Good Wednesday morning!

Full results in the highly competitive primary races in New York and Kentucky are not expected until at least early July due to record-breaking mail-in ballots. More below.

Yesterday, former President Barack Obama hosted a virtual small-dollar fundraiser for Joe Biden that brought in more than $7.6 million for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. An additional $3 million was raised in a private online event that was closed to the media. The Trump campaign boasted later that it raised more than $10 million over the weekend of the Tulsa rally. A new national New York Timespoll shows Biden with 50% of likely voters in November, Trump with 36% and 14% of voters undecided.

Today, President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda at the White House, days before voters decide Duda’s fate in his first re-election bid. 

The United Nations Security Council is holding the first round of talks today on a U.S. proposal to extend an arms embargo on Iran, ahead of its October expiration date.

In Israel, Defense Minister Benny Gantz indicated he would support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unilateral annexation efforts, saying: “We won’t continue to wait for the Palestinians. If they say no forever to everything, then we’ll be forced to move forward without them,” adding that Israel won’t get dragged into the Palestinians’ “deep shit.”

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early lead

Bowman holds double digit lead over Rep. Eliot Engel

The highly watched race in New York’s 16th district was too close — and too early — to call by Wednesday morning. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) is trailing his progressive challenger Jamaal Bowman by double digits, with current results showing Bowman at 61% compared to Engel’s 35% with 33,000 votes cast in person.

Election night statements: Speaking to supporters last night, Bowman was confident that he would emerge victorious once the absentee ballots are counted. In a statement released Tuesday night, Engel noted that “every primary ballot must be counted” to know the full results. Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Reportsuggested there could be up to 60,000 mail-in votes to count.

Troublemaker: In his remarks, Bowman said he “cannot wait to get to Congress and cause problems — for the people there who have been maintaining a status quo that is literally killing our children.” Bowman said that if sent to Washington, he would advocate for a strong America “to create peace all over the world, to become a humanitarian leader on this planet.” 

Turning the page: New York City Councilman Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn) told Jewish Insider‘s Jacob Kornbluh after attending the Bowman election night party, “Of course we must take the time to count every vote, but I’m feeling very optimistic about Jamaal’s lead. He won by big margins throughout this diverse district, even in the heart of Riverdale. It’s an impressive election night lead that will be hard to overcome on paper, even with a lot of paper.”

Writing was on the wall: Stu Loeser, a political consultant and Riverdale resident, told JI that Engel has himself to blame for his presumed loss, refusing to learn from former Rep. Joe Crowley’s defeat in 2018. Engel’s absence during the coronavirus outbreak was a driving factor in Bowman’s rise. “Crowley lost the next seat because his smart opponent emphasized how he didn’t live in the district anymore,” Loeser noted. “Engel could’ve run a perfect race and still lose. But he didn’t run a perfect race.”

book shelf

Is 2020 the year cell-cultured meat arrives?

Journalist Chase Purdy thinks cell-cultured meat will soon be having its global moment. Lab-grown meat, created from animal cells, can produce products that are remarkably similar — in taste, texture and preparation — to what is currently found in grocery stores around the world. And there’s a chance, the author of the recently released Billion Dollar Burger: Inside Big Tech’s Race for the Future of Food suggests, that the meat could be determined to be kosher — pareve, in fact. Purdy spoke with Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss about what he predicts will be the next big food trend.

To the experts: Purdy consulted the experts — in this case, Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the Orthodox Union’s kosher division. Genack, Purdy writes, was enthusiastic about the possibility of kosher cell-cultured meat, though “he stops short of saying cell-cultured pork could be kosher. He lauds it as an innovation that is especially promising for the environment during a time when climate change has understandably become a source of anxiety.” He compares Genack’s excitement to “the excitement of the people making cell-cultured meat, for whom religious dietary restrictions could be lucrative,” noting the $24 billion kosher food industry and the $1.6 trillion halal market.

Blast from the past: Purdy opens one chapter, which explores the kashrut of cell-curated meat, with a story about Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar, who traveled from Morocco to Jerusalem in the 18th century, stopping for years in Italy, where he received community funds enabling him to print his religious commentary. Included in his published writings was the idea that in the future, the physiology of a pig would be altered enough to make it permissible to be eaten by Jews. 

