In his campaign materials, George Santos, a Republican elected to Congress last month on Long Island, wove a compelling family narrative, tracing his maternal grandparents’ flight from Jewish persecution in Ukraine to Belgium, where, he has said, they fled the Nazis before settling in Brazil. But with key elements of Santos’ background now under scrutiny, the harrowing immigrant story and claims to Jewish heritage he sold to voters have been called into question, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

Records reveal: Brazilian records from a national civil identification database reviewed by JI show that Santos’ maternal grandmother, Rosalina Caruso Horta Devolder, was born in 1927, and is unlikely to have immigrated from Belgium in 1940, as Santos has previously claimed. His maternal grandfather, Paulo Horta Devolder, was, “by all indications, Brazilian,” according to Fábio Koifman, a historian at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro who specializes in the entry of foreigners into Brazil.

Catholic roots: Meanwhile, none of Santos’ maternal ancestors “suggest any closeness to Judaism,” said Koifman, who recently assembled an extensive genealogical record of Santos’ family, the details of which he shared with JI. “All were baptized, married and buried according to Catholic rites and traditions. Most of them were born, lived and died in the city of Niterói, with a certain concentration in the Santa Rosa neighborhood from the mid-1950s.”

Tenuous connections: Near the end of the election, Santos freely identified as Jewish, placing himself in a rarefied position to become the next — and only — Jewish Republican member of New York’s congressional delegation. But personal and professional acquaintances of Santos say they have no awareness of his connection to Judaism, and mainstream Jewish organizations in New York haven’t met with him. Jewish residents of Niterói, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, tell JI they have no recollection of interacting with his mother, Fatima Devolder, who lived there.

‘Deeply troubling’: Joseph Murray, a lawyer for Santos, said he was unable to comment, insisting that he would “respond in due course.” In a statement to JI, Matt Brooks, the chief executive of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said the RJC is “aware of the claims being made against” Santos and has “reached out to his office directly to ascertain whether they are true,” adding: “These allegations, if true, are deeply troubling. Given their seriousness, the congressman-elect owes the public an explanation, and we look forward to hearing it.”

Read the full story here.

Bonus: In The New York Times, Democratic opposition researcher Tyson Brody explores how Santos’ misrepresentations were not uncovered prior to last month’s election. “Could Mr. Santos’s opponent and Democratic operatives have pursued this story harder and found out much more? I can imagine why that didn’t happen: We’re talking about what appeared to be résumé embellishment, evictions and legal liabilities. These are not always shocking things on their own in politics; it’s the extent of Mr. Santos’s apparent false claims that’s highly unusual.”

A new bill, set to be introduced on Thursday by a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the last days of this Congress, seeks to examine the status of Holocaust education efforts in public primary and secondary schools, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod has learned.

In the text:The Holocaust Education and Antisemitism Lessons (HEAL) Act is sponsored by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Michael McCaul (R-TX), Kathy Manning (D-NC), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Brad Sherman (D-CA). The bill draft, obtained by JI, would mandate that the Department of Education submit to Congress a report on Holocaust education in public schools, including identifying schools and states that do not require Holocaust education, and examine the quality and type of education and materials used and how students are assessed on their learning. The bill suggests measures of educational quality, including whether the curricula include in-class discussion, homework and projects. 

Remembering: “It is critically important not just to remember the victims of the Holocaust killed by the Nazis in gas chambers and concentration camps simply for being Jews, but also because our history teaches us that we have a responsibility to confront bigotry, hatred and intolerance wherever it can be found,” Gottheimer told JI. “Therefore, we cannot — and must not — ignore the stunning rise in antisemitism and Holocaust denial around the world and, increasingly, here at home in the United States.” The current session of Congress is expected to adjourn by the end of the week, so the legislation will likely need to be reintroduced in the new year in order to proceed.

Fading memory: The bill arrives as incidents of antisemitism within the U.S. continue to rise. It also follows alarm about shrinking knowledge of the Holocaust in younger generations. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., 21 states require schools to provide Holocaust education. A 2020 study conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany of people ages 18 to 39 — millennials and Gen Z — in all states showed that 63% of respondents did not know that 6 million Jews were killed, and the majority of those thought less 2 million were killed.

Red alert: “The mounting evidence that knowledge about the Holocaust is beginning to fade should also alarm us all,” Gottheimer added. “As Elie Wiesel said: ‘Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger or hatred.’ With this commonsense bipartisan legislation I’m introducing, both Democrats and Republicans are coming together to ensure we’re working to stem the rising tide of hate and to improve Holocaust education in schools nationwide.”

