👋 Good Friday morning!

For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent JI stories. Print the latest edition here.

Second-quarter fundraising hauls were posted on the Federal Election Commission’s website yesterday, providing a preview of the 2022 election cycle, when all House members and a number of senators are up for reelection. Jewish Insider drilled down the numbers:

It was a solid quarter overall for some of the loudest pro-Israel Democratic voices in the House. Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), from Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District — where she won by less than six percentage points last cycle — raised nearly $753,000. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), who represents New Jersey’s 5th District and won by 7.6 percentage points last cycle, raised $966,000 and has nearly $10 million in the bank. Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), pulled in more than $860,000 and has $1.4 million on hand.

Most members of ‘The Squad’ pulled in sizable hauls. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) raised $733,485 and leads the pack so far in cash on hand with over $950,000. The rest of the reporting members — all with several hundreds of thousands of dollars on hand — are Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who pulled in $578,156, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) with $239,106, Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) with $205,960 and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) raising $165,120.

In New York’s 12th Congressional District,Rana Abdelhamid — a Google employee, community organizer and first-time candidate who is also supported by Justice Democrats — raised $411,000 in her bid to unseat Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). Maloney, who was nearly toppled by a primary challenger last year in the Upper East Side district, pulled in $503,000.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) raised just $1,433 in the last quarter, a possible sign that the 88-year-old senator, who has recently faced questions about her health and continued fitness for office, does not plan to run for reelection when her current term expires in 2024.

Read the full run-down here.

podcast playback

Why the congressman who boycotted South Africa says he won’t do the same for Israel

Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD)

A year into his return to Congress, Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) joined Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast” co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein to discuss his early experience in Baltimore politics, the state of Black-Jewish relations and why he opposes the BDS movement that targets Israel.

On the intersection between BLM and the Palestinian activist movement: “There were a number of agendas that were starting to creep into the Black Lives [Matter] movement that had nothing to do with Black lives. But they found a way to creep in and they mixed messages. And it was difficult for persons who are caught up in the movement and the pureness of the movement to always decipher and say, “Now, that’s not what we’re about, or are we really agreeing to the same thing? A lot of that happened with the civil rights movement, and so there are lessons, history lessons here for us. But I just think that those persons, who are opportunists, who wanted to create several different agendas, found a way to do it. You also had the ‘defund the police’ movement, which really did not begin with Black Lives [Matter], but it was rolled in, and now it’s almost synonymous in the minds of a lot of people. And that really is unfortunate.”

Opposition to BDS: “But here’s what I say about BDS. I oppose BDS, and I oppose it on legitimate civil rights grounds. I strongly believe in boycott and divestment when it is applicable to a situation that has historically and continues to find a way to oppress people; when we were protesting the de Klerk regime in South Africa — and I started as a young college freshman with the boycott movement on South Africa, and continued as a young city councilman with divesting our funds from South Africa — we were trying to divest our funds from a hideous regime that had existed for hundreds of years. That was not the majority, but rather the minority in South Africa that had oppressed, murdered, killed and jailed so many South Africans, that that was the only way to draw attention to it….That’s not the case in the BDS movement, as I see it. I understand that there are those who will probably attack me and say, “No, it is the same thing.” But I’ve lived long enough. And I’ve been through enough to know that they are two different things. And it has not risen, in my opinion, to the level that the hundreds of years of oppression by the Afrikaners in South Africa against the indigenous population, which was the majority, it’s not risen to that level.”

On whether he’ll make an endorsement in the Democratic primary for the Ohio 11th special election: “Well, I’m not supporting either one. So maybe that makes me the oddball. I don’t know either one. I’d like to get to know both of them. But, you know, the election is just about here. So I haven’t chosen to support anybody. I’d like to support people who I know, not people who I think I know. And so for me, the better thing here is to let the voters decide. I think they’re both very well qualified. And as you said, they have their own set of endorsements….When this is all over, when the smoke clears, on one side or the other, there’s going to have to be some amending and some handing out of carrots to sort of heal over the wounds and to bring us to the point where we can govern together. One of them will be elected. I don’t know which one, but I’m not in that race. And I think more than anything else, I just want the best candidate to come forward, and I trust the voters of Ohio’s 11th to do that.”

