Daily Kickoff
HEARD LAST NIGHT — Ted Cruz’s victory speech: “Catholic schools and Jewish Day Schools .. will see a Supreme Court that protects their religious liberty, the fundamental freedom of every one of us to live according to our faith and our conscience…. We’ll see a President who stands with Israel. Clearly and unapologetically. Instead of negotiating with terrorists, we’ll rip to shreds this catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal.” [CSPAN]“Wisconsin meltdown puts Trump on track for convention fight” by Eli Stokols: “Long frustrated by Donald Trump’s seeming invincibility, the Republican establishment’s anti-Trump brigade celebrated a clear victory in Wisconsin on Tuesday night. And while it was a long time coming, it might be just in time and just enough to prevent the GOP front-runner from winning the party’s presidential nomination.” [Politico; NYTimes]
STATE OF THE RACE: “Big Wins for Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz Set Up Two Showdowns in New York” by John Cassidy: “As the results came in from Wisconsin last night, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the front-runners in the Republican and Democratic primaries, were nowhere to be seen. According to reports from the television networks’ campaign correspondents, they were both in New York. Trump was holed up in Trump Tower, and Clinton, after attending a fund-raiser in Riverdale, had returned to her family’s home in Chappaqua, in Westchester County. The fact that Trump and Clinton had chosen to stay at home and not to schedule any press availabilities indicated that they were both expecting to lose. However, it is doubtful that either expected to be defeated quite so badly.” [NewYorker; WSJ]
SCENE LAST NIGHT: “Jack Bendheim Hosts Hillary Fundraiser in NY” by Jacob Kornbluh:“Hillary Clinton spent Tuesday evening with top Jewish donors at a fundraiser hosted by Jack Bendheim in Riverdale… In 1999, when Clinton ran for the U.S. Senate in New York, Bendheim served as a bundler and an advisor on Israel. “I basically advised her that the most important thing she could do is to keep promoting the peace process,” Bendheim told the Jewish Week at the time. “He is one of few Orthodox Jews to have a close relationship with Clinton,” the publication wrote.” [JewishInsider] • NYC Councilman David Greenfield posts selfie with Hillary from fundraiser [Pic]
“Jewish Values Debate Intensifies As N.Y. Primary Nears” by Hella Winston and Stewart Ain: “The debate on Jewish values intensified this week with a cover story in the Village Voice that focused on Sanders’ view of Judaism. It noted that he “carries on a Jewish tradition much longer, and more sacred, than merely paying lip service to the Holocaust. His every utterance about universal health care, economic inequality, and social justice relentlessly embraces Judaism; it’s just a Judaism many people no longer recognize.” [JewishWeek]
“9 things Bernie Sanders should’ve known about but didn’t in that Daily News interview” by Jonathan Capehart: “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most vexing and vital for the occupant of the Oval Office. It bedeviled Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. And as we learned from Jeffrey Goldberg’s excellent piece on “The Obama Doctrine,” our current president has given up. Solve that foreign policy Rubik’s Cube and you might unleash broader peace on the Middle East. But it requires being able to answer 4, 5 and 6 with finesse, which can’t be done if you “don’t quite think I’m qualified to make decisions.” [WashPost] • “Massively inflating toll, Sanders suggests Israel killed ‘over 10,000 innocents’ in Gaza” [ToI]
Malcolm Hoenlein Cautions Against ‘Obsession’ with Presidential Election: “Instead, Hoenlein suggested, the American Jewish community should keep an eye on President Barack Obama as he may refocus his attention, during the final year of his presidency, on the failed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. According to Hoenlein, Obama is not going to end his presidency as a lame duck, rather as an activist president “who has made clear that he has a legacy agenda that he wants to implement.” In addition to improving relations with Cuba, Hoenlein sees the president aiming to “create the predicates” for the creation of a future Palestinian state.” [JewishInsider]
SPOTLIGHT: “Donald Trump Settled a Real Estate Lawsuit, and a Criminal Case Was Closed” by Mike McIntire: “I don’t settle lawsuits — very rare — because once you settle lawsuits, everybody sues you,” Trump said recently. But Mr. Trump made an exception when buyers of units in Trump SoHo, a 46-story luxury condominium-hotel in Lower Manhattan, asserted that they had been defrauded by inflated claims made by Mr. Trump, his children and others of brisk sales in the struggling project. He and his co-defendants settled the case in November 2011, agreeing to refund 90 percent of $3.16 million in deposits, while admitting no wrongdoing… The other development partner for Trump SoHo was the Sapir Organization, whose founder, Tamir Sapir, was from the former Soviet republic of Georgia.” [NYTimes]
BUSINESS BRIEFS: “Patrick Drahi’s Next Trick” [Bloomberg] • “The Mystery of the Gay Jewish Defense Lawyer Murdered in Ukraine” [DailyBeast] • “Russell Galbut’s Crescent Heights’ Wave project gets height variance” [RealDeal] • “Tepper’s Move May Affect New Jersey Budget, Forecaster Warns” [Bloomberg] • “Netflix approaches Israeli content creators” [Globes]
FORBES IN ISRAEL: Last night, 600 Forbes #Under30Summit participants converged on Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda market for a food and bar crawl. The participants, armed with 10 vouchers each, injected amazing energy along with some much needed commerce — around 180,000 NIS — particularly after a challenging local business climate the past few months. Approximately 90% of Forbes Summit participants had never been to Israel previously but even the few who had visited the market in prior years were introduced to a new nightlife hub of the city. Driven by a combination of local music, a diverse array of restaurants and art, including a new graffiti project featuring prominent faces on shop shutters (we spotted Steven Spielberg), the Jerusalem market at night has witnessed a complete rejuvenation.
