Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaks at Chabad’s Living Legacy conference in Washington, D.C., on March 30, 2022.

Just days after the Capitol officially reopened to tours, some 250 members of the global Chabad community gathered Wednesday in a stately caucus room in the Russell Senate Office Building to kick off a daylong conference honoring the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. The Living Legacy conference, which had not been held in several years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrated Chabad’s political muscle in Washington and the movement’s global reach, with high-profile appearances from members of Congress, Biden administration officials and foreign ambassadors, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch and Marc Rod report.

Eyes on Ukraine: Instead of focusing on a single legislative agenda or policy objective, most speakers throughout the gathering spoke passionately — and, at times, personally — about the crisis in Ukraine, a country that is home to a significant Jewish community and many Chabad emissaries, who have been active in humanitarian efforts in the war-torn nation. “I want, like we all want, peace, quiet and success,” Rabbi Jonathan Markovitch, the chief rabbi of Kyiv, told attendees at a lunch reception at the St. Regis hotel near the White House. Markovitch and his wife left Kyiv in the early days of the Russian invasion but returned to help with relief efforts.

Read Gabby Deutch’s full dispatch from the Living Legacy conference here.

Situational awareness: Among the notable speakers throughout the day were Soviet refusenik and former head of The Jewish Agency Natan Sharansky, former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), State Department Special Advisor on Holocaust issues Stu Eizenstat and Justice Marcus Solomon of the Supreme Court of Western Australia, a Chabad-trained rabbi.

Welcome to all: “Not many gatherings have Jan Schakowsky and Madison Cawthorn,” said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), after both the progressive Illinois Democrat and the conservative North Carolina Republican, under fire this week for recent comments he made about illicit parties in Washington, spoke at the breakfast. Rep. Michelle Steel (R-CA), whose chief of staff is a Chabad member, conversed with the Chabad rabbis from Japan and South Korea — in Japanese and Korean, respectively.

Faithfulness: A parade of lawmakers sounded off on issues from the separation of church and state to the Iran deal. In his remarks, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) argued for a role for religion in governance. “A lot of people think this country’s about separating church or religion from government. I say no,” Booker remarked. “I say this is a time more than ever that we need our faithfulness. We need to understand that God has a calling for us. And if we do that I promise you we will heal. We will have a better day not just for America but for the whole world.”

Spotted on Capitol Hill: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Rick Scott (R-FL), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Michelle Steel (R-CA), Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN), Claudia Tenney (R-NY), Dusty Johnson (R-SD), Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), Lee Zeldin (R-NY) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) all delivered remarks. Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) attended, but left before he was able to speak at the event.

Read more about lawmakers’ remarks here.

Rep. Madison Cawthorn/Chuck Edwards

A recent polling memo, obtained by Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel, suggests that Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) may be “in danger” as he prepares to go up against more than a half-dozen Republican primary challengers this May in North Carolina’s newly drawn 11th Congressional District.

Chuck’s luck: The memo, composed on behalf of one of Cawthorn’s most formidable rivals, state Sen. Chuck Edwards, puts the freshman congressman in first place with 52% of the vote, “right on the bubble of the 50% mark,” writes the Republican pollster Glen Bolger, whose firm, Public Opinion Strategies, conducted the survey. Incumbents “who slip below that during the campaign,” he adds, “are in danger.”

By the numbers: Cawthorn, who represents western North Carolina, still maintains a relatively robust lead over Edwards, who came in second with 20% among 300 likely Republican primary voters surveyed between March 10 and 13. Another candidate, who is unnamed in the memo, pulled in 11%, and 17% of respondents said they were undecided. The margin of error is 5.7%.

‘Off the charts’: But Bolger argues that, with the right messaging and an influx of campaign cash, Edwards could pull off an upset. When respondents were informed of Edwards’ record in the state Senate, for instance, “52% of primary voters said they would be very likely to vote for him after hearing it,” Bolger writes. “I’ve tested this format for decades, and 30% is a good number; 52% is off the charts.”

