👋 Good Monday morning!

President Joe Biden will meet with King Abdullah of Jordan this afternoon for a pair of bilateral meetings. King Abdullah will have breakfast with Vice President Kamala Harris this morning and meet with Secretary of State Tony Blinken tomorrow.

Arnold and Frimet Roth, whose daughter Malki was killed in the Sbarro suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 2001, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journalcalling on President Biden to exert pressure on Jordan to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, who helped to orchestrate the attack that killed their daughter and 14 others. Tamimi spent eight years in an Israeli prison before being released in the prisoner swap that freed Gilad Shalit in 2011.

Yesterday’s observance of Tisha B’av was checkered with clashes between Muslim worshippers and Israeli police on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, where more than 1,000 Jewish pilgrims were allowed in to pray as they marked the holiday.

A tweet from the Prime Minister’s Office hours later said that PM Naftali Bennett had thanked the country’s top security officials for “maintaining freedom of worship for Jews on the Mount,” which was flagged by some observers as a change from the status quo in which Jews were allowed to visit, but not pray, at the site.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) will travel to Israel in August with the U.S.-Israel Education Association, a spokesperson clarified to Jewish Insider — not with the AIPAC affiliate AIEF (American Israel Education Foundation), as Tuberville told JI last week.

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain received the profile treatment from Mark Leibovich in TheNew York Times. Leibovich writes that Klain’s 60th birthday this summer is the cause of much “Beltway status anxiety” as Washingtonians strive for details and invites regarding a possible blowout party.

Quotable: “Mr. Klain, who resembles a grown-up Model U.N. prodigy with a round, boyish face and a burdened, workaholic demeanor, determinedly addresses Mr. Biden with the deference of a professional humble servant: always ‘sir’ or ‘Mr. President,’ despite having worked for him on and off for 35 years.” Read the full story here.

LA Confidential

East Coast editor shakes up L.A.’s journalism scene

Maer Roshan

Los Angeles magazine editor-in-chief Maer Roshan, a fairly recent transplant to the West Coast after a career in New York-centric media, is now drawing on previous high-level editing roles at publications like New York and Talk to shape the Southern California magazine’s voice. But in many ways, the experience of navigating newfound terrain, on deadline, is a familiar one for the seasoned editorial hand. Throughout his decades-long career in journalism, Roshan told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel, his perspective has often been “shaped by a sense of being both a participant and an outsider in very different worlds.”

A cut above: During the pandemic, when newsstand sales for many magazines experienced steep drops, Los Angeles increased its circulation, Roshan says, and web traffic has quadrupled under his leadership. The magazine, he emphasized to JI, is profitable. Published by Hour Media Group, the magazine had been struggling to achieve relevance before Roshan came on. “It was a lot of service journalism, like best parks and stuff like that,” he said of the outlet, which is the oldest independently published city magazine in the country. When he interviewed for the job, Roshan pitched a more ambitious approach, vowing to pursue splashier and scoop-driven features on politics, Hollywood and other power nodes in Los Angeles and beyond. “They were like, ‘Yeah, we’re up for that,’” Roshan said. “I’m like, are you sure?”

Hungry for news: “He is a careful editor who knows a good story when he sees it and certainly has an appetite for accountability journalism,” said Norman Pearlstine, who tried to hire Roshan after taking over as the Los Angeles Times’ executive editor in 2018. “He got the offer to do L.A. magazine, and understandably opted for something where he could basically run his own show,” Pearlstine, who stepped down from the Times late last year, told JI. “He’s done a few pieces that I certainly looked at and said, when I was in L.A., these are things that the Los Angeles Times should have gone after.”

A different time: Roshan’s parents, both Jewish, settled in Iran after meeting at college in the United States. His mother was from Far Rockaway, in Queens, and his father was Persian. “Shockingly, when I think back about it now, my mom, who was raised Orthodox, suddenly decided to marry my dad and move to Iran,” Roshan recalled, “which at the time was not a place where nice Jewish girls were running off to.” He fled the country with his family in 1979 as the Islamic revolution was underway and before the ayatollah returned from exile. “It was pretty bad by then,” Roshan recalled. “There were people on the streets and they were setting fires.” His father stayed behind to sort things out, escaping nearly a decade later, but died of cancer shortly after arriving on American shores.

Community ties: Roshan entered a Long Island yeshiva as a 12-year-old Iranian immigrant with no knowledge of Hebrew. During high school in Queens, Roshan, who is gay, studied Talmud while “mingling with club kids in Manhattan on the weekends.” For his college essay at New York University, he was asked to write about two people he admired. “I chose Truman Capote and Menachem Begin,” he said.

