NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 02: Managing Director and Vice Chairman of Morgan Stanley Tom Nides speaks on stage during the 2015 Concordia Summit at Grand Hyatt New York on October 2, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)

The first-ever “Abraham Accords Working Group,” inaugurated last night, will strengthen and deepen the connections forged in 2020 between Israel and five Muslim-majority countries, as well as underscore the importance of Israel’s long-standing ties with Egypt and Jordan, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides told Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash in an exclusive interview on Thursday.

Example of peace: In his first interview with an English-language media outlet since becoming ambassador, Nides explained the importance of the U.S.-facilitated forum, which will bring together Israel-based ambassadors and representatives of Arab states that have peace and normalization agreements with Israel. Its goal, he said, is not only to build upon already blooming business ties or to expand the people-to-people relations, but also to show the benefits of cooperation and serve as an example of stability and peace in a volatile region.

Long-term benefits: “At the end of the day, it’s all about the people of these countries recognizing the importance of the other’s culture and of other people,” Nides told JI. “That will drive business, it will drive political stability and the national security implications of this are also obviously quite important…. The more comfortable these countries are vis-a-vis working with each other, the more it will only enhance the long-term benefits for all the countries and for Israel,” he added.

Credit for starting: Asked by JI about criticism that the Biden administration might not be as enthusiastic or dedicated to broadening Abraham Accords in the same way as the previous administration, Nides countered that his team in Jerusalem and representatives of the State Department in Washington are spending “enormous amounts of time on this… I give the Trump administration, Jared and the team, Ambassador Friedman, an enormous amount of credit for starting this,” he said. “But as you know, the easy part of these things is starting them, the more difficult part is deepening the piece and getting things done.”

Big focus: “If it was that easy, then we would have had all these countries join the first time around,” Nides continued. “So obviously, we have work to do, but make no mistake, we are not only focusing on it, but we also believe that it’s really important. It’s really important for the region and it’s important for the Biden administration.”

Read the full interview here.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer during our interview in his office, in Washington, D.C.

Following news reports on Wednesday that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer plans to retire at the end of this term, Court watchers and political activists have begun to speculate about whom President Joe Biden will choose to replace Breyer. The reliably liberal associate justice, 83, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1994, will have served nearly 28 years on the nation’s highest court. Breyer’s retirement could reduce the number of Jewish justices on the Court to one — Elena Kagan — following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020. But his seat on the Court has historically been held by Jewish justices, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

‘Jewish seat’: Breyer’s seat on the Court was once routinely, if unofficially, called the “Jewish seat,” because five of the last six justices to fill that seat were Jewish. After Louis Brandeis’ nomination to the Court in 1916, he was the sole Jewish justice until President Herbert Hoover appointed Benjamin N. Cardozo in 1932. Brandeis retired in 1939, leaving Cardozo as the only Jewish justice. Future Jewish justices would go on to occupy Cardozo’s seat — he was succeeded by Felix Frankfurter, Arthur Goldberg and Abe Fortas.

Bump in the road: When Fortas left the Court in 1969 over an ethics scandal, he was replaced by Henry Blackmun, a Methodist, and the “Jewish seat” disappeared. But not forever. The next Jewish justice named was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in 1993, who did not fill the “Jewish seat.” That went to Breyer, a year later, when Blackmun retired. “No one saw us as filling a Jewish seat,” Ginsburg said in a 2003 speech.

Slow progress: Breyer told the writer Abigail Pogrebin in 2005that he was “a little surprised” that his Jewish faith did not come up in his confirmation hearings. “If you told my grandfather that there would be two Jews on the Supreme Court at the same time and nobody would make an issue of that, he would have found that to be impossible.” Nearly 80 years before Breyer joined the Court, Brandeis’s confirmation hearings were tinged with antisemitism.

Hillel’s lessons: Breyer often speaks to Jewish audiences, although he has spoken less frequently about his Jewish faith and upbringing than other Jewish justices. He told Pogrebin that his Hebrew school and Jewish summer camp experiences “made an impression,” and that he views the world like his father did: “My favorite way of looking at things is what Hillel said: ‘If I am not for myself who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?’ That captures it to me.”

Who’s who: During his campaign, Biden pledged to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. One jurist Biden is reportedly considering is California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger, who has Jewish and Jamaican roots.