Lightning Round: Favorite Baltimorean of all-time? Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Favorite Jewish word or phrase? Chutzpah. Favorite Jewish food? Bagel and lox. Reading recommendation? The Constitution. “Legend has it that Ben Franklin walked out, once the Constitution had been adopted, onto the streets of Philadelphia, and a woman came up to him and said, ‘Dr. Franklin, Dr. Franklin, what have you given us? Is it a monarchy or a republic?’ And he said, ‘Ma’am, it is a republic, if you can keep it.’ Well, we almost lost it on January the 6th. And I think it would behoove all of us to kind of just take a moment or two and look back at what they created in that document and to see how close or how far away we are today.”

Read more here.

Listen to the full episode and all previous episodes here.

silver screen

How the new movie ‘How It Ends’ began

Zoe Lister-Jones and director Daryl Wein speak during the “How It Ends” premiere during the 2021 Tribeca Festival at Battery Park on June 20, 2021 in New York City.

When the pandemic forced people into their homes last spring, some took up hobbies like baking or biking. Husband-and-wife writing duo Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones took up therapy. They used what they learned to co-write, produce and direct “How It Ends,” a comedy-drama about one woman’s last day on Earth before the planet is destroyed by a meteor. The movie comes to streaming services and select theaters on July 20. Wein talked to Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch a week before the release.

Going deep: “We had started to explore, like, the inner child in both of us — that was just something that we were tackling, and investigating, you know, early childhood stuff,” Wein said. “We were like, ‘Alright, that’s interesting. What if we came up with a story that was an exploration of the self, selfhood, self-acceptance and overcoming one’s fears?’”

Let’s get metaphysical: The movie centers on two characters, who are really the same person: Liza, played by Lister-Jones, and her “younger self,” played by “Mare of Easttown” star Cailee Spaeny. (Several big names have cameos, including Fred Armisen, Olivia Wilde, Nick Kroll and Bradley Whitford.) Liza’s “younger self” follows Liza around, urging her to spend her last day making amends with friends and family and going to the last party on Earth. On the city’s deserted streets, they have a number of comedic run-ins as neighbors live out their last days.

Capture the moment: Liza and her younger self walk through an eerily empty Los Angeles, the result not of special Hollywood know-how or film permits but the pandemic — they filmed the movie with a bare-bones team (Wein shot the film himself) at a time when people were mostly staying home. But despite the apocalypse theme and the quiet streets, Wein asserts that “How It Ends”is not a COVID-19 movie. “This was capturing a special moment in time. The streets of L.A. were empty, so [viewers will] understand that this was made during the last year,” he explained. “But I think it can function and exist on its own two feet.”

Jewish soul: None of Wein’s films have touched on Judaism (though Lister-Jones’s character does refer to her cousin’s bat mitzvah in “How It Ends”), but Wein says his faith has played a role in his creative pursuits. “Even though my films aren’t about overtly Jewish topics or subjects, I feel like they have a Jewish soul to them,” he said, naming Woody Allen and the Coen Brothers as inspirations. “From an intellectual standpoint, I think I like to wrestle a lot with ideas in the same way that Jews tend to wrestle with big ideas and the Torah and in general … I think that the screenplays that I’ve written, or co-written are definitely intellectually based, in a way, or just highly analytical.”

Read the full story here.

on the hill

Senate Republicans seek Magnitsky sanctions on Raisi, Khamenei

Iranian President-elect Ebrahim Raisi holds a press conference at Shahid Beheshti conference hall on June 21, 2021 in Tehran, Iran.

Fifteen Senate Republicans introduced a bill Thursday afternoon that would impose further sanctions on Iranian President-elect Ebrahim Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Act. The act, passed in 2016, levies sanctions against individuals responsible for human rights violations or actions of corruption, based on a framework used to target Russian officials in 2012, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

State of play: Raisi, the head of Iran’s judicial system, whom critics accuse of winning a rigged election, is already subject to U.S. human rights sanctions, the first Iranian president to draw such a censure. Khamenei is also subject to sanctions, which Iran has demanded the U.S. withdraw to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. The Biden administration has reportedly considered complying with that demand.

Big picture: Sponsors of the legislation tied the push to the ongoing nuclear negotiations, as well as other recent developments in the U.S.-Iran standoff. “The Biden administration has rushed to dismantle sanctions on the Iranian regime and is looking to remove what’s left of American pressure,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the bill’s lead sponsor, said in a statement. “I am proud to introduce this legislation to ensure we continue imposing critical sanctions to isolate the Iranian regime and block their malign activities.”

