Ohio Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, speaks during a news conference Monday, Oct. 7, 2019 at the Ohio Department of Public Safety in Columbus, Ohio.

Former President Donald Trump has yet to make an endorsement in Ohio’s crowded Republican Senate primary, but one candidate can be sure he won’t be getting the nod. Hours after Ohio state Sen. Matt Dolan declared his candidacy last Monday, he received a sharply worded rejection letter from the ex-president, pejoratively characterizing him as a “Republican in name only.” Not that Dolan, 56, was expecting it would go any other way, reports Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel. Dolan has made clear that he isn’t actively seeking Trump’s support — in contrast to the other Republican candidates locked in competition for an endorsement.

Against the grain: For one, Dolan wholeheartedly supported the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal negotiated by outgoing Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), in spite of Trump’s vocal opposition to the bill. The other GOP candidates all bashed the spending package. “I can only guess I’m the only person who supported it because President Trump said he wouldn’t endorse anyone who did,” Dolan said in a recent interview with JI. “My opponents all failed the very first test — that they’re going to follow politics before they follow what’s in the best interest of Ohio.”

Toeing the line: Despite his readiness to part ways with the former president on select issues, Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Indians, is quick to suggest that he largely approved of the former president’s agenda — even if the feeling isn’t mutual. The two-term state senator and former state representative lists a number of issues on his campaign site that suggest he is in line with the other Republican candidates in substance if not style, employing such terms as “socialist Democrats,” “election integrity,” “critical race theory” and “securing the border.”

Eye on Israel: On Israel, there is little to no distance between Dolan and his opponents, who have all expressed staunch support for the Jewish state. Dolan said he would have voted in favor of providing $1 billion to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, as the House did last week after a contentious floor debate. “The Iron Dome is essential for Israel to protect itself,” he said. The other GOP Senate candidates told JI after the vote that they supported the spending as well.

‘Republican ideals’: Still, Dolan’s candidacy represents an unorthodox path in Ohio, where Trump’s base appears to remain energized as he mulls running in the 2024 presidential election. But Dolan said it would be misguided to view his Senate bid as a test of Trump’s salience within the Republican Party. “If we want an America that’s better and we want an Ohio that’s better, then you need somebody like me who’s pushing conservative Republican ideals that have produced results,” Dolan told JI. “That’s what I think this race is about.”

Read the full interview here.

Little Sesame chef Ronen Tenne (left) and co-founder Nick Wiseman

After the coronavirus pandemic sent sales at Little Sesame’s two downtown locations into a tailspin, the chefs at the Washington hummus restaurant figured it would be easy to create a packaged version of its popular hummus to sell in local grocery stores. It’s just a few ingredients, they thought. Right? “It’s a whole new business. There’s a lot of learning we had to do,” Little Sesame co-founder Nick Wiseman told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch in a recent interview. After nearly a year of experimenting with acidity levels and pasteurization, Little Sesame’s hummus hit shelves at 13 Whole Foods locations in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia over the summer.

Off the shelves: Little Sesame opened its first brick-and-mortar location in 2018. Its two storefronts are in Chinatown and Farragut Square, two business districts that have yet to see a mass return of office workers. But “we couldn’t be happier” with sales at Whole Foods, said Wiseman.

Honoring tradition: Wiseman created Little Sesame with his cousin, Dave Wiseman — a lawyer, not a chef — and Ronen Tenne, an Israeli chef with whom Wiseman worked as a line cook at a restaurant run by Michelin-starred chef Michael White in New York. “We always dreamed of opening our own place one day,” said Wiseman. Little Sesame wasn’t the trio’s first project. Washington foodies will recall their previous restaurant, DGS Delicatessen, a Jewish-style deli that paid homage to the region’s Jewish food heritage. It was named for District Grocery Stores, a 20th-century grocery cooperative that at its peak comprised 300 stores, most of which were owned by Jewish immigrants from Europe.

Trendlines: The partners’ journey from a deli to an Israeli hummus restaurant could be seen as a broader trend in American Jewish food culture playing out in miniature: a move beyond Ashkenazi foods like smoked salmon and bagels to include Sephardic and Mizrahi cuisines. But Wiseman is quick to note that Little Sesame’s influences go beyond Israel. “It is inspired by Israel, but it’s reflective of the food of the entire region,” he said.

Read the full story here.

A picture taken on August 5, 2021, shows an Iron Dome defense system battery, designed to intercept and destroy incoming short-range rockets and artillery shells, in the Hula Valley in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon.

The House of Representatives voted 420-9, with two present, last Thursday to provide $1 billion to Israel to replenish its Iron Dome missile defense system. Eight Democrats — Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Andre Carson (D-IN), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Marie Newman (D-IL), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Jesús Garcia (D-IL) and Cori Bush (D-MO) — voted against the Iron Dome supplemental funding. Republican Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), a libertarian generally opposed to foreign aid, also voted no. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Hank Johnson (D-GA) voted present.

