Harriet Hageman

Even amid shifting intra-party dynamics within the GOP, Harriet Hageman believes that Republican voters in deep-red Wyoming are united against Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the leading exponent of anti-Trump conservatism in the House. Hageman, a trial attorney and GOP activist, describes encountering a growing well of anti-Cheney sentiment as she embarks on a bid to unseat Wyoming’s lone congresswoman. “Liz Cheney is not liked in Wyoming,” Hageman, 59, charged in an interview with Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel. “That’s why she doesn’t come to Wyoming.”

Revenge campaign: Hageman seems unusually confident about her prospects, and she has reason for optimism, thanks in large part to an endorsement from Cheney’s chief adversary, former President Donald Trump, who performed well among Wyomingites in 2020 and maintains strong support throughout the state. Hageman is no doubt banking on that good will as a leading foot soldier in the former president’s effort to enact vengeance against the 10 House Republicans, including Cheney, who voted for his impeachment last January.

Attendant baggage: Still, Hageman enters the race with some baggage, both as a former Cheney supporter and an outspoken Trump critic. In 2016, for instance, Hageman described Cheney as a “friend” and “proven, courageous, constitutional conservative,” while that same year participating in a failed effort to deny Trump the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Either way, Hageman said the former president is fully supportive of her candidacy. “I can assure you that he’s not worried,” she told JI.

Addressing antisemitism: Hageman was prepared to criticize one of Cheney’s biggest enemies in the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who earned Trump’s endorsement in 2020. On the House floor last month, Cheney called Greene a “joke,” alluding to her past suggestion that wildfires were caused by a space laser controlled by a Jewish banking family. Hageman claimed to have “just heard about” Greene’s comments. But she vowed to oppose such rhetoric if elected, even from members of her own party. “If they’re espousing antisemitic views,” she said, “hold them accountable.”

Irreconcilable division: Hageman and Cheney are fundamentally divided on the most salient issue in the race: the 2020 election. While Cheney is among the most outspoken critics of Trump’s baseless effort to cast doubt on the election results, Hageman refused to acknowledge that Trump had lost. “I think that there were some serious irregularities, especially in the swing states, and I think we need to get to the bottom of it,” she told JI. “I think we need to make sure that we have the integrity in the elections that we’re entitled to.”

Read the full interview here.

Editor-in-Chief of Food & Wine, Dana Cowin speaks at Mastering Your Mistakes In The Kitchen hosted by Dana Cowin during the Food Network New York City Wine & Food Festival Presented By FOOD & WINE at Neuehouse on October 18, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for NYCWFF)

For most Americans, early COVID-19 lockdowns meant plenty of free time, and three meals to fill each day without the possibility of going to restaurants. Home cooking became a near-universal hobby: First there was banana bread, and then sourdough starter. Former longtime Food and Wine editor Dana Cowin experienced this too. Used to elaborate nights out at the world’s best restaurants, Cowin was not an exceptional home cook. She published a cookbook in 2014 premised on the fact that she was, actually, a terrible chef. “I for one really needed shortcuts,” Cowin told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch in a recent interview.

Broad offerings: To bolster her cooking and to support women entrepreneurs in the food space, Cowin created Giving Broadly, a website serving as a guide to, and one-stop shop for, products from female-owned brands. The site has a wide array of offerings, including Soom tahini from Amy Zitelman, jerk seasoning from Fauzia Abdur-Rahman and Masala Mama Indian sauces from Nidhi Jalan.

Supporting women: “Giving Broadly, which is all packaged products to make your cooking better, was a dream for me, trying to help these women and then putting it out in the world so that other people would be exposed to their stories and the food,” Cowin explained. Cowin has spent the five years since she left Food and Wine magazine helping promote and coach female chefs and creators. Giving Broadly was a spin-off from her podcast, “Speaking Broadly,” where she has interviewed diverse culinary figures like the American-Israeli cookbook writer Adeena Sussman and the Palestinian-American chef Reem Kassis.

Top tastemaker: Cowin has been described as “one of the country’s leading tastemakers,” and she described that process of spotting the next trend as “instinctive.” “I’m like, ‘Oh my god, this is gonna be the next thing,’” Cowin explained of her creative process. She can remember only one major miss in her career: vegan food. 20 years ago, she was asked about it: “‘The vegan food that’s not just straight, great vegetables is just awful. And I don’t see that gaining so much traction.’ And I was so wrong, obviously,” Cowin recalled.

Fan favorites: It’s sometimes a chore to get her family to care about New York’s hot restaurants. “My husband, not at all. He could not care less,” Cowin said. One of her college-age daughters “has a standing order of, ‘I have to go to Zabar’s,’ which is near us, to buy particular matzah balls, and their chicken broth, not just a standard chicken broth,” Cowin added. Other classic New York Jewish foods are family favorites — Russ & Daughters bagels, herring and cream sauce (though Cowin says that’s mostly her own guilty pleasure, not her family’s), rugelach, challah that’s “squishy.”

Read the full story here.

Yuval David Shimoni

​​Yuval David Shimoni is literally running for his life these days. And swimming. And cycling. When he competes Friday in Israel’s first-ever Ironman triathlon, he will be continuing his slow but steady recovery from the psychological trauma he suffered following his harrowing experiences in the IDF, reports Jewish Insider’s Tamara Zieve.

Sports therapy: In his agonizing journey toward healing, one that took him to the brink of suicide, David Shimoni said, sport helped save him. The discipline required in an event like the triathlon provides him with positive challenges, gives him faith in himself and the strength to succeed through hard work and self-improvement. Regular therapy and a soldiers’ triathlon support group have also helped along the way. “I’m still in the process of returning to myself,” David Shimoni, today a therapist who is guiding others on their own paths to recovery.

Breaking point: During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, David Shimoni was called for reserve duty and his army unit entered Lebanon. The house where they were holed up was hit by two missiles, killing nine members of his unit and wounding several others. David Shimoni was physically unscathed. But he said that a some seven-hour wait for the rescue-and-evacuation force to arrive, and what followed, caused him deep psychological trauma that would manifest itself several years later. “After they evacuated the dead and the wounded, we were instructed to stay there. We were covered in blood, we had no food, no water and we didn’t know why we were staying — we hadn’t been given a new mission,” David Shimoni told JI. The long days that followed in Lebanon almost broke him.

No way out: After his unit returned to Israel, he thought “the nightmare was over.” He finished his university exams and took a flight to China, where he lived for several years. It was during that time that the flashbacks began, mostly coming to him at night. Shortly after, the anger attacks began and David Shimoni felt himself deteriorating. He returned home to Israel but he started isolating himself from his loved ones. He started taking psychiatric medication and sleeping pills. At some point, he started using drugs, first soft ones and then harder ones. He stopped working and the symptoms, the depression and the despair got worse, snowballing into acts of self-harm. David Shimoni was suicidal. “My romance with death started in the war. The answer became death,” he explained.

Running forward: Today, David Shimoni is not only healthy and happy, but helping others on their own paths out of depression to recovery. Crucial in his recovery process has been his involvement in a triathlon group, part of the Brothers for Life NGO that supports IDF veterans who sustained physical or psychological injuries as combat soldiers. He’s already completed two triathlons and sees the half Ironman in Tiberias, organized and hosted by the Tel Aviv-based Comtecgroup and the Sylvan Adams Foundation, as “the peak of the peak.” “It’s a great privilege to take part in the first Ironman in the country I fought and was injured for. It’s a double victory for me,” David Shimoni said.

Read the full story here.