Good Tuesday morning!

Today is primary election day in four states: Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont and Wisconsin. There are also primary runoffs in Georgia. More below.

Joe Biden has reportedly spoken with all of his top choices for a running mate, and is expected to announce his decision this week. 

U.N. Security Council memberswill discuss and likely reject this week the proposed U.S. resolution to extend the arms embargo on Iran that is scheduled to expire in October. A last-minute attempt by Britain, France and Germany to broker a compromise with Russia and China has failed, Reutersreported. 

Former Likud Minister Gilad Erdan arrived in New York this morning to begin his term as Israel’s ambassador to the U.N.

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TOUR DE TAKEOUT

How restaurant critic Hannah Goldfield is navigating her work amid the pandemic

Hannah Goldfield

In late July, Hannah Goldfield, the food critic for The New Yorker, was in Rockaway Beach ordering a bag of burgers and fries from a boardwalk concession stand. It was a stiflingly humid day, but Goldfield was in high spirits as she sat down on a nearby bench, clutching her bounty. “I like the sack,” Goldfield said. “I feel like I’m at the diner in the Archie comics.” It was no surprise that Goldfield was feeling nostalgic. Since the city went into lockdown, she has had to learn to adapt to being a restaurant reviewer with virtually no restaurants to go to. 

Different role: “It’s changed my job,” Goldfield told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel as they chowed down during a recent interview, noting that she wouldn’t dare ding a restaurant now because the industry is struggling enough as it is. “I feel like I’m not a critic all of a sudden.” Indeed, Goldfield’s “Tables for Two” reviews since the shutdown read like a bleak yet pragmatic culinary chronicle of the coronavirus pandemic — dispatches from a food writer isolated in her Brooklyn apartment, surviving on takeout and delivery. 

Playing it safe: As the city opens up, Goldfield has been cautiously venturing out. Recently, she brought a meal to “a socially distanced salon” in Prospect Park. Still, while Goldfield has been reacquainting herself with the city’s food scene post-lockdown, she has resolved not to eat out at a sit-down restaurant — an option available to cooped-up New Yorkers since June 22 — even as some critics have braved the elements.

Background: Goldfield, 33, began reviewing restaurants full-time for The New Yorker in 2018. It was the fulfillment of a lifelong ambition, yet she took a somewhat circuitous route to achieving her goal. Born and raised in New Haven, Conn., Goldfield decided early on in her childhood that she wanted to be a food critic after watching “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” the romantic comedy starring Julia Roberts as a lovelorn restaurant reviewer. “For whatever reason,” Goldfield recalled, “I seized on this as a 10-year-old, and I was like, that must be my job.”

Testing the waters: The Rockaways expedition was a compromise of sorts. While Goldfield still won’t go to restaurants, she has been to the beach with her husband, Joshua Stern, and their 14-month-old son. The experience felt reasonably safe to her, and so she had it in mind to give her readers a sense of the food options available to them down by the shore. “I thought it would be fun to do a survey,” she explained, “less a review than a tour or a diary entry about what it’s like right now to eat at the Rockaways.”

Read the full feature here. 

primary day

Voters head to the polls in primaries — and runoffs

Voters in Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont and Wisconsin will head to the polls or drop off their mail-in ballots in primary races today. In Georgia, some voters will cast their votes in primary runoffs for congressional seats. Here is JI’s guide to the races to watch today. 

MN-05: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is facing four challengers in the Democratic primary for Minnesota’s 5th congressional district. Mediator and attorney Antone Melton-Meaux, Omar’s main challenger, told JI he’s feeling confident that he has managed to get his message across to voters and is well positioned to unseat the first-term congresswoman. The remaining Democratic candidates are John Mason, a community organizer who worked on voter registration for the Obama campaign, Les Lester and Daniel Patrick McCarthy. 