Machane Yehuda’s turnaround story began several years ago when the Jerusalem Season of Culture created the Balabasta festival with support from the Schusterman Foundation. The festival, started in 2010, was designed to bring locals to the otherwise abandoned night alleys of the market on weeknights for good food and drinks. Soon after, more bars and restaurants popped up and stayed open late and the festival, which succeeded in creating this new nightly reality, no longer needed to exist in a formal way. Building on this momentum, last night’s ‘crawl’ was the result of a collaboration between Forbes and Lior Shabo, founder of the Jerusalem Parliament and longtime champion of shopkeepers of the shuk. Thanks to the powerful amplifier effect of the young social media savvy Under30Summit crowd, the rest of the world got to witness the lively Machane Yehuda at night too. A win-win for all.
SCENE YESTERDAY: The National Library of Israel held a cornerstone ceremony marking the groundbreaking of a new complex adjacent to the Knesset in Jerusalem. Speakers included Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Rivlin, and Baron Rothschild. [Video]
COMING SOON: “Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren has agreed to host the award ceremony of Israel’s Genesis Prize in Jerusalem” [AP; NewsWire]
TALK OF THE TOWN: “The Whitney Museum Names its Downtown Headquarters For Leonard Lauder” by Kevin Conley: “At a black tie event this evening, it was announced that the Whitney Museum’s new downtown headquarters will now be known as the Whitney Museum of American Art Leonard A. Lauder Building. In 2008, the former president and CEO of Estée Lauder corporation provided the single largest donation to the museum’s endowment, $131 million dollars. That gift is widely credited with making the museum’s move to its new quarters feasible, not just because of its size (it more than doubled the Whitney’s war chest at the time) but also because it inspired other wealthy patrons to dig deep.” [Town&CountryMag]
“Four Seasons Restaurant: When Anna Wintour Was Served Raccoon and Other Amazing Tales” by Maer Roshan: “Julian Niccolini — the colorful proprietor of New York’s loftiest lunch room, set to close later this month — opens up about his A-list clientele, from past presidents to Donald Trump, why the Pool Room is more desirable than the Grill Room and why “Silicon Valley types” choose to eat elsewhere… Q: So how did a young waiter come to co-own the most exclusive restaurant in the country? A: The previous owner gave all of us a certain amount of shares in the company. When he sold the company to Mr. [Edgar] Bronfman, we acquired many more shares.” [HollywoodReporter]
TALK OF OUR NATION: “How Jewish Designers Helped Invent Preppy Fashion” by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell: “It’s a tale as old as American fashion itself: the unlikely history of how Jewish American designers descended from immigrants helped transform WASP style into an international uniform that endures today.” [TheAtlantic]
CAMPUS BEAT: “Why Are Oberlin’s Students So Silent About Anti-Semitism?” by Emily Shire: “Students on campus are quick to protest incidences of supposed cultural insensitivity—even over sushi—but not when it comes to a professor’s anti-Semitism.” [DailyBeast]
PROFILE: “The C.E.O. of ‘Hamilton’ Inc.” by Michael Sokolove: “The producer Jeffrey Seller struck gold with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway hit about the founding fathers. Now he has a new challenge — managing a runaway success.” [NYTimes]
DESSERT: “Michael Twitty explores intersection of kosher and soul food” by Kristine Kierzek: “When Michael Twitty gathers a recipe, it is more than just food. It is a connection to people and the past. Q.What exactly does “kosher soul” mean to you? A. It is really an expression of how I store my own daily life as an African-American person who is Jewish or a Jewish person who is African-American. I look at it through both perspectives. … You can be your authentic self and tell very unique stories. It doesn’t have to be through food, but for me in particular it is that window of intersection coming through food that reflects who I am.” [JSOnline]
BIRTHDAYS: Academy Award winning director Barry Levinson turns 74… Philanthropist Jeanie Schottenstein… AIPAC’s Jay Haberman… Entourage director Doug Ellin turns 48… Academy Award winning director Rob Epstein turns 61… Artist, designer and Holocaust survivor Helen Berman turns 80… Gabrielle Birkner… Nancy Shiffrin… Philip Seal…
