🏙️ Breaking the Mold: Politico’s Ruby Cramer profiles New York City Mayor Eric Adams 10 weeks into his run at City Hall. “In a city of weird people and weird mayors, Adams is maybe the most idiosyncratic figure to ever hold the office. And yet he has presented himself as a national model, a new brand of politics for others to emulate, built on the notion that you can be two or more things at once. If this is a good model for his party, torn in an existential crisis about what it means to be progressive or a moderate, establishment or anti-establishment, it’s a hard one to replicate. He is telling politicians they don’t have to choose. They can, in fact, be everything, assuming they want to be. Adams has called himself the new ‘face of the Democratic Party,’ and it’s one of the few labels he is willing to embrace, but there’s no easy way to nail down what it will mean today, tomorrow, or the day after that. It’s an instruction manual where all the parts fit in all the sockets. By his own description, Adams is ‘perfectly imperfect,’ embracing his many facets as a feature rather than a bug — and thus leaving open the possibility for … well, anything.” [Politico]

👪 Role Reversal: In The Washington Post, Daniella Greenbaum spotlights the efforts of the descendants of a Ukrainian Holocaust survivor to rescue the granddaughters of the woman who, during WWII, sheltered their family’s matriarch. “Cousins and Ukrainian refugees Lesia Orshoko and Alona Chugai are among the millions who are running for their lives as Russian forces invade their country. But in a wartime twist of fate, the cousins landed in Israel last week to a friendly face — someone who was repaying a decades-old kindness. The friendly face was Sharon Bass, whose Jewish grandmother was sheltered and saved by Lesia’s grandmother in Ukraine during the Holocaust… It felt like history repeating itself, she said. But in this case, it’s an inversion of the norm. Jews have been persecuted throughout our entire history. We’ve been killed, kicked out or forced to flee from every country we’ve stayed in long enough. But this time we have the privilege and responsibility of being a safe haven for other fleeing refugees.” [WashPost]

👨 Fall of the Roman Empire: The New York Times looks at Russian-Israeli billionaire Roman Abramovich’s meteoric rise, from college dropout to businessman and philanthropist who has had Jewish leaders and institutions campaign on his behalf in recent weeks to keep the U.S. from imposing sanctions amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The request [by Yad Vashem, Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi and others] to [U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides] reflects the extraordinary effort Mr. Abramovich, 55, has made over the last two decades to parlay his Russian fortune into elite standing in the West — buying London’s Chelsea soccer team, acquiring luxury homes in New York, London, Tel Aviv, St. Barts and Aspen, collecting modern masterworks and contributing to arts institutions around the world. With two superyachts, multiple Ferrari, Porsche and Aston Martin sports cars, and a private 787 Boeing Dreamliner jet, Mr. Abramovich wanted everyone to know that he had arrived. But now the backlash against the Russian invasion of Ukraine is tarnishing the status that Mr. Abramovich and other oligarchs have spent so much to reach.” [NYTimes]

⏸️ On Hold: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is looking to delay Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s nomination to be ambassador to India as he conducts a probe into whether Garcetti lied while testifying before a congressional panel regarding sexual harassment allegations against a top advisor.

🛡️ Security Breach: A Department of Homeland Security task force found “significant gaps” in the department’s efforts to address violent domestic extremism.

🗣️ Sanctions Stance: Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, speaking in Slovakia, said that Israel will comply with Western sanctions against Russia.

🤝 Peace Partners: Ukraine sounded optimistic about a proposal for Israel to host mediations between Ukraine and Russia, denying earlier reporting that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett counseled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept Russian conditions for ending the conflict.

↪️Walk Back: “The Rachel Maddow Show” apologized for tweeting a segment in which former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said that Adolf Hitler did not kill German speakers.

❌ Cancel Culture: The Oakland, Calif.-based Sierra Club canceled two upcoming trips to Israel after coming under pressure from anti-Israel activists and progressive organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace and the Sunrise Movement.

🇵🇹 Citizenship Case: Portuguese authorities confiscated the passport of Rabbi Daniel Litvack, who provided documentation used by Roman Abramovich to claim Portuguese citizenship, as part of Portugal’s investigation of Abramovich’s citizenship application.