MN-07: A slate of Republicans are facing off in today’s primary in Minnesota’s 7th district, vying for the chance to challenge Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) — a longtime Democrat serving in a solidly red district — come November. The projected frontrunner, former Lt. Gov. Michelle Fischbach, shared her perspective on the race and her foreign policy views with Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod.  

GA-14: Businesswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has trafficked in QAnon conspiracy theories and posed for photos with a former neo-Nazi leader, is facing off against neurosurgeon John Cowan in a GOP runoff to succeed Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA) in Georgia’s 14th congressional district. The winner of the runoff will go up against Democrat Kevin Van Ausdal in November, and is expected to win in the conservative district. Greene took 41% of the vote in the June 9 primary. On Monday, Greene responded to the charge by 7th district Democratic candidate Carolyn Bourdeaux, reported in Jewish Insider, that she traffics in antisemitic stereotypes. “How dare [Bourdeaux] attack me and defend [George Soros],” Greene tweeted. “She’s never denounced anti-Semites [Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib or Linda Sarsour]. Her Democrat Party is run by anti-Semites committed to destroying Israel.”

VT: Vermont Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman is competing in a four-person Democratic primary to take on incumbent Republican Gov. Phil Scott in November. Zuckerman is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his SuperPAC Our Revolution. The remaining candidates are former Vermont Education Secretary Rebecca Holcombe, attorney Pat Winburn and activist Ralph Corbo. Scott is facing four challengers in the GOP gubernatorial primary. 

Check out Jewish Insider’s full interactive elections map here.

boston brawl

Candidates in Massachusetts’s 4th explain their anti-BDS positions

The crowded Democratic primary in Massachusetts’s 4th district continues to heat up with just three weeks to go until voters cast their ballots. Two candidates in the race, Newton City Councilor Jake Auchincloss and social entrepreneur Alan Khazei, participated in web events yesterday aimed at reaching voters in the district.

Backtrack: At an event hosted by the Boston Globe — which endorsed Auchincloss — the candidate apologized for a handful of controversial social media posts from 2010 and 2016. In one post, Auchincloss — addressing Pakistani lawyers burning an American flag at a rally — wrote, “So we can’t burn their book, but they can burn our flag?” In another, he said that Cambridge, Mass. was “taking P[olitical] C[orrectness] too far” by changing Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s day.

Changing opinions:Auchincloss apologized for his comments about the Quran, characterizing them as “a stupid remark by a snarky 22-year-old” and said that he is “surprised and embarrassed” by them now. “It’s not how I felt then and it’s certainly not how I feel now,” he said. The candidate also said that he has changed his opinion on Columbus after reading more about him, and is now advocating for Newton to change the holiday to Indigenous People’s Day.

Too far: Auchincloss pointed to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and broader criticism of Israel on college campuses as examples of the potential dangers of political correctness taken too far. “This is especially close to home for me as a Jewish American,” he said. “We’ve seen this with issues related to Israel and BDS… I do think that as a country, we’ve got to be careful that we’re not putting [blinders], that we really are willing to grapple with the full suite of opinions.”

Read more here.

No to BDS: Also yesterday, Khazei held a web event with members of the Boston-area Jewish community, and touted his support for Israel and his opposition to the BDS movement. “I think if individuals want to speak out and criticize Israel, that’s their right. But when you talk about boycotts and divestment and sanctions, that’s different,” he said. “I think you can draw a distinction between individuals who want to speak out — that’s their right, protection of the First Amendment — and trying to have government policy, especially around corporate actions.”

Civil society: Khazei said his past visits to Israel left a lasting impression, in particular on the topic of national service. “I was blown away. When in Israel, you see that because young people serve — the life of the country is literally dependent on young people in service — they’re more mature. They are taken more seriously by the adults. Everybody is much more politically engaged,” he said. “The civil society was so much more powerful than we had back home.”

Read more here.

Bonus: Fellow Democratic candidate Jesse Mermell writes on her campaign website that while she is opposed to the BDS movement “and would support certain anti-BDS legislation,” she is “opposed to efforts to curtail free speech aimed at BDS proponents… and she does not believe that Israel’s defense requires the silencing of its critics.”