Read the full feature story here.

on the ground

Ohio 11th continues to heat up as wings of Democratic Party pour in resources

Nina Turner and Shontel Brown

In National Journal, Josh Kraushaar examines the “battle for the soul of the Democratic Party” raging in Ohio’s 11th Congressional District, where progressive candidate and former state Sen. Nina Turner and centrist Shontel Brown are vying for the Democratic nomination in the August 3rd special election to replace Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge, who previously represented the district.

Democratic establishment weighs in: “It’s the most significant sign of how invested the traditional Democratic establishment is in this otherwise nondescript special-election primary in August. It’s unusually rare for the party to throw the kitchen sink behind an underdog [Brown], but it underscores that party leaders believe left-wing lawmakers are badly damaging the Democratic Party brand — and are now working overtime to stop them.”

Dueling appearances: “House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC), who endorsed Brown last week, plans to campaign in Cleveland the weekend before the Aug. 3 special election, according to Brown’s campaign manager — a sign of confidence that Brown has the momentum. Clyburn’s strategy is reminiscent of his bet on Biden’s struggling presidential campaign before [the] South Carolina [primary], where a coalition of pragmatic African Americans and white moderates gave him a commanding victory that propelled him to the nomination… The day after Clyburn’s visit to the district was revealed, the Turner campaign announced that [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)] would be traveling to Cleveland next week to canvass with her.”

The Jewish vote: “Most significantly for the race, the district has a sizable Jewish community around Cleveland, which is mobilized for the low-turnout primary because of Turner’s history of antagonism towards Israel. Democratic Majority for Israel, an organization that backs Democratic pro-Israel candidates, has invested heavily in the race for Shontel Brown, blanketing the local airwaves with ads attacking Turner for her past criticism of both Biden and Hillary Clinton.”

Brown in Israel: “Last Wednesday, Brown stopped at a meet-and-greet in Cleveland Heights with several dozen members of the local Jewish community, where she introduced herself to the attendees and professed her strong support for Israel. In her stump speech, Brown talked about how she was wowed by her first trip to the Jewish state in 2018 and how she would be fully committed to protecting Israel’s security if elected to Congress. ‘I’m a person who grew up in the inner city so I’m used to hearing gunshots, but that feeling of vulnerability [after visiting Israel] I’ve never felt before,’ Brown said to the audience. ‘It gave me an appreciation for the Iron Dome [Israel’s missile-defense system] and the importance of the allyship of our democracies. You can always count me as a pro-Israel ally.’”

‘Justice and security’: “Asked about her frequent criticism of Israel, Turner said: ‘Israel has a right to exist. It is a democracy allied with the United States of America. And you need justice and security because if one side has it and the other doesn’t, it doesn’t help both peoples.’ She sounded a defiant note on the DMFI advertising: ‘It’s unfortunate that outside dirty money is coming into the district, and there’s only one candidate that invited that money in.’”

Read the full piece here.

campus beat

Summer is hot, but campus is hotter

Two women walk through a mostly empty campus at the University of California, Irvine in Irvine, CA on Friday, October 2, 2020.

School might be out for summer, but college campuses are busier than ever. We drill down the numbers:

By the numbers: In the weeks following May’s 11-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, unilateral statements condemning Israel were released in some form — from statements from faculty working groups and academic departments to accusations of “ethnic cleansing” from local chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine to student government resolutions — on 152 U.S. college campuses, according to the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC). Thirty-seven student government resolutions targeting Israel were introduced on 27 campuses during the 2020-2021 school year, including 17 that were introduced on or after May 10, the day the conflict began.

Big increase: The 152 figure represents a 105% increase over the total number of resolutions put forward during the prior academic year.

On the ground: The conflict spilled over onto campuses around the country. Days after issuing a statement condemning antisemitism — which did not mention Israel — in the wake of the conflict, the chancellor of Rutgers University walked it back, apologizing for having issued a statement against antisemitism that “failed to communicate support for our Palestinian community members.” In New Haven, Conn., the Yale College Council approved a statement written by Yalies 4 Palestine that condemned “the injustice, ethnic cleansing and genocide occurring in Palestine” and compared Israel’s actions to those of police in the U.S.

Bigger picture: The issues at Rutgers and Yale,campus professionals told JI, are not unique to those schools, but rather emblematic of a new campus landscape, in which the academic calendar no longer determines levels of campus activity, and the borders of a campus are no longer determined by its geographic address.

Root cause: Campus organizations attribute the shift in part to the pandemic, which moved the campus experience online, blurring not only the calendar days but also the lines between school and social life. “For supporters of Israel, summer break is canceled for the second year in a row,” ICC Executive Director Jacob Baime told JI. “In today’s digital-first world, the boundaries between campus and community are dissolving before our eyes. May’s Gaza conflagration showed that we are all living on campus now.”

