Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) announcement last Thursday that he will seek the Senate seat currently held by Democrat Dianne Feinstein sets off a race in the state’s 30th Congressional District, where L.A. Unified School District board member Nick Melvoin filed papers to run earlier this month, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Campaign cause: “My main calling is, how do I amplify my impact for the communities that I fought really my whole adult life for, in a larger setting?” Melvoin, a Democrat, told JI in a recent interview. A Los Angeles native, Melvoin taught middle school through Teach for America before going to law school and mounting a successful bid for a seat on the school board in a 2017 upset. Melvoin, a charter school advocate, defeated an incumbent in a race with heavy outside spending.

Party politics: One reason he’s entering the race is in response to the recent “rise in antisemitism, pro-BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] on university campuses, the ethnic studies curriculum that we’ve been fighting in L.A., as a progressive and a strong Zionist,” said Melvoin, who is Jewish. “In Congress, I don’t see as many of those candidates, especially in the Democratic Party, as I would like.” Melvoin was referring to a lengthy statewide debate over a proposed model ethnic studies curriculum, early iterations of which praised the BDS movement and did not educate about antisemitism. Similardebates have played out in LAUSD, the nation’s second-largest school district. 

Wide field: The race in the 30th District, which stretches from West Hollywood to Pasadena, has already drawn significant interest. Nine candidates have filed paperwork to run, including actor Ben Savage, who mounted an unsuccessful bid for the West Hollywood City Council last year, State Del. Laura Friedman and entrepreneur Josh Bocanegra. In California’s so-called “jungle primaries,” the top two vote-getters advance to the general election potentially setting up two Democrats to face off in November.

Read the full interview here.

At the second annual Holocaust commemoration event in Cairo on Monday, survivor Ruth Cohen urged the roughly 150 dignitaries present to use their positions of influence to educate the public about history’s lessons and secure a safer future for the younger generations, Jewish Insider’s Tamara Zieve reports. German Ambassador to Egypt Frank Hartmann hosted the gathering at his residence in the Zamalek neighborhood of Cairo. The event marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, held last year at a local hotel on the Nile River, was co-produced with the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. 

Survivor speaks: “The Holocaust teaches us about human nature, that there is great capacity for good as well as for evil,” said Cohen, 92, an Auschwitz survivor who was born in Czechoslovakia and whose mother, brother and cousins were killed in the gas chambers. “That when one group in a society is singled out for persecution, other groups are likely to be targeted too. In small and large ways each individual has the capacity to hurt or to heal, to savage or to save. Perhaps one of the most important lessons to know on today’s commemoration of the 78th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is that Holocaust did not begin with Auschwitz, nor should it be solely defined by it. It began with words and small acts, then infinitely larger ones that resulted in the murder of 6 million Jews.”

Stepping up: Speaking alongside Cohen on a panel moderated by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Rob Satloff was Egyptian university professor Dr. Nasser Kotby, who is the nephew of Dr. Mohamed Helmy, the first Arab to be honored as a Righteous Among the Nations. “I want to end my life working for this cause. And in front of you all, I am taking the first step. Who will meet me? Who will meet your view? I don’t see steps coming up, step forward,” Kotby urged the audience, drawing members of the crowd to join him at the front of the room. “Step forward. Yes, we should work hard [so] that peace and compassion and prosperity will prevail and hate and prejudice will end.”

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As he enters his second year in office, Alvin Bragg, the district attorney of Manhattan, has suddenly found himself at the center of a heated and increasingly personal debate over a case involving the brutal assault of a Jewish man in Times Square, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. The veteran prosecutor, whose closely watched handling of the high-profile tax fraud investigation into former President Donald Trump’s real estate company successfully capped off an otherwise turbulent introduction to city politics, is now facing scrutiny for offering what many are denouncing as an overly lenient plea deal to one of four defendants charged with targeting a Jewish resident of Nassau County, Joseph Borgen, in an antisemitic attack nearly two years ago. 

Background: Borgen, now 30, has said he was wearing a yarmulke when, in an incident captured on video, he was violently beaten while walking to a pro-Israel demonstration in Midtown Manhattan during the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which coincided with an uptick in antisemitic incidents across the U.S. He has recalled being punched, kicked and pepper-sprayed during the assault, for which he was hospitalized. 

Response: In his first public comments to address the Borgen case, Bragg, 49, said in an interview with JI on Friday that he was “aware of the broader discussion” around the investigation but refrained from responding directly to accusations from some of his most vociferous critics. Instead, he insisted that his office is simply following the facts at hand. “Our focus is where it must be,” he said in a phone conversation, “which is the evidence that will be put forth and that does come forward during our investigation.”

Details: Awawdeh, who reportedly called Borgen a “dirty Jew” during the attack and later said he would “do it again,” did not initiate the assault and left before it was over, according to a spokesperson for Bragg’s office. He has no prior criminal convictions. “We do this in all of our cases, a kind of individualized justice depending upon a person’s role in the charge conducts” and “a person’s criminal history or lack thereof,” Bragg, a former federal prosecutor who has long advocated for a holistic approach to criminal justice, said broadly of the deal offered to Awawdeh. “We’re looking specifically at the person, the crime and the person’s role in the crime.”

Read the full story here.

A bipartisan sanctions bill reintroduced last week aims to impose sanctions on high-level Iranian regime officials in response to the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last year and the subsequent crackdown on protesters, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Background: The MAHSA Act, named for the Iranian woman who died in custody after being detained by Iran’s Gasht-e-Ershad — known more commonly as the “morality police” — for an alleged violation of headscarf laws, was introduced last week by Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) and 18 co-sponsors from both parties.

Cracking down: The bill instructs the administration to determine whether U.S. sanctions can be applied to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Ebrahim Raisi and any member of their offices; any economic entities overseen by those offices that are involved in human rights abuses or terrorism and officials of those entities; and other Iranian state officials.

Two years: In a statement, Banks indicated that he’s uncertain the legislation will be able to be enacted into law in the current Congress, in which Democrats have control of the Senate, and under the current president. “Two years from now, Congress will be ready to work with a reasonable administration to hold Iran accountable,” Banks, who is mounting a bid for Indiana’s open Senate seat in 2024, said.

Signatories: The legislation is co-sponsored by 15 Republicans, Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Mike Waltz (R-FL), Claudia Tenney (R-NY), Joe Wilson (R-SC), Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Rob Wittman (R-VA), Randy Weber (R-TX), Pat Fallon (R-TX), Tom McClintock (R-CA), Greg Murphy (R-NC), Diane Harshbarger (R-TN), Cathy McMorris Rogers (R-WA), Michael Guest (R-MS) and Doug Lamborn (R-CO), and three Democrats, Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL).

Read more here.