Read more here.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

President Joe Biden named 10 new members to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, the governing body of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, on Wednesday, a day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, reports Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss.

Who’s Who: Two of the appointees — Allan M. Holt, managing director at The Carlyle Group, and Tom Bernstein, president and co-founder of Chelsea Piers L.P. — are current Council members whose terms are being renewed. Bernstein, the chair emeritus, has been on the Council since 2002, and Holt will continue as vice chairman. Stuart Eizenstat, the State Department’s special advisor on Holocaust issues, will chair the council.

‘Perilous times’: Several of the appointees have connections to Democratic politics, including Susan Stern, founder of Jewish Women for Joe and a member of the executive committee for Jewish Democratic Council of America. “I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to work to make the museum stronger, and get the message out to as many people as possible. I’m afraid that the story is slipping away, and we can’t let that happen,” Stern, whose mother-in-law survived the Holocaust, told JIon Wednesday. “We’re living in very perilous times, and I think this is an important time and the museum has an important role to play in telling the story and making sure people understand the perils that we face.”

Passage of time: Other members appointed by Biden include Abe Foxman, the former longtime national director of the Anti-Defamation League who had previously been tapped to serve on the Council by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; Marsha Laufer, a philanthropist and Democratic activist; and Sam Lauter, who worked on Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign and sits on the board of Democratic Majority for Israel. Foxman told JI that continuing to educate the public about the Holocaust is critical “because of the lapse of time, the loss of survivors and witnesses,” noting that when he first joined the board, he was one of many Holocaust survivors nominated. Now, many of the board’s members are the descendants of survivors. “That’s what time does.”

Read more here.

Toddler Iza Harnik. Poland, 1939

At the age of 3, Iza Harnik was forced to assume an entirely new identity, memorize a new life story and learn prayers belonging to her newly adopted religion — a false but life-saving guise that saved the young Jewish girl from the Nazis when a Christian family provided her with refuge in German-occupied Brody, formerly Poland, today Ukraine, Jewish Insider’s Tamara Zieve reports.

Holed up: On June 22, 1941, the Germans began the invasion of the Soviet Union. Brody, which had been occupied by the Red Army since 1939, was bombed before the Germans occupied it at the end of June 1941. Despite her young age during World War II, Iza, today named Israela Hargil, retained vivid memories from that time. “I remember we were in a kind of cellar with a group of Jews — and the bombs, it was very noisy outside,” Hargil, 84, told JI in a phone interview this week. “When it became quiet outside my father went out cautiously, and when he came back he said he met his Polish friend, [Jacenty] Miklaszewski, and he offered to take me to his house. Well, I had nothing to say about it,” Hargil said.

False identities: Hargil’s harrowing story is documented by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, which is spotlighting her and others who survived under false identities, in a new virtual exhibition launched for this year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls today. The exhibiton, “Remember Your New Name: Surviving the Holocaust Under a False Identity,” tells the stories — through testimonies, personal documents, photographs, artworks and footage — of 14 Jews who survived outside of the ghettos, concentration and extermination camps, under assumed identities in countries across Europe.

Escaping certain death: Hargil’s mother, Elsa Harnik, a teacher and musician, was killed alongside her brother Shoylek Kahana some two weeks after the occupation of Brody, when German soldiers interrogated and murdered approximately 250 Jewish men and women. By January 1942, the Jews of Brody were confined in a ghetto. Iza was smuggled out, and into the home of Miklaszewski and his wife, Maria. Her father, Kalman-Karl Harnik, knew Miklaszewski from the orchestra he conducted. Iza’s grandmother Sheindel perished in the ghetto. Kalman-Karl escaped and hid, with Miklaszewski’s assistance, in a pit in a village near Brody.

Adopting a new life and religion: Iza’s new name was Eva. She had to learn her new Polish identity, along with Christian prayers that she would recite while kneeling by her bed. She was instructed to tell anyone who asked that her parents were killed in the bombing of their village and she was subsequently adopted by her “uncle and aunt.” “Whenever the neighbors or anybody asked, I told them this story,” Hargil said. The family later moved to Krakow, where “Eva” went to a kindergarten run by nuns and then to first grade. “I learned that the Jews are a terrible people, very ugly, very hateful, that killed God, Jesus. And I didn’t want to belong to them but I always remembered that I am a Jew, always it was in the back of my mind,” Hargil said.

Read the full story here.