Huma Abedin

Growing up in Saudi Arabia was “one of the greatest gifts” given to Huma Abedin by her parents, she said in the newest episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast.” The longtime aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recalled her upbringing in the Gulf nation in conversation with co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein. Abedin, who was born in Michigan, moved to Saudi Arabia as a toddler in 1977 on her parents’ one-year sabbatical (they were both academics), which they kept extending — her mother still lives in the Gulf nation. “I loved growing up there.” she said.

Expat environment: “Everybody was an expatriate. I mean, it was sort of flush with oil money. All these institutions were brand new, and they were basically importing foreign talent,” Abedin recalled of the country in 1977. “It was a few years after [the] very popular, moderate King Faisal was murdered by his nephew. So it was rather a tumultuous time in the Middle East. A lot was happening. Israel and Egypt just negotiated a peace deal…. And the siege of Mecca took place while we were living there. So a lot was happening.”

Ch-ch-changes: While she said the killing of columnist Jamal Khashoggi on the order of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman made her “sick to my stomach,” Abedin spoke positively of the reforms enacted under the current Saudi regime. “Every year that I’ve gone back since, what has surprised me is how, yes, things that my friends and family were not able to do, they can now. I go to Saudi Arabia, my sister-in-law now drives me around. There are movie theaters; there were no movie theaters growing up,” Abedin said. “It’s just a different culture. It’s on a different timeline. But certainly I see things now that were unheard of when I was growing up.”

Memorable visit: Abedin, who began her career working in the Clinton White House for the then-first lady, recalled an assignment in 1998 to prepare for the president’s upcoming trip to Israel. “That trip changed my life,” Abedin said, describing, among other experiences, her visit to Masada and her surprised discovery of a Shabbat elevator. At the end of the trip, a member of the Israeli Foreign Ministry told Abedin that, despite the presence of Jewish staffers on the delegation, “we like you because you’re the most like us.”

Fake news: Though her role as a Clinton aide had largely placed her behind the scenes, Abedin first garnered significant press coverage when then-Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) questioned her allegiance to the United States, falsely asserting a connection between Abedin’s family and the Muslim Brotherhood. “It was fake news based on a fake video,” Abedin explained, but the allegation was not without a negative impact. “We went on an official State Department trip and a member of the Coptic Christian community sat across from Hillary and said, ‘We’re not sure we can trust you because of your aide, who is whispering all kinds of things in your ear,’” Abedin recalled. “What Michele Bachmann did — and the five Republican members of Congress who joined her — was essentially question my patriotism and essentially suggested that I, and not just me, it was other high-ranking Muslims serving in government, that we essentially were not loyal to this government, and that we should be investigated,” Abedin continued.

Tough on Russia: “I think Hillary was very, both prescient and tough in some of the conversations that she had [with Russia],” Abedin said. “The protests in 2011, that she spoke out about… when people took to the streets to protest the government. And then the very tough reaction from the Russian government, from Putin. I mean, she basically called him out, and, I think, made a little bit of an enemy in him.”

Read the full story here and listen to the full podcast here.

Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick waits for the results of a machine recount at the Voting Equipment Center in Lauderhill, Fla.

Raised in an evangelical Christian household where support for Israel felt close to sacrosanct, Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) remembers bidding adieu to her Haitian-born parents as they set off on religious pilgrimages to the Holy Land every other year. The South Florida congresswoman, 43, never joined them on those excursions. But she hoped to visit Israel at some point in her life, and — before the pandemic hit, canceling such plans — had been expecting to embark on her first visit to Israel. A couple of weeks ago, Cherfilus-McCormick finally got her chance, reports Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel.

‘It was surreal’: The newly elected representative from Florida’s 20th Congressional District, who assumed office in January, traveled last month to Israel and the Palestinian territories with a delegation of freshman House Democrats sponsored by the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation. “It was surreal,” Cherfilus-McCormick told JI in an interview. Her parents “were so excited,” she added. “They actually wanted me to go because they helped fund an orphanage” not too far from the Galilee. “They texted me and they told me, ‘Make sure you go over there, you’re going to find our name in the stone.’ But we didn’t have a chance.”

Building empathy: Beyond the personal, Cherfilus-McCormick said the delegation was instructive as she seeks to make sense of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during her first months in the House. “Usually, when you learn about the conflict and you learn about Israel, you always think about it from a cerebral, intellectual place,” she explained. “But going to Israel, meeting the people, talking to everyone and the leaders, it was an amazing experience, because you start empathizing with the people.”

Iron Dome: Cherfilus-McCormick said the trip was a reminder of the many security risks Israel faces on a daily basis. “When we talk about funding for Iron Dome,” she said, referring to Israel’s missile-defense system, which was the subject of a heated House vote last September, “a lot of times there are people who are like, ‘Oh, we shouldn’t fund it that much,’ but when you see how much needs to be covered that we’re funding, we’re still not covering enough of Israel to make it safe. You realize that there needs to be more funding.”