🏨 Polish Sanctuary: NPR visits the Hotel Ilan in Lublin, Poland, which once served as a yeshiva and now houses Ukrainian refugees fleeing violence in their country.

🇷🇺 Moscow Misinformation: In the Wall Street Journal, the Alexander Hamilton Institute’s Juliana Geran Pilon looks at the history of Russian disinformation that has focused on antisemitism.

⚖️ Take the Stand: Eighty-four-year-old Judah Samet, a Holocaust survivor who also survived the deadly mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, hopes to testify against Robert Bowers in the mass shooter’s trial, which does not yet have a set date.

🕰️ Spring Forward: The New York Times interviewed Marvin Schneider, New York City’s clock master, who spent the weekend darting around the city to change the time on the city’s public clocks to account for Daylight Savings Time.

🎿 We Don’t Ski on Shabbat:The New York Times spotlights Sheina Vaspi, Israel’s first Winter Paralympian and an observant Jew who skied with a skirt over her uniform and forewent one of her races when it was rescheduled for Shabbat.

🕯️ Remembering: Longtime Wall Street executive Wally Stern, a former Hudson Institute board chair who reshaped the think tank, died at 93. Read his Wall Street Journal obituary here. Former Atlanta Mayor Samuel Massell Jr., who served as the city’s first Jewish mayor from 1970-1974, died at 94. Cultural historian Leo Marx, who for decades taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, died at 102.

Comedian Alex Edelman performed a set on Thursday night on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Edelman joked about his family, including his brother, Winter Olympian in skeleton sledding for Israel Adam Edelman, whom he nicknamed the “frozen chosen” and “shul runner.”

Former NASCAR driver, he is the sole inductee into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and Museum in the “Auto Racing” category, now a credit trader at TD Securities, Jon Denning turns 35…

Professor emeritus of chemistry at Tel Aviv University, winner of the 1982 Israel Prize, Joshua Jortner turns 89… Founder and retired president of Los Angeles-based Skirball Cultural Center, Rabbi Dr. Uri Herscher turns 81… Dean of Yeshiva Toras Moshe in Jerusalem, Rabbi Moshe Meiselman turns 80… Canadian criminal defense attorney, Brian Greenspan turns 75… Actor, producer, director and comedian, he has hosted the Academy Awards nine times, Billy Crystal turns 74… Member of the Maryland House of Delegates since 1995, Shane Elizabeth Pendergrass turns 72… One-half of the eponymous Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Jerry Greenfield turns 71… Retired Hebrew teacher, Eliezer Cohen Barak turns 71… President of Stand By Me, an organization that supports cancer patients, Gila Milstein turns 69… Partner at Hefter, Leshem, Margolis Capital Management Group of Wells Fargo Advisors in Highland Park, Ill., Steven Hefter turns 68… Founder and leader of ChangeCommunications, Jo-Ann Mort turns 66… NYC-based restaurateur and CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, Danny Meyer turns 64… Professor at Tel Aviv University and head of the Bet Midrash program at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Menachem Lorberbaum turns 64… Of counsel in the Minneapolis office of Maslon LLP, Jonathan S. Parritz turns 63… Past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Denise Davida Eger turns 62… Owner of Baltimore’s Tov Pizza which he founded in 1984, Ronnie Rosenbluth turns 59… Owner and COO of EJM Development Company, Jon Monkarsh turns 58… Microgrid architect at Urban Ingenuity, Shalom Flank, Ph.D. turns 57… Film and television actress, Meredith Salenger turns 52… Canadian fashion stylist and publicist, Jessica Brownstein Mulroney turns 42… Heiress to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, philanthropist, former child actress, Liesel Pritzker Simmons turns 38… Former point guard at the University of Pennsylvania and founder of a basketball camp, Zack Rosen turns 33… Product quality specialist at The Topps Company, Philip Liebman turns 32… Four-time Israeli national champion in the skeleton event, currently general manager of the Israel Bobsled and Skeleton team, Adam Edelman turns 31… Emotional fitness coach, Sophie Galant…