a joint author. Allen’s office says that the similarity is evidence Bloom is attempting to co-opt Allen’s effort and bring it under the purview of the Jewish caucus.” [JewishJournal]

IRAN DEAL: “Congress Seeks Fight Over Obama Effort to Give Iran Access to US Markets” by Adam Kredo: “Leading foreign policy voices in Congress say they are preparing to fight against an Obama administration effort to provide Iran unprecedented access to U.S. financial resources as part of an expanded package meant to address new demands from the Islamic Republic’s for greater economic concessions.” [FreeBeacon]

Mark Dubowitz and Jonathan Schanzer: “Dollarizing the Ayatollahs: The White House appears poised to give Iran access to the U.S. financial system. Watch out.” [WSJ]

“Ted Cruz Names Friends, but Silence From G.O.P. Brass Deafens” by Jonathan Martin and Matt Flegenheimer: “Rubio is likely to run again for president in 2020 should Republicans lose the White House this year, and, in making scores of thank-you calls to donors in recent days, he has been discouraged by some party financiers from supporting Mr. Cruz, according to a Republican strategist briefed on the calls.” [NYTimes]

PODCAST: “Anthony Weiner Was The ‘Perfectly Evolved’ Politician — Until He Screwed Up” [HuffPost]

**Good Monday Morning! Enjoying the Daily Kickoff? Please share us with your friends & tell them to sign up at [JI].  Have a tip, scoop, or op-ed? We’d love to hear from you. Anything from hard news and punditry to the lighter stuff, including event coverage, job transitions, or even special birthdays, is much appreciated. Email [email protected]**
BUSINESS BRIEFS: “Israeli Court Strikes Down Natural Gas Development Deal” [NYTimes] • “Yokohama Rubber to buy Israel’s Alliance Tire Group for $1.2B” [Globes] • “Israel’s Nexar is more than a simple dashcam recording app” [VentureBeat] • “When 500 Palestinians Lose Their Jobs At SodaStream, Who’s To Blame?” [NPR] • Nakash Group’s Jerusalem’s Herbert Samuel Hotel to open in May [Globes] • “Artist Doesn’t Trust Developer Joseph Chetrit to Save Murals at Sony Building” [WSJ]

CRAIN’S 40 Under 40 Class of 2016 — Brittany Bragg, 33: “Brittany Bragg showed why she has become the sister the Chera brothers never had. Last year, she helped Crown Acquisitions, the real estate investment firm run by Stanley Chera and his three sons, Haim, Isaac and Richard, buy Olympic Tower, at the corner of 51st Street and Fifth Avenue, for more than $1 billion.” [Crains]

David Klein, 35: “By the time David Klein co-founded the student-loan platform CommonBond, he had spent nearly a decade at McKinsey and American Express and was earning an M.B.A. at Wharton… The grandson of Holocaust survivors, Klein studied conflict resolution at Brandeis and worked as a small-claims mediator. When he launched his loan-refinancing platform in 2011, it was with the idea of people helping each other—specifically, Wharton alumni lending to Wharton students.” [Crains]

Niki Russ Federman, 38: “New York City remains the center of Old World Jewish cuisine largely because of Russ & Daughters. Opened in 1914 as a pickled-herring purveyor, the store, at 179 E. Houston St., passed to the fourth generation, Niki Russ Federman and her cousin Josh Russ Tupper, in 2009. In 2014, they opened Russ & Daughters Café on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side, and in February, a restaurant inside Fifth Avenue’s Jewish Museum. “Our story is a universal story,” said Federman. “It reminds people of their grandparents.” [Crains] • See the full list of 40 Under 40 [Crains]

DESSERT: “This 29-Year Old Owns New York City’s Largest Kosher Steakhouse” by Christopher Tkaczyk: “Albert Allaham came to the United States from Syria in 1999 when he was 13 years old to live with family who had settled in New York City… In 2013, Allaham used money he’d made from the family business to open Reserve Cut, a fine dining kosher steakhouse in Manhattan’s financial district. At 14,000-square feet, it is one of the largest kosher restaurants in New York City and has multiple private dining areas, seating for 287 people, and a glassed-in kitchen.” [FortuneMag]

BIRTHDAYS: Hadassah Lieberman, wife of former Sen. Joe Lieberman, turns 68… Film Director Brett Ratner turns 47… Tevi Troy, president of the American Health Policy Institute and former Bush WH Jewish Liaison, turns 49. We’re told Tevi celebrated last night in NYC with his wife, Kami, at Le Marais before catching Hamilton on Broadway [Pic]… Hartz Group’s Leonard Stern turns 78… MK Shelly Yachimovich turns 56… Genie Kutchins… Chicago Cubs outfielder Ryan Kalish turns 28… Author Lauren Weisberger turns 39… Nobel Prize winning physicist Jerome Isaac Friedman turns 86…