Gaining momentum: While experts believe that Edwards, 61, is facing a tough race, he appears to be gaining momentum as Cawthorn, 26, has struggled to move past recent controversial remarks that have drawn sharp rebukes from GOP colleagues. In a remarkable show of frustration with Cawthorn’s conduct, for example, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told CNN on Wednesday that he was endorsing Edwards in the primary.

Read more here.

Suitcase containing gloves, helmet and ring shoes of the Roman boxer Leo Efrati (1916-1944).

In the face of fresh allegations that eBay is profiting from the sale of historical Holocaust-related items, a spokesperson for the online platform said this week that it is reviewing its policy on Holocaust-related items available for purchase on the site, Lianne Kolirin reports for Jewish Insider.

Background: Nearly a decade ago, eBay issued a public apology after an investigation by Britain’s Mail on Sunday newspaper revealed it had been selling the items, including a uniform and a pair of shoes purportedly belonging to concentration camp victims, as well as yellow Star of David armbands. Now, amid new charges from New York-based social media influencer and self-proclaimed “heirloom hunter” Chelsey Brown that the online retail giant is openly selling documents, mementos and other personal items acquired from victims of the Holocaust, eBay is making a distinction between those “historical” items and “hateful” items like swastikas, which it claims are banned on the site.

Bad business: Brown, 29, is an interior designer who in her spare time uses genealogy to track the “rightful” owners of old letters, photographs, postcards and other personal items that she comes across while thrifting. Her TikTok, which boasts more than 100,000 followers, alternates posts about home design and WWII-era items she discovers for sale. “Sometimes I’ll use eBay to find old letters or photo albums, and that’s when I saw an ad for a Holocaust letter pop up. This was back in September. That’s when I deep-dived into the horrific world of how Holocaust documentation is sold on eBay.” She has returned hundreds of items to date, including most recently a letter sent by a woman to her sister in July 1945 revealing that she had survived the Holocaust — but that the rest of their family had perished.

For sale: Despite eBay’s pledge to remove items belonging to Holocaust victims, many similar items still populate the site, according to Brown, whose own family tree includes numerous relatives who were killed in the Holocaust. Recent listings include a yellow star armband for $899.99, a letter sent from Auschwitz for $747, a collection of yellow stars for $4,950 and a collection of documents relating to a family of survivors from a German concentration camp for $1,999.99. One live listing by a seller in Florida features 17 letters sent between 1943 and 1945 for $3,600, reduced from $4,000. In the description the seller states: “This is a beautiful correspondence of 17 letters all from the same prisoner in the concentration extermination camp of Auschwitz in Germany occupied Poland.” Further down the seller notes: “This is truly a museum quality correspondence and very very rare.”

Response: An eBay spokesperson told JI, “eBay generally does not prohibit historical documents, including letters and postcards. In response to Ms. Brown’s correspondence, we are reviewing our policy to update the relevant sections to clarify what is prohibited. eBay does not allow the sale of items that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance, or promote organizations with such views. As such, most items with swastikas or that promote Nazis or Nazism are prohibited. To ensure we prohibit hateful items, while allowing legitimate historical and educational items, we engage with a wide range of experts from NGOs and third-party groups.”

Yad Vashem weighs in: Robert Rozett, senior historian at Yad Vashem, denounced the general phenomenon of trading in Holocaust artifacts. “Yad Vashem is opposed to the commercialization of documentation and artifacts relating to the Holocaust, and certainly anything that glorifies Nazim and similar ideologies from that period,” he said in a statement to JI. “The proper place for authentic items from the Holocaust is in collections like that of Yad Vashem,” he added. “In such collections the items are not only preserved for posterity, they are made available for research and other legitimate purposes, and may be displayed with proper historical information and contexts, all of which prevents them from being misused.”

Read the full story here.