Daily Kickoff: Sen. James Lankford on the risks of the U.S. pivoting from the Middle East
👋 Good Friday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to “Parade” playwright Alfred Uhry about the antisemitic response to the show’s Broadway opening, and interview Sen. James Lankford on our podcast. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Leah Goldin, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Yair Rosenberg.
For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent Jewish Insider and eJewishPhilanthropy stories, including: UAE Jewish community opens the Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue; Wes Moore: Maryland should adopt Israel’s public-service ethos; With Feinstein’s retirement, Adam Schiff seeks to carry the torch of Jewish values; Nides aims to make Israel’s Fulbright program the largest in the world; ‘Ginny & Georgia’ creator Sarah Lampert dishes on the hit Netflix show; Alfred Uhry won’t let antisemites rain on his ‘Parade’; and OneTable brought Shabbat to thousands of young adults. Soon, empty nesters will dine, too. Print the latest edition here.
Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) arrived in Israel with a delegation of Senate Democrats on Thursday, where he met privately with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and enjoyed some nut-stuffed dates, Angelo Roefaro, Schumer’s press secretary, informed Jewish Insider.
Earlier today, Schumer visited Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, where he laid a wreath and delivered brief remarks. “As Senate majority leader — the highest-ranking Jewish American elected official in history — I stand here today in the shadow of my ancestors who perished in the Holocaust to promise that as long as Hashem breathes air into my lungs,” Schumer said, “the United States Senate will stand behind Israel with our fullest support.”
The senator will also meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, Roefaro confirmed. Read more here.
For five days, American Jewish communal leaders, who were in Jerusalem for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations’ national leadership summit, met with officials and figures who are mainstays in the Israeli and international press.
But on Thursday afternoon at the Inbal Hotel in Jerusalem, a slight woman in a white cardigan addressed a silent, rapt room. She wasn’t a government official or the head of an Israeli organization, but a mother who has spent nine years lobbying Israeli and American officials to aid her in her effort to provide a proper burial for her son.
Leah Goldin has become the public face of families who have lived for years in limbo, unable to retrieve the remains of her son, Hadar, who was killed by Hamas militants during Israel’s Operation Edge in 2014. Since then, the terror group has held the remains of Hadar Goldin and another soldier, Oron Shaul. Two other Israelis — Ethiopian-Israeli Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, a member of the Bedouin community — are believed to be alive and in Hamas custody, after both men separately entered the Gaza Strip in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
“What we need is your help, and to know that you’re ready to operate in order to bring our boys home,” Leah Goldin pleaded, her voice breaking at times. “We should bring up our boys to a decent burial. Being a second-generation Holocaust survivor, most of my parents’ family did not have a proper burial. Being in Israel, having a son, a soldier, going to fight to defend Israel, it is not a question. We have to bring him home to a decent burial.”
On a visit to the U.S. two years ago, Goldin had pushed for Washington to condition rebuilding aid to Gaza following the May 2021 conflict on the return of her son’s remains. She found support in former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley. “My heart goes out to the Goldin family who have persevered through such hardship. The withholding of remains is one of many barbaric practices of the Hamas terrorists. We must always keep that in mind when dealing with them,” Haley told JI at the time.
podcast playback
Lankford: U.S. pivot away from Middle East risks ‘exposing that whole region to China’
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), a longtime staunch supporter of Israel, was a key member in the formation last year of the Senate Abraham Accords Caucus. In mid-January, around the first anniversary of the caucus’ launch, Lankford, along with Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), led a bipartisan delegation of senators to the Accords’ signatory countries: Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. On this week’s episode of Jewish Insider’s podcast, Lankford joined co-hosts Rich Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein for a discussion on how the Senate Abraham Accords Caucus came into being, U.S. efforts to deter Iran, China and Russia, improving Israeli-Palestinian relations, UNRWA and bipartisanship in the Senate.
On the creation of the Senate Abraham Accords Caucus: “So the caucus itself was obviously birthed out of the Abraham Accords agreement that happened almost three years ago now,” Lankford explained. “The formation of that agreement was so historic…the concern was, would this current White House pick it up, would the State Department keep going, or would they say, ‘Eh, it was a Trump project.’ It really wasn’t designed to be the ‘Trump accords,’ it was an agreement made between Arab nations and between Israel to be able to start an ongoing normalization. So, it really was birthed out of, ‘we need to keep this momentum going in the region.’ The Abraham Accords were built with three nations initially, then it kept expanding, added Sudan and Morocco, but it was designed to keep going, to keep expanding. And so we wanted to basically put our foot on the gas to say this is a formula for normalization in the region, for interacting with business relationships, with commerce, with energy, with water issues, with common issues just among people on it, and to get people talking to each other.”
On the United States’ ability to deter Iran and China at the same time: “We’re the superpower of the world, we can absolutely walk and chew gum at the same time,” the Oklahoma senator said. “And quite frankly, if we pull ourselves out of the Middle