Worthy Reads

💰 Activist Philanthropists: In the Wall Street Journal, Naomi Shaefer Riley looks at the rise of “woke philanthropy,” with major foundations taking on causes championed by the progressive left, including income inequality and systemic racism. Activist pressure has also forced groups to more carefully choose their donors, screening for ideology, among other factors. “Museums are jettisoning board members and canceling donors who made their money in ways counter to progressive orthodoxy. Government officials are threatening the independence and privacy of philanthropists.” [WSJ]

👩 Woman of Valor: In Foreign Policy, Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt profiles Rivka Ravitz, the Haredi mother of 12 who served as chief of staff to former Israel President Reuven Rivlin for two decades. ​​”Ravitz is, in many ways, the face of many Orthodox Jewish women, who identify as Haredi, who follow rabbinical rulings and who are uncomfortable in questioning the status quo publicly, who are devoted to traditional family values and community life—yet who are ready to step into leadership positions previously barred to women.” [ForeignPolicy]

⛑️ Community Response: The Washington Post’s David Suggs and Brittany Shammas spotlight the efforts of Chesed Shel Emes, a volunteer group that provides emergency services to Jewish communities, which is assisting families of Jewish victims of the Champlain Towers collapse as they try to hold proper burials for their loved ones. “Surfside is a community bound by tradition, its sunlit streets lined with kosher restaurants and synagogues. And that adherence to tradition defines the recovery and burial process, too.” [WashPost]

⚾ Play Ball: The Israeli national baseball team is headed to Tokyo for the Olympics — but most of them are Americans, The New York Times’ Corey Kilgannon reports. “It’s a ragtag assemblage of retired major leaguers, current minor leaguers and even some weekend warriors with day jobs: The team’s veteran pitcher works in Manhattan as head of programming for City Winery, a wine, food and music space. Another pitcher is an investment analyst with Goldman Sachs. An exporter of bathroom fixtures is the team’s general manager.” [NYTimes]

Around the Web

🛫 Plane Ticket: Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid will travel to Morocco next month to open Israel’s new diplomatic mission in the country and in doing so will become the first Israeli minister to visit Morocco since the normalization deal last year.

🇨🇦 New Gig: Former Yesh Atid MK Ronen Hoffman was announced as Israel’s next ambassador to Canada.

💻 Tech Trouble: Israeli cyber-surveillance firm NSO Group licensed spyware that was used to hack dozens of smartphones, including those of journalists, activists, executives and women close to murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

🇮🇷 Testing the Waters: The Washington Post editorial board writes that Iran’s attempted abduction of a Brooklyn-based Iranian dissident is a test of President Joe Biden’s resolve to oppose autocrats.

🇬🇧 ​​Across the Pond: U.K. MP and former Labour leader Ed Miliband talks about his life and career in an interview with The Evening Standard, revealing that he’d like to be buried in the same cemetery as Karl Marx.

📘 Picky Seller: An excerpt from an upcoming book on the sudden fall of WeWork by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell reveals that ousted CEO and founder Adam Neumann expressed concern over taking a Saudi Arabian investment, fearing responsibility for helping the state earn money.

💰On the Market: L Brand founder and former CEO Leslie Wexner is selling $745 million of stock, among a number of billionaires liquidating in recent months.

🕵️‍♂️ Manhunt: The NYPD is investigating an attack on a Jewish man walking to synagogue Friday morning in Brooklyn. Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa added a $5,000 reward on top of the $1,000 reward offered by a local volunteer group for information that leads to the assailant’s arrest.

🥙 Menu Mishegas: McDonald’s has reintroduced its Mini Pita Falafel on its Israeli menu, but some — including Haaretz’s Linda Dayan, who said the meal “tastes like a punishment” — are not impressed by the offering.

🥪 Let’s Nosh: Fritzi’s, a new kosher-style delicatessen in Oak Park, Ill., pays tribute to the owner’s father, who fled Nazi Europe with his family.

🕯️ Remembering: Former Washington Post editor Henry Rosenfeld, who supervised reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during their coverage of Watergate, died of COVID-19 complications at 91.

Pic of the Day

Israeli and American flags displayed during the national anthems prior to Team Israel’s exhibition game Sunday night against the Bethesda Big Train, a summer collegiate team, in Bethesda, Maryland.

Birthdays

Ian Schrager speaks in conversation with magazine editor Paul Flynn about Studio 54 at The V&A on October 9, 2017, in London, England. (Credit: Dave Benett/Getty Images)