Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Tuesday morning!
Fifty-eight members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas urging that Israel be added to the Visa Waiver Program, allowing citizens of Israel to travel to the U.S. without requiring visas.
The group was led by Reps. Kathleen Rice (D-NY), Michelle Fischbach (R-MN), Grace Meng (D-NY), Brian Mast (R-FL), Elaine Luria (D-VA) and Lee Zeldin (R-NY).
Zeldin told Jewish Insider, “Admitting Israel to the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) would help fuel the country’s continued economic growth and create opportunities for new international trade partnerships. I sincerely hope the Biden administration will approve Israel’s entrance into the VWP and strengthen our country’s economic and national security bonds with Israel.”
John Kerry, the Biden administration’s climate envoy, attended a signing ceremony in Dubai yesterday for a regional clean energy and water cooperation project between Jordan, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Israeli President Isaac Herzogparticipated last night in a Genesis Prize Foundation event in London, celebrating the legacy of the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, one year after his death. The president awarded the Genesis Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously to the late Rabbi Sacks, presenting it to his widow, Lady Elaine Sacks.
Herzog said he reads Rabbi Sacks’s commentary on the weekly Torah portion every Shabbat. “Rabbi Sacks became a masterful articulator of the Jewish foundation of universal values, while unapologetically verbalizing a proud, dignified Jewish identity. His innate, God-given power of expression gave voice to the contribution of Judaism and the State of Israel to humanity at large,” he said.
funny guy
Alex Edelman’s quest for comedy in unfunny places

Alex Edelman
Alex Edelman is a comedian who spends a lot of time doing one of the least funny activities imaginable: tracking down and reading antisemitic hate on Twitter, Gab and Telegram. “The first time I saw it directed at me, I did cry. It was a bad day. I cried in the Apple store,” Edelman told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch in a Zoom interview last week. And yet it’s this activity — lurking in virtual white supremacist spaces — that serves as the inspiration for Edelman’s latest production, a one-man show called “Just For Us,” which premieres Off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Manhattan.
Nerf Nazis: “Just For Us,” produced by comedian Mike Birbiglia, is about a meeting of white supremacists that Edelman attended several years ago. “I used to say Nazi or neo-Nazi freewheelingly, and now I’m just like, ‘These are nerf Nazis.’ These guys are Nazis the way that people who fight each other in the park with, like, tinfoil swords are the Knights of the Round Table.” The show runs from Dec. 1-19.
Saturday Night Seder: Edelman was the lead writer and executive producer of “Saturday Night Seder,” a virtual production that took place early in the COVID-19 pandemic to raise money for a nonprofit set up by Congress to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “‘Seder’ set us up in a really interesting way. It was right at the beginning of the pandemic, and there was a bunch of really fascinating stuff happening,” said Edelman. “I helped rabbis prep for the High Holy Days” by leading discussions on how they could be engaging over Zoom. He has also since done fundraisers for Sharsheret, which works on breast cancer prevention and education; on his BBC radio show, he used an episode to explore his Jewish identity.
Natural tension: “Comedy comes from tension. There’s a natural incongruity in living a life, in a modern world, that is focused on tradition, or living in a traditional world where you’d like to have a little bit of the aspects of modernity,” noted Edelman. “There’s a joke in my act about how I never tried bacon. I have tried cocaine, but I’ve never tried bacon. Something about that deals with this sort of funny incongruity between a modern world, with unusual electric fences for the people in it.”
Alex Edelman is a comedian who spends a lot of time doing one of the least funny activities imaginable: tracking down and reading antisemitic hate on Twitter, Gab and Telegram. “The first time I saw it directed at me, I did cry. It was a bad day. I cried in the Apple store,” Edelman told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch in a Zoom interview last week. And yet it’s this activity — lurking in virtual white supremacist spaces — that serves as the inspiration for Edelman’s latest production, a one-man show called “Just For Us,” which premieres Off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Manhattan.
Nerf Nazis: “Just For Us,” produced by comedian Mike Birbiglia, is about a meeting of white supremacists that Edelman attended several years ago. “I used to say Nazi or neo-Nazi freewheelingly, and now I’m just like, ‘These are nerf Nazis.’ These guys are Nazis the way that people who fight each other in the park with, like, tinfoil swords are the Knights of the Round Table.” The show runs from Dec. 1-19.
Saturday Night Seder: Edelman was the lead writer and executive producer of “Saturday Night Seder,” a virtual production that took place early in the COVID-19 pandemic to raise money for a nonprofit set up by Congress to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “‘Seder’ set us up in a really interesting way. It was right at the beginning of the pandemic, and there was a bunch of really fascinating stuff happening,” said Edelman. “I helped rabbis prep for the High Holy Days” by leading discussions on how they could be engaging over Zoom. He has also since done fundraisers for Sharsheret, which works on breast cancer prevention and education; on his BBC radio show, he used an episode to explore his Jewish identity.
Natural tension: “Comedy comes from tension. There’s a natural incongruity in living a life, in a modern world, that is focused on tradition, or living in a traditional world where you’d like to have a little bit of the aspects of modernity,” noted Edelman. “There’s a joke in my act about how I never tried bacon. I have tried cocaine, but I’ve never tried bacon. Something about that deals with this sort of funny incongruity between a modern world, with unusual electric fences for the people in it.”