Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) speaks with reporters at the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference in Philadelphia, Pa., on Thursday, March 10, 2022.

Democratic Majority for Israel’s political action committee is endorsing Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) as he seeks to fend off a primary challenge from his left in New York’s redrawn 17th Congressional District, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. The announcement on Monday came just weeks ahead of the Aug. 23 primary, where Maloney, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is competing against state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, a progressive political scion making her first bid for federal office.

Unusual alignment: Both candidates have occupied a mainstream Democratic lane on Middle East policy, even as Biaggi has gained backing from some far-left lawmakers who have supported measures that are critical of Israel, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Biaggi, meanwhile, has clarified that she disagrees with Ocasio-Cortez on such issues, advocating for continued U.S. military aid to Israel as well as supplemental Iron Dome funding, among other policies DMFI supports.

Bypassing Biaggi: A spokesperson for DMFI PAC, Jake McClory, had no comment on Biaggi’s positions or her recent endorsements, focusing instead on Maloney’s record in an email to JI on Monday. “We’re endorsing strong pro-Israel incumbent champions in Congress, including Congressman Maloney,” McClory said.

Two more endorsements: In a statement to JI, the pro-Israel group said it is throwing its support behind two additional members of New York’s Democratic House delegation: Reps. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who chairs the House Democratic caucus. According to McClory, DMFI PAC, which has invested significant resources in a number of recent primary battles, will be “spending on behalf of some of” the three candidates it is now backing in New York. He declined to provide further details, however, regarding “how much or for whom.”

Question marks: DMFI PAC has yet to weigh in on two high-profile New York races, including a hotly contested matchup between longtime Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in the new 12th District. The other race, in New York’s redrawn 10th, features a dozen Democrats who are jockeying for the rare open seat. Among the leading candidates is state Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, who drew criticism last month when she expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. “We have no plans to endorse in those races at the moment,” McClory told JI.

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Michael Twitty is the founder of the Cooking Gene, a project that explores his own African American roots as well as the roots of Southern cooking.

Sit down at author Michael Twitty’s Shabbat dinner table, and you might be served old-school kasha varnishkes reminiscent of the Pale of Settlement, his signature collard greens (made with schmaltz — chicken fat — rather than lard or bacon grease) and brisket flavored with berbere, an Ethiopian spice. For the James Beard Award-winning food writer and recipe developer, this is standard holiday fare, even if it’s a combination that has probably never been replicated at another Jewish table. This mix of cuisines and cultures is Twitty’s calling card: He calls it “Koshersoul,” which is also the name of his latest book. He talked to Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch about his unique culinary style, his experience with racism in the Jewish community and what it means to be a “community scholar.”

Around the table: “Recipes are nothing compared to the real story of why the dishes came to be and why people enjoy them, why people pass them and people share them, why people incorporate them into their hospitality and generosity,” Twitty told JI. He gets into all of this in Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew, out today. The book features an exploration of Twitty’s own background and his attempts to understand how Black Jews fit into both the Jewish tradition and the African American tradition — told through long conversations with friends, thought partners and mentors. 

Fusing identities: Twitty, who grew up (and still lives) in the suburbs outside of Washington, D.C., converted to Judaism at 22. He has spent the past two decades navigating those two once-separate identities — Black and Jewish — that he has fused in his life. “When I go into the kitchen to make my unique brand of koshersoul food, all of it goes with me,” he writes. “Food has been my primary lens for navigating my citizenship within the Jewish people and my birthright as a Black man in America.”

Mixed reactions: The Jewish response to his koshersoul style has mostly been positive, Twitty noted. People are excited “to try something new,” or to finally get to taste a dish that is usually not prepared in a kosher manner. But not everyone buys into it. His book tells the story of the wife of a friend for whom he cooked his kosher collard greens, who berated him for bringing what she viewed as a dirty, unhealthy dish into her home. 

Read the full interview here.

Members of the Kuklya family (Facebook)

When more than 70 members of the massive Kuklya clan gather today in New York City, it won’t be a normal family reunion: The gathering is part of a roots journey nearly 30 years in the making, one undertaken by an amateur genealogist that spans from Lithuania in the 1800s to England to Minnesota, reports Jewish Insider’s Nava Katz. This extensive family tree includes many celebrities, including Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler and Bob Dylan, and connects back to medieval French commentator Rashi. 

Getting started: British record producer Ian Levine began the project in 1995, long before the internet made such searches commonplace, after the death of his grandmother, Golda Cooklin. “I was very fond of her,” Levine told JI. “I never took the opportunity to talk to her about the Cooklins. She used to say, ‘It’s a wonderful family I come from; we’re the Jewish royal family,’ and when she died I decided I wanted to trace the family.” Levine began interviewing several of his grandmother’s cousins to find as much family information as he could before he began his search. “If I had started now, with the internet, I wouldn’t have known how to trace them.” Levine reflected. “I had a pen and wrote down everything that [they] said on scraps of paper.”

Midwest branch: Dan Singer, a New York City cantor originally from Superior, Minn., discovered his Kuklya roots through a Facebook group dedicated to genealogy. Singer’s father was orphaned at a young age and had been raised by cousins. He knew little about his father’s branch of the family. As an adult, he became a librarian and began doing family research with the help of a supervisor at the Superior Public Library. After his father’s death, Singer continued to research his ancestry. With the help of a genealogist, he was able to identify family members going back to the 1800s. He put his information on ancestry websites and joined genealogy Facebook groups, where people shared their findings and supported one another. One day, a group member saw his family tree and reached out. “She said to me, ‘Dan, you need to be in touch with Ian Levine.’ I said, ‘Why?’ She says, ‘Because you’re related to Bob Dylan.’”

Fit to print: Levine has compiled all of his research into two 1,000-page books, a family tree and an encyclopedia. He has also written a 2,000-page historical novel — “Kuklya” — that follows 18 generations of his family, based on his extensive research, with some gaps filled in with fiction. “It’s a mix between ‘Roots’ and ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’” Levine said of his novel.

Read the full story here.