Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Wednesday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we take a peek inside the World Economic Forum at Davos and look at the Republican Steering Committee assignments doled out this week. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff, Gov. Josh Shapiro, Annette Taddeo and Yossi Vardi.
When the World Economic Forum in Davos concludes on Friday, some 175 attendees will wrap the week in a time-honored, millennia-old tradition: Shabbat dinner.
The annual Shabbat dinner, held at the conclusion of the weeklong confab for the last 25 years, is sponsored by the World Economic Forum and hosted by WEF founder Klaus Schwab and his wife, Hilde. (Schwab, for his part, once said the dinner is his favorite part of the gathering.)
“When it comes to Shabbos, it’s at the end of a week of intense meetings and networking and business,” Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, who has traveled to Davos annually for two decades and is involved in the planning for the annual dinner, told Jewish Insider. “So then people come to the last important meal: It’s spiritual, it’s purposeful, it’s Yiddishkeit.”
Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Vardi is a driving force behind the event, Berkowitz said. Prior to his death, Israeli President Shimon Peres was an annual staple at the dinner. Former Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat gives the d’var Torah, a role he took on following the death of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel.
“From heads of state to leaders of industry, emerging technology companies, Nobel laureates, academics, it’s an amazing amalgam of the amazing diversity of the Jewish people and friends of the Jewish people,” Berkowitz, who is also the president of AZ Advisors, explained.
While the guest list for the invite-only Shabbat dinner remains under wraps, Berkowitz noted that this year’s WEF boasts a host of high-profile Jewish figures, including Andy Jassy, Eduardo Elsztain, Orit Gadiesh, David Rubinstein, Steve Schwartzman, Jared Kushner, Marc Benioff, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Alex Soros, Rebecca Blumenstein, Adam Grant, Gary Cohn, Wired’s Gideon Lichfield, Israeli Chief Economist Shira Greenberg, Rabbi Yonatan Neril, Google’s Ruth Porat, OurCrowd’s Jonathan Medved, Edward Felsenthal and Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron.
While the Swiss Alps might not seem on its face to be a classic destination for observant Jewish travelers, the town boasts a long Jewish history, and has become a summer hotspot for Orthodox Jews looking for a getaway, with at least one fully kosher hotel, and a yeshiva that functions year-round for some 200 young men.
Today in Davos, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will address the gathering, in what is expected to be one of the most-anticipated speeches of the week. Immediately after Zelensky’s address, which is scheduled for 5 p.m. local time, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines will speak alongside NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Polish President Andrzej Duda, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and First Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Svyrydenko on a session focused on “Restoring Security and Peace.” Earlier today, Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Princess Reema Bandar al-Saud spoke on a panel titled “Saudi Arabia’s Transformation in a Changing Global Context.”
Yesterday, Iranian-British actress Nazanin Boniadi, Iranian-American writer Masih Alinejad and Tirana Hassan, the acting executive director of Human Rights Watch, spoke about the ongoing protests in Iran in a conversation moderated by Rima Maktabi, U.S. bureau chief of Al Arabiya. Also yesterday, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis called for more sanctions on Iran over its recent drone exports to Moscow.
On the sidelines of the Swiss confab, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen met with his Spanish counterpart, José Manuel Albares.
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt is also in Davos this week, where he’ll be speaking on a Thursday panel titled “Keeping Faith.”
“We’re seeing more and more data points in the trendline of rising global extremism — from rising antisemitic attitudes and incidents in the U.S., to an authoritarian insurrection in Brazil, to violent crackdowns against peaceful protests in Iran,” Greenblatt told us. “I’m looking forward to joining diverse world leaders at Davos to connect the dots between individual countries’ issues and concerning global trends, and identify paths forward to collaboratively address these challenges.”
Back in New York City, Dan Senor and Campbell Brown hosted “Fauda” creators Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff last night for a conversation and private screening of the premiere episode of the show’s newest season — the fourth season will drop on Netflix on Friday. The intimate event was held at the Roxy Cinema in Tribeca’s Roxy Hotel.
During the panel discussion, Raz and Issacharoff also discussed a new four-episode series that will launch on Showtime later this year about a joint CIA-Mossad operation to track down the world’s most wanted terrorist.
Notable attendees included Blackstone’s Jon Gray, Joseph Baratta, David Kestenbaum, Peter Wallace, Paramount’s Shari Redstone, Bloomberg‘s Ethan Bronner, The Wall Street Journal‘s James Taranto and Gregory Zuckerman; Pushkin’s Jacob Weisberg, Tribeca Enterprises’ Jane Rosenthal, New York Post’s Keith Poole, Instagram’s Charles Porch, Meta’s Naomi Gleit; Tablet‘s Alana Newhouse, Armin Rosen and Stephanie Butnik; Boykin Curry, Cyrus Vance Jr.; Emma Bloomberg, Gary Ginsberg, Mindy Gray, Endeavor’s Linda Rottenberg, Nir Hood, Post News‘ Noam Bardin, Steven Rattner and Maureen White; Richard Haass and Susan Mercandetti; Tali Farhadian Weinstein and Boaz Weinstein; Seth Siegel, Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan and Daniel Bonner.
We heard from Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) about her attendance at a weekend showing of Tom Stoppard’s semi-autobiographical play “Leopoldstadt” on Broadway. “‘Leopoldstadt’ was a profound example of how we can learn from the arts,” Pelosi told JI’s Marc Rod. “I told the cast that they were great teachers and that I’ll never forget the story they told. I also told them of my father being a champion of the Jewish community, calling upon the Roosevelt administration to be more concerned about the treatment of Jews in Europe and to move quicker in establishing a Jewish state. Bravo to Tom Stoppard!”
davos discussion
Qatari foreign minister urges global action on Israeli-Palestinian conflict at Davos

Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani urged global action regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the United Nations and in other international forums similar to the global response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Drawing comps: Al Thani, speaking at a World Economic Forum panel in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, said that he and others in the Middle East have been “struck” that the global community has been “mobilizing only for specific causes,” like that of Ukraine. “We’ve been in the Middle East suffering for decades from all violations of the U.N. charter, including from the Palestinian-Israeli issue, the Syrian issue,” Sheikh Mohammed said. “We would like to see the same world stand for these kinds of causes.”
On Israel’s new government: He specifically emphasized a “very big concern now among the region” for the Palestinians situation given “all these provocative policies” from the Israeli government. “We would like to see a real stand from our allies and partners also to stop the Israeli government from taking such actions,” al Thani said.
New path: Saudi Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, who also spoke on the panel, said Saudi Arabia is seeking a diplomatic pathway forward with Iran. “We have reached out, we are trying to find a path to dialogue with our neighbors, Iran, because we believe very strongly that dialogue is the best pathway to resolving differences,” Prince Faisal said. “We feel quite strongly that what we are doing in the kingdom, and what others in the region, especially the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries are doing, in addressing the challenges of their economy, in investing in their countries, in focusing on development rather than geopolitics, is a strong signal to Iran and others in the region that there is a pathway beyond the traditional arguments and the traditional disputes towards joint prosperity.”