Start-up nation: Purdy traveled the globe, visiting labs and meeting with researchers, religious authorities, chefs and other experts. He made several trips to Israel, which — along with Singapore and the United States — is at the forefront of the industry. “Israel is one of those countries in the world that has had to be extremely conscientious of its own sort of national security, and food security is part of that,” Purdy said, pointing to the advances Israel has made in water technology. “Think about the desalination plants that are turning seawater into potable water. The world is taking its cues from Israel when it comes to desalination of water, and so I think that it’s not a huge leap to think that the world will take a lot of its cues from Israel when it comes to sustainably producing cell-cultured meat.”

Read the full interview here.

Heard yesterday

Former Obama official: Netanyahu ‘playing with fire’ by ignoring opposition to annexation

Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy warned Israeli leaders not to ignore the objections to West Bank annexation plans from nearly 150 Democratic senators and members of Congress. During a panel discussion on the issue hosted by Israel Policy Forum, Flournoy suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “playing with fire, not only in terms of fracturing the region and their relationships with Israel, but also fracturing American political support, which would be terrible and disastrous.” 

Critical matter: Flournoy, who has been floated as a possible secretary of defense in a Democratic administration, said she worries that if Israel moves ahead with annexation in the coming weeks, some Democratic lawmakers may try to hold up the implementation of the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel and “decide to hold hostage our security assistance to Israel as a way of protesting Israel’s policies” in the West Bank. “That may not be the most likely outcome, but it’s not unlikely either,” she suggested. Such attempts, Flournoy cautioned, would undermine long-standing bipartisan support “for critical pillars” of the security relationship with Israel. “That’s what really worries me,” Flournoy said.

Read more here.

Glass half-full: Matt Duss, who served as a foreign policy advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) 2020 presidential campaign, pushed progressive activists to be optimistic about former Vice President Joe Biden’s approach to the Middle East on Tuesday. “One very positive aspect here… is Biden’s commitment to rejoining the Iran nuclear agreement, which is a commitment he shared with every Democratic primary candidate,” Duss said during a panel discussion hosted by Jewish Currents and moderated by the publication’s editor-at-large, Peter Beinart. 

Open eyes: Duss said he hoped the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, if elected, would not compromise his approach to Iran and would moderate his position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict out of concern that Israel could openly oppose new talks with Tehran. “We’ll need to work hard and make sure that the Palestinians are not the ones who have to pay a price for the broader effort at regional diplomacy that I expect Biden would pursue as president,” he said. 

Read more here.

Bonus: The Biden campaign is restricting staffers and volunteers “from engaging in substantive conversations with foreign government officials” to avoid the perception of outside interference in the presidential election. A Middle Eastern diplomat called the move “frustrating” because it complicates building a relationship with future senior officials before they take an administration role.

Worthy Reads

🇪🇺 Behind The Scenes: Reuters’s Robin Emmott, Luke Baker, John Irish and Maayan Lubell explore the deep, ongoing battle among E.U. officials on how to approach Israeli annexation efforts. The unity that European countries once had on foreign policy issues is splintering, said one diplomat: “It’s hell in the EU to try to get a common position on this.” [Reuters]

🎥 On Screen:Television critic Daniel Fienberg dives deep in The Hollywood Reporter into the heavily Jewish nature of shows like “Unorthodox,” “The Plot Against America” and “Hunters,” where characters wear yarmulkes, quote from the Talmud and even bend their knees for “Aleinu” in synagogue. [THR]

🏖️ Life’s a Beach: In New York magazine, David Gauvey Herbert takes a close look at the New York City lifeguard corps, which has been overseen for 40 years by Peter B. Stein. Herbert charges that Stein has maintained his tight control by relying “on a playbook of patronage, power brokering, and intimidation.” [NYMag]

✍️ Changing Times: Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Wesley Lowery writes in The New York Times about the “breaking point” many U.S. media outlets are facing over issues of race and the changing view of objectivity. “No journalistic process is objective. And no individual journalist is objective, because no human being is.” [NYTimes]

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