Joining up: The other sponsors of the bill are Sens. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), John Barasso (R-WY), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Roger Marshall (R-KN), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Rick Scott (R-FL), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Mike Braun (R-IN), John Hoeven (R-ND), John Cornyn (R-TX), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Todd Young (R-IN) and Marco Rubio (R-FL).

Read more here.

Bonus: A day after some Senate leaders emerged from a classified briefing with Secretary of State Tony Blinken offering a pessimistic outlook on the chances of reentering the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told Jewish Insider, “I don’t accept the premise that we can’t find a way back into this deal. It will require hard choices by the United States, difficult choices by the Iranians, but I don’t see a path forward without being inside this deal… I still believe that our only course of action is to get back into the deal.” Murphy, one of the leading Senate proponents of reentry, said he did not attend the briefing and was not familiar with what was said.

Worthy Reads

🕍 Chosen: In her Substack column “Chosen by Choice,” Nellie Bowles features fellow Jewish convert Tommy Collison, whom Bowles dubs “​​San Francisco’s best and newest Irish-Jewish tribesman.” Collison, who heads communications for a San Francisco-based coding school, talks through what drew him to Judaism and the experience of converting during the pandemic. “Converting during 2020 helped me gain a new appreciation for lo ba-shamayim hi — the idea (which comes from Devarim and translates as “It’s not in heaven”) that observing mitzvot is close to human hearts, and that Judaism is not solely practiced in the synagogue. My relationship to being Jewish, the one that I cultivated during the pandemic, by necessity, had to be within the walls of my home.” [Substack]

🍦 Scooping Controversy: The Boston Globe looks at why ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s has gone silent on social media after facing an onslaught of criticism during the recent violence in Gaza for continuing to license a factory in Southern Israel. The backlash comes after years of criticism by activists in Vermont over the company’s continued presence in Israel — not only licensing a factory for three decades, but selling and catering in Israeli settlements. Despite the well-documented progressive bona fides of Ben & Jerry’s founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the company (now owned by Unilever) has resisted. “Should the company now choose to break its social media silence with a message at all critical of Israel, it would make waves in the corporate and political worlds.” [BostonGlobe]

🇸🇦 Cutting Curfew: Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has gradually shifted from the theocracy that has long defined the kingdom, lessening restrictions — traditionally issued through fatwas — that limited freedoms, Donna Abu Basr writes in Bloomberg Businessweek. At the root of the effort is bin Salman’s desire to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil, including in entertainment and tourism. But the effort risks upsetting more conservative factions in the kingdom, a criticism the crown prince has done much to dissuade, telling a TV station in April, “We cannot grow, we cannot attract capital, we cannot have tourism, we cannot progress with such extremist thinking in Saudi Arabia….If you want millions of jobs, if you want unemployment to decline, if you want the economy to grow, if you want your income to improve, you must eradicate these projects.” [Bloomberg]

🤝 Hold Your Nose: Writing in The Washington Post, Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky argue that President Joe Biden’s idealistic foreign policy does not match with reality, warning that his idealist rhetoric risks encouraging a Cold War. Instead, they argue, Biden should accept the necessity that the U.S. must work with autocrats and democracies, writing, “An effective foreign policy…means accepting that the United States has to work with regimes that are far from democratic. And a foreign policy doctrine that unnecessarily divides the world into good guys and bad guys — even rhetorically — risks alienating fellow democracies that have to deal with Russia and China, makes solving global challenges harder and needlessly underscores inconsistencies in U.S. foreign policy.” [WashPost]

🎨 Found Again: The New York Times’ Elaine Sciolino profiles art historian Emmanuelle Polack, whose grandfather was killed in Buchenwald. Polack has served for the last year as the head of restitution investigations at the Louvre, which holds more than 1,700 pieces of stolen art that France received after WWII. “For years I cultivated a secret garden about the art market during the Occupation,” Polack told The New York Times. “And finally, it is recognized as a crucial field for investigation.”[NYTimes]

Around the Web

⏰ Tick Tock: Iran is reportedly not prepared to rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement until its new president, Ebrahim Raisi, assumes office in August.

🖥️ Unfriend: Facebook accused a group of Iranian hackers of using the social media network to spy on the U.S. military by tricking users into clicking corrupted links.

👮 Round Up: Israel announced the arrest of dozens of Palestinian students in the West Bank with ties to Hamas.

⌨️ Big Hack: According to Microsoft, malware software sold by an Israeli firm, Candiru, was likely used by government clients in the Middle East and Asia to hack more than 100 politicians, human rights workers, dissidents, journalists and embassy workers.

⚽ Field Politics: Owner of Israel’s Beitar Jerusalem soccer club called off an upcoming match with Barcelona to play in Jerusalem.

🇲🇽 Safe Haven: A former Mexican official accused by Mexico of abduction, torture and tampering with evidence has sought asylum in Israel for two years. Israel’s slow process in deciding whether to grant asylum or extradition has angered Mexican officials, with an Israeli official admitting the government has no interest in helping Mexico because of previous criticisms it has leveled against the Jewish state.

🔎 Lost and Found: A rotating crew of rabbis is working with officials at the site of the Champlain Towers collapse in Surfside, Fla., to identify religious items that belonged to the condominium’s Jewish residents.

⚔️ Nightmare Scenario: The New Yorker reports that former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley feared two scenarios in the period between the 2020 election and then-President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration: an effort by then-President Donald Trump to mobilize the military to prevent the peaceful transition of power, and a U.S.-initiated military conflict with Iran.

↪️ Midterm Rematch: Republican Tom Kean, Jr., a former state senate minority leader, announced he will mount another challenge to Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) in the 2022 midterms, after losing to the Democrat by 5,000 votes in 2020.

🚗 Road Trip: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) will travel to Ohio next week to campaign for congressional candidate Nina Turner, who is locked in a tight race against Democratic establishment-backed Shontel Brown in the special election primary in the state’s 11th Congressional District.

🏛️ Going Strong: Associate Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told CNN he has no immediate plans to retire, despite pressure for the liberal justice to take advantage of a Democratic president and majority in the Senate.

💰Terms and Conditions: In a new book “The Cult of We,” written by the The Wall Street Journal’s Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell, Adam Neumann reportedly told colleagues that SoftBank asked him to pledge not to give any of his own resources to the Israeli military since it could be problematic for SoftBank’s Middle Eastern investors. SoftBank denied the report to Axios.

🎬 Silver Screen: Steven Spielberg is working on a new autobiographical film, starring Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, Paul Dano, Julia Butters and Sam Rechner.

🎥 Coming Attractions: Bleecker Street and ShivHans Pictures secured the rights to Guy Nattiv’s “Golda,” the upcoming thriller starring Helen Mirren that will cover the Israeli prime minister’s handling of the Yom Kippur War.

📺 Culture War: Leading Haredi observerAvi Shafran pushes back against the “condescending and demeaning” portrayals of Haredi Judaism in Julia Haart’s new Netflix series, “My Unorthodox Life,”saying the show is misleading and biased.

💼 Transitions: American Jewish Committee CEO David Harris will step down from his role after more than 30 years next spring. Noah Schactman, the top editor at The Daily Beast, will leave the publicationto become editor-and-chief at Rolling Stone.

☕ Brewing Drama: Texas-based Black Rifle Coffee, founded by veteran Evan Hafer, is attempting to become the “Starbucks of the right” by leaning heavily into cultural debates.

🕯️ Remembering: Rabbi Yoel Kahn, a leading disciple of the Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, died at 91.

Wine of the Week

JI’s wine columnist Yitz Applbaum reviews theChâteau Serilhan Saint Estèphe 2012:

“Life is about conflict and compromise. Sitting in Kavod, a phenomenal kosher restaurant in Paris, with a dear friend earlier this week, I took a quick peek at the wine menu, and for a moment I was conflicted because the Nine Days had already started, and ultimately compromised that I would start the Nine Days a day late. A robust list of French wines, great company and a remarkable menu has me observing what I now affectionately refer to as the ‘eight days.’

“The Château Serilhan Saint Estèphe 2012 is a blend of 53% Cabernet Sauvignon, 42% Merlot and a smidgen of Cabernet Franc. The barrels where this wine consummated its marriage with wood must have been toasted by powerful forces as the vanilla flavor still has not left my front palate. The wine’s mid-palate soaks your tongue in deep purple plum juice. The finish shows the subtle attributes of which the St Estephe region is known for. Drink this wine with Le Tigre qui Pleure (Sua rong hai). This wine is drinkable for the next 5 years, at least.”

Birthdays

Anna Smashnova Pistolesi from Israel returns the ball during her match against Jill Craybas (USA) in the ASB Womens Tennis Classic played at the ASB Tennis Centre, Thursday. (Credit: Dean Purcell/Getty Images)