Worthy Reads

🚢 Deep Dive: NBC News’s Raf Sanchez explores the ways that Iran circumvents U.S. sanctions on its oil tankers, continuing to export more than 600,000 barrels of crude oil per day, mostly to China, by turning off or manipulating trackers on its ships. [NBC]

🖋️ Better Together: Paul Packer, chairman of the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, and former NFL player Herschel Walker, write about the spate of recent antisemitic comments from prominent Black figures. “Today, when the challenges facing America and the world seem so vast, our two peoples should lean on each other and look to our historical bond for solace and support.” [FoxNews]

🕍 Sage Advice: In USA Today, Rabbi Benny Berlin reflects on taking up a new pulpit at the BACH Jewish Center in Long Island, N.Y., just before the pandemic hit. “Certainly, this was not how I envisioned the beginning of my pulpit, but it has taught me an incredible lesson — one of resilience.” [USAToday]

Around the Web

💯 Stamp of Approval: Former Anti-Defamation League national director Abe Foxman toldBoston Herald contributor Jeffrey Robbins that he believes Joe Biden is the best candidate for the Jews and Israel.

🧑‍💻 Dark Web: Facebook has uncovered thousands of groups and pages that push the QAnon conspiracy theory to millions of followers. 

📱 Past Post:In a now-deleted 2017 Instagram post, North Carolina Republican congressional nominee Madison Cawthorn wrote about visiting “the Führer” Hitler’s vacation home.

⚖️ Day in Court:A New Jersey resident pleaded guilty to threatening to beat up members of Lakewood’s Jewish community with a baseball bat for violating coronavirus lockdown measures. 

📁 Disclosed: Ex-Victoria’s Secret CEO Les Wexner is being dragged into the ongoing legal battle between Alan Dershowitz and his accuser, Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre.

👎 No Kidding:Pro-police protesters in Nevada praised Adolf Hitler as a “great Christian man” as they clashed with Black Lives Matter activists on Saturday. 

📊 Error Correction:The superintendent of Beechwood Independent Schools in Northern Kentucky has apologized for downplaying the state’s COVID-19 deaths by comparing them to those killed in the Holocaust.

✈️ Route Planner: British Airways has resumed weekly flights between London and Tel Aviv for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak in March.

🛬 Incoming:After a protracted debate, Israel has indicated it will allow 17,000 foreign students to attend yeshivas and universities this year, contingent on a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

🛡️ Shielded: Despite being largely spared from the coronavirus due to the blockade on Gaza, Hamas has imposed new restrictions on travelers returning from Israel or Egypt.

🚫 No Entry: Israel closed its crossing with Gaza Tuesday morning after several days of incendiary balloons being launched into Israel. 

🏒 Sports Blink: Eliezer Sherbatov, the captain of Israel’s ice hockey team, has signed to play for a local hockey team in Oswiecim, Poland, right next to Auschwitz.

⛓️ Justice Served: All appeals against the conviction of 93-year-old Nazi concentration camp guard Bruno Dey have been dropped, paving the way for more prosecutions of camp guards. 

🎙️ Apology Tour: In a conversation with the American Jewish Committee yesterday, Nick Cannon said he is undergoing “a process” of atonement for his antisemitic remarks — and revealed that his great-grandfather was a Sephardic rabbi.  

💷 Across the Pond: A number of longtime Labour donors have rejoined the party after new leader Keir Starmer has taken a tough approach on antisemitism. 

📚 Book Shelf: A new book in Yale’s “Jewish Lives” series spotlights famed filmmaker Stanley Kubrick.

🗞️ Transition: Former Israeli Channel 13 reporter Barak Ravid will be joiningWalla! News as a diplomatic correspondent and analyst.

🕯️Remembering: Hilary Tisch, a jewelry designer and the daughter of Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, has died at age 36.

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