Read the full story here.

Jewish tunesmiths like Irving Berlin, Sammy Cahn and others created much of the musical soundtrack for the secular Christmas season, but that fact has been largely overlooked. In its recent series of Christmas shows, the Washington Men’s Camerata, a choral group based in Washington, D.C., set out to correct the musical record by paying homage to the Jewish songwriters behind many of the jingly holiday favorites, Jewish Insider’s Madison Hahamy reports.

Doco direction: The group’s music director, Frank Albinder, who has led it since 1999, came up with the idea for the theme, titled “I’m Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas,” after watching a 2017 documentary about the origins of many popular Christmas songs, including “Winter Wonderland,” “White Christmas,” “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “The Christmas Song,” “Silver Bells” and “Do You Hear What I Hear?” The documentary, “Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas,” noted that songwriting was one of the few industries open to American Jews during a time of rampant job discrimination, and Christmas was seen as a collective holiday that brought people together, rather than one owned by the church. 

Rudolph’s red nose: Nevertheless, Jewish songwriters still managed to incorporate their identities into the music. The story “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is commonly thought to have originated from creator Robert May’s experiences with antisemitism as a child due to his similarly prominent nose. His brother, Johnny Marks, who was also Jewish, would later write the popular song. Though the Camerata often sings Christmas music, the choral group has never done so by specifically acknowledging the Jewish origins of the songs. It’s something that Albinder, who is Jewish, was excited to see come to fruition. 

Broad support: The Camerata Board, he said, was supportive of the idea of a Jewishly themed Christmas series (though one board member was concerned that Jewish people might find the theme offensive). Ultimately, the decision required little modification from the group’s repertoire, which already included most of the two dozen songs that they planned to sing, including three by Johnny Marks. They also sang songs by Gloria Shayne Baker, Mel Tormé, Jule Styne, Berlin, Felix Mendelssohn and others. In concert, Albinder introduced each song, explaining each composer’s Jewish background and whether or not their heritage figured into the tunes. For instance, he noted the origin of Rudolph’s red nose, as well as the anti-war sentiment behind “Do You Hear What I Hear?”

Read the full story here.

While regulators scrutinize a bid from the United Arab Emirates for Israel’s largest insurance company, the Gulf state will be looking to buy more pieces of the Israeli financial services industry, Minister of State for Foreign Trade Thani Al Zeyoudi told The Circuit’s Jonathan Ferziger. Al Zeyoudi said the offer last week from a consortium led by Abu Dhabi-based ADQ for a controlling stake in Israel’s Phoenix Group was “just another signal that relations are going to grow.” Israeli insurers, financial services companies and fintech startups are among the most attractive candidates for partnerships and acquisitions, he said.

Setting goals: In a video interview from his office in Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital, Al Zeyoudi also said he expects ties between the two countries to strengthen under returning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said the free-trade agreement that the UAE and Israel ratified on Dec. 11 would likely reach its goal of generating an annual $10 billion in bilateral economic activity by 2026, two years ahead of the ministry’s earlier projections. Two years after the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan signed agreements to normalize relations with Israel, he said more Arab countries are getting ready to engage with the Jewish state. “There is a growing appetite across the region for collaboration and cooperation,” Al Zeyoudi said. 

Let’s make a deal: In the insurance deal, Al Zeyoudi said ADQ, a holding company owned by the Abu Dhabi emirate, is prepared to confront concerns expressed in Israel about foreign control of Phoenix, the largest manager of employee pension funds. The investment group it leads signed a term sheet last week with Phoenix’s controlling shareholders, U.S. investment firms Centerbridge Partners and Gallatin Point Capital, to buy between 25-30% of the company’s shares for as much as $800 million. “It’s all been studied very well and thoroughly from both sides,” he said. “No deals will be signed without the full picture [being] put on the table, being discussed, being tackled, and then we move on to the next level.”

Fast friends: In his own efforts to understand the Israeli financial services market, Al Zeyoudi said he developed a warm relationship with Samer Haj-Yehia, chairman of Bank Leumi, Israel’s largest lender. Haj-Yehia, an Arab citizen of Israel, was a surprise speaker in October at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Saudi Arabia, even though the two countries do not have diplomatic relations. Al Zeyoudi first met the banker during a meeting with Israeli business leaders in Dubai on Sept. 15, 2020, the day the Abraham Accords were signed in Washington. “Since then, the relationship is very close with him,” Al Zeyoudi said. Haj-Yehia, who also spoke at conferences in the UAE last month, acknowledged through a Leumi spokesman that he has met with the Emirati minister and declined to comment further.

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