Nicola Mendelsohn, Vice President EMEA Facebook, speaking to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) annual conference in London.

For many Jews, their relationship with their rabbis usually starts — and ends — at the doors of the synagogue. Not so for Nicola Mendelsohn. The stalwart of the British Jewish community built close personal ties with Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and his predecessor, the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. Their outside-of-synagogue hangouts looked a little different than a study session or a Shabbat dinner: Mendelsohn, Meta’s ad chief, once took Sacks and Mirvis on a climbing trip. In the metaverse. “If you reach up, it feels like you’re moving, and the imagery is going down. And in the same way as in real life, when you look up and down,” Mendelsohn told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch in a recent Zoom interview from Herzliya Pituach, the coastal Israeli neighborhood where her family has a home.  

Day job: As the vice president of Meta’s global sales group, Mendelsohn oversees the company’s advertising business, a massive portfolio that makes her the biggest booster of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and the company’s burgeoning metaverse-focused products like Oculus to businesses around the world — and to skeptics in her own communities who haven’t yet bought into the immersive augmented reality that Mendelsohn thinks everyone will soon be using. 

Jewish journeys: What if, she explained, someone organized a metaverse tour of the synagogues of Europe? “Look to your left, look to your right, you’ll either have people you know, or people that you’re going into a group that you don’t know, and you’ll be able to converse together. You’ll be able to listen to an informed expert,” she added. “You’ll be able to see these extraordinary things, and then be able to reflect on them afterwards.”

Philanthropic family: In London, where the Shabbat-observant Mendelsohn lived for her entire adult life until relocating to New York City this year, she was active at her family’s synagogue. Her husband, Lord Jonathan Mendelsohn, a member of the House of Lords, brought Jewish themes to his work, too; he once served as chairman of Labour Friends of Israel. Together, they serve as co-presidents of Norwood, a Jewish charity that supports vulnerable children in the U.K. What if, Mendelsohn asks, the metaverse could help drive philanthropy? 

Changing times: Meta was a very different company when Mendelsohn, 51, joined nine years ago as vice president for Europe, Middle East and Asia. Back then, the company had no real Israeli presence, which she helped change. At the time, Facebook was still the business’s primary product. Researchers had not yet begun to uncover the ways extremism and misinformation flourish on Meta’s products. “We absolutely don’t want that on our platforms,” Mendelsohn argued. 

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Republican Party gubernatorial candidate Marc Molinaro, takes part in a gubernatorial debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters at The College of Saint Rose Thursday, Nov. 1, 2018, in Albany, N.Y.

Voters in New York’s 19th Congressional District stunned much of the political world in late August by delivering an unexpected victory to Democratic Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan, who defeated Republican Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro in a special election in the Hudson Valley district. Molinaro has shrugged off the loss and has trained his eyes on November, when he will again appear on the ballot — but against a different Democrat and in a newly drawn district, following the state’s redistricting earlier this year, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Postmortem: Speaking to JI last week, Molinaro downplayed the implications of his loss for the November election in the newly drawn 19th District, saying that his internal polls never showed him beating Ryan outright, and that Democratic turnout was higher due to competitive Democratic primaries in the area. “All of that and redistricting created so much confusion that, frankly, we knew that turnout was going to be a difficult challenge,” Molinaro explained. “Elections are not about candidates. You can’t tell people what they should believe or what issues are important to them… We as candidates not only have to talk about those issues but be honest and earnest about listening to voters about those issues.” 

Other side: While pundits have attributed Ryan’s victory to a significant degree to renewed national debates over abortion, which have energized the Democratic base and were a focus of Ryan’s campaign, it has not been the most prominent message employed by Democrat Josh Riley, an attorney whose resume boasts stints as general counsel to former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) on the Senate Judiciary Committee and as an appellate court clerk. “Folks across upstate New York want more public servants and fewer professional politicians,” Riley told JI. Riley’s core campaign message — and the focus of his first general election ad, released Wednesday — centers around bringing manufacturing and industry back to upstate New York, with a focus on high tech and technologies critical to the renewable energy sector. 

Iran agenda: Riley and Molinaro did find some common ground on foreign policy — they both expressed opposition to a nuclear deal with Iran along the lines currently being negotiated. Molinaro said he does not expect any positive outcome could come from negotiations with Tehran, calling for a “hard-line approach” involving the Islamic republic’s “economic, military and cultural isolation.” Riley said he has “some pretty serious concerns with what I have seen so far,” calling for a “longer and broader and stronger” deal than the original 2015 agreement — a pursuit largely abandoned by the Biden administration. Riley noted that he had been part of a legal team representing families of 9/11 victims that sued the Iranian regime.

Home front: Riley said that his experience working for the Senate Judiciary Committee has given him insight into the role that the federal government can play in fighting antisemitism. Congress, he said, could work to ensure proper oversight of and support for the FBI and Justice Department’s efforts to fight attacks against the Jewish community. Molinaro emphasized that leaders and law enforcement need to specifically call out and pursue antisemitism as a distinct issue and trend, rather than generalizing it as part of broader issues of hate, extremism and white supremacy. He also said that the U.S. is doing a “very poor job” of teaching young people about both religion and the Holocaust.

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Rep. Virginia Foxx, (R-NC) speaks during the House Republicans’ news conference on the 2021 election results on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021.

A Republican-sponsored resolution seeking to force the administration to provide Congress with the still-pending draft text of the Iran deal is headed to a vote in the House Foreign Affairs Committee next week, a spokesperson for the bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod.

On the docket: The resolution, introduced by Foxx and Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) would compel the administration to provide Congress with the text of the draft deal and any related side agreements immediately, even if negotiations are still in progress when the bill is passed. It’s unclear if the resolution will have enough support to pass the committee. Under existing law — the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) — the administration is required to submit any Iran nuclear agreement in full to Congress when it is signed. 

Go deeper: A source familiar with the Foxx legislation characterized it as an “opening salvo” in efforts to “forc[e]” the administration to comply with INARA. A Democratic staffer familiar with the process described the legislation as procedural “funny business” that would force the administration into a premature version of the INARA review process for an unfinished deal.

Next steps: Foxx’s resolution was introduced under special procedures that would force a full House vote on the legislation in late September unless it is considered by the Foreign Affairs Committee before then. By bringing the legislation to a committee vote next week, on Sept. 14, Democrats will avert this scenario. Even if the committee votes in favor of the resolution, Democratic leadership would subsequently control its fate, and would be able to prevent it from receiving any further consideration or a floor vote.

Numbers game: The source familiar with the legislation said they were unsure if there are enough votes in the Foreign Affairs Committee to approve the legislation. A Democratic staffer who spoke to JI was confident there are sufficient votes in the committee to block it. The staffer said the Foxx resolution “would break precedent” by interfering with presidential authority to conduct pending international negotiations, such that it would likely be roundly rejected by Democrats. The staffer also noted that Republicans have used the same procedural tool — seen by critics as a mechanism to force committee consideration of and votes on politically sensitive issues — on dozens of occasions during the current congressional session, and have been consistently blocked by Democrats.

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