Hastings’ legacy: Before she took office, Cherfilus-McCormick, the first Haitian-American Democrat in Congress, had vowed to uphold the legacy of her predecessor, the late Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL), a staunch supporter of Israel who was also known for his commitment to promoting Black-Jewish relations before he died last April. She reaffirmed that approach in conversation with JI. “The fight at the end of the day is really about equality,” the congresswoman said, “and the same way that we align ourselves and stand up for Israel and Jewish people is the same way we hope that we all stand for equality.”

Read the full interview here.

Andrew Dana and Daniela Moreira

Before Call Your Mother Deli existed, Washingtonians had a habit of kvetching about the lack of good bagels in the nation’s capital. When the restaurant opened its first location in the Park View neighborhood in 2018, it became something of a sensation. Lines snaked around the block every weekend morning, all year long. “We’re sort of always keeping our ear to the streets and looking for, what neighborhoods are ‘bagel deserts’ and where can we go next,” founder Andrew Dana told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch in an interview at Call Your Mother’s newest location in Yours Truly DC, a hotel in the District’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood.

Boca meets Brooklyn: Call Your Mother’s bagel sandwiches are named after retirement communities in South Florida. But this is not your zayde’s deli. Take the King’s Point sandwich, which is named for an iconic retirement community near Fort Lauderdale but contains fillings that would likely shock many King’s Point residents: nacho jalapeño cream cheese, bacon and crispy shallots on a cheddar bagel. At each of the local chain’s six locations — a major expansion from the lone shop it had at the start of the pandemic — visitors are greeted with a bright pink-and-teal color scheme, which Dana describes as “Boca meets Brooklyn.”

Creative cuisine: “We’ve had some people come in expecting chopped liver and a lettuce wrap, and that’s not really what we’re doing,” Dana said. A seventh location will open this spring in Logan Circle, joining spots in Capitol Hill, Georgetown, the original in Park View and two in Bethesda.

What’s in a name: “I wanted the name to be something just fun and playful, and so I was sitting around the table with a bunch of my friends, who were saying, like, ‘What’s something funny your Jewish grandmother would have yelled at you?’” Dana recalled of the process of naming the company. “My other friend yelled, ‘Call your mother,’ and I just said, ‘Holy s***.’ It was just, like, the aha moment.” Dana’s business partner and then-girlfriend (and now-wife) Daniela Moreira, who is not Jewish, instantly liked the name, too. “It spans other cultures. Dani is from Argentina. And she’s like, ‘Oh my God, my mom will love this too,’” Dana noted.

Baking bashert: Dana and Moreira, 31, met at an early iteration of Dana’s first culinary venture — Timber Pizza, another D.C. hotspot. Timber began as a mobile wood-fired pizza oven, and the pair met when both were purchasing eggs at a farmers market where the pizza truck was set up. Timber’s brick-and-mortar restaurant is located on the same street as Call Your Mother in Park View. (Before running Timber, Dana’s baking experience involved a handful of dorm room experiments; Moreira studied at the Culinary Institute of America.)

Blank slate: Moreira had never had a bagel before, which gave her a blank slate that allowed the pair to begin concocting unique, memorable sandwiches. Yes, patrons can order an everything bagel with the all the trappings of Manhattan — cream cheese, lox, capers, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions — but the menu at this self-described “Jew-ish” deli has much more than that. Last year around Purim, Call Your Mother, which is not kosher, sold dulce de leche hamantaschen, and on Passover, it offered brisket pastrami tacos.

Read the full story here.

Bonus: Call Your Mother is participating in Hamantaschen for Ukraine, a global project in which bakers around the world are donating proceeds from the sale of hamantaschen to aid Ukrainian refugees.

A man buys Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in Jerusalem on July 20, 2021.

American Quality Products (AQP), the Israeli manufacturer and distributor of Ben & Jerry’s products, is suing the ice cream company and its parent group, Unilever, following an announcement in July that Ben & Jerry’s would no longer sell its products in what it referred to at the time as “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss reports.

Details: In the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey, AQP owner Avi Zinger alleges that Unilever’s decision to end its 34-year agreement with AQP constitutes wrongful termination and breach of contract and that the conglomerate had instructed AQP to violate existing Israeli and U.S. state laws that prohibit boycotts against Israel or areas under its control. New York, New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Illinois and Arizona have divested from Unilever in the months since the July announcement, citing the company’s violation of state anti-boycott laws.

Pressure campaign: Zinger told JI that pressure had been building on Ben & Jerry’s for years to cease sales in the West Bank, but that after last May’s conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, “the pressure was tremendous.” Zinger said the company asked him to find a way to stop selling Ben & Jerry’s products in the Palestinian territories. “I kept telling them it’s impossible. There are two laws in Israel, there’s the anti-discrimination law, that they cannot discriminate [against] any customer or any store that wants to buy my products, that I cannot just tell him, ‘I don’t want to sell [to] you because where the store is located or because of who you are.’ And there are anti-boycott laws here in Israel.”

Peace push: AQP partners with a range of governmental and international groups on initiatives to foster peace, including “Fruits of Peace,” an effort done in conjunction with USAID, the Israeli government, and nonprofit groups to create new Ben & Jerry’s flavors using ingredients sourced from Palestinian farmers.

Read more here.