Strong Message: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who was part of the pro-Israel group that pushed for this vote, told JI, “It was a really gratifying vote to be able to demonstrate [Democratic support for Israel] and also to push back on some of the really ridiculous hypocrisy that came from the Republican side,” Wasserman Schultz said, noting that “any lingering doubt in the pro-Israel community about the overwhelming support [in] the Democratic Party for the U.S.-Israel relationship… should have been erased by the evidence of 96% of our caucus voting in support.”

Lingering Issues: Despite the vote’s outcome, some pro-Israel members remained frustrated with the events that led up to Thursday’s vote. “I’m not happy with everything that we went through to get here. I think that was unnecessary because there truly is broad bipartisan support, almost unanimous,” Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) said. “The biggest takeaway… is that neither party should use issues related to Israel as a political football.” She added, “Combining the support for Iron Dome with other pieces of legislation… really muddled this.”

Spotlight on AOC: Ocasio-Cortez, who changed her vote from “no” to “present” at the last minute and was seen crying on the House floor, released a statement on Friday apologizing for her vote and making clear she opposed the funding. While some commentators suggested that Ocasio-Cortez changed her vote to appease pro-Israel voters in future elections in New York, New York-based Democratic strategist Stu Loeser called that idea “nonsense.” In an interview with JI on Friday, he said, “She’s been very clear in her views. Nobody who’s a one-issue voter is going to vote for her.”

Outlier: Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) was the only member of the “Squad” of far-left Democratic lawmakers who voted in favor of the Iron Dome funding, after opposing including it in a government funding bill earlier in the week, citing process concerns. According to Loeser, who lives in Bowman’s district — which includes parts of the Bronx and Westchester County — Bowman has discussed the issue with pro-Israel voters in the district. “I know he heard from a lot of his constituents… that this issue mattered,” Loeser said. “[Iron Dome] saves Israeli lives, it saves the lives of his constituents when they’re in Israel.”

Read more here.

What’s next: Punchbowl News reported this morning that the Senate may attach the funding to an upcoming continuing resolution. A Senate source tells JI that Schumer ran a “hotline” to pass the bill by unanimous consent, which was met with an objection. Schumer can either ask consent to pass the funding bill without a vote, file cloture to deal with an objection or try to attach it to the continuing resolution that will go back to the House.

As a legislator in Washington since 2015, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) has largely focused on federal issues. But the Long Island congressman, who spent four years in the New York state Senate before seeking higher office, is looking to return to Albany. In April, Zeldin announced a challenge to then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the state’s 2022 gubernatorial race. In an interview with Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod, the New York Republican, in a pivot to state-centric issues, spoke about his focus on rooting out antisemitism in education.

Eyes on Education: Last month, he called for an investigation into New York City public school teachers who accused Israel of “ethnically cleansing Palestinians.” In June, he criticized City University of New York’s faculty union for passing an anti-Israel resolution. Weeks later, he called for the firing of a CUNY School of Professional Studies adjunct professor for a sermon he delivered at a New Jersey Islamic center calling for Muslims to “erase this filth called Israel.”

Quotable: “No one, from a teacher in grade school to someone in higher education to faculty administration, should be in charge of a kid’s education if they’re going to be bringing these views in or near the classroom,” he told JI. “We need to root out antisemitism to its core and ensure that we don’t have a next generation of educators and students being brainwashed to hate the way that we see some currently in education aspiring towards.” The congressman said he has chosen to speak out on antisemitism in education in particular because he sees a “push inside of higher ed[ucation] promoting the BDS movement more than ever before.”

Crackdown: Zeldin argued that public funding to schools, from elementary level to institutions of higher education, should be “leveraged to ensure that there’s more accountability” and “zero tolerance for this hate.” The New York congressman, who represents the eastern end of Long Island, also said that New York needs to be more strongly enforcing its current policies regarding antisemitism, particularly its 2016 executive order cutting off business with companies engaging in Israel boycotts, by applying that executive order to Ben & Jerry’s and its parent company, Unilever. The ice cream maker recently announced that it was ending sales in the West Bank, calling it “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” “The state should be cutting off business and making an example of Unilever,” Zeldin said.

Upcoming: He also said that Congress can take several steps to help advance the fight against antisemitism. “That’s an issue too — those who are in positions to legislate, not only can pass bills, but many can speak out more, and that helps in increasing pressure,” Zeldin said. According to a spokesperson, the congressman is currently collecting sponsors for a reintroduction of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, a bill he introduced in 2020 with 63 Republican cosponsors and one Democrat, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), who represents Nassau County on Long Island. The bill would bar entities from participating in boycotts or requests for boycotts by international organizations such as the United Nations and European Union, with fines as penalties.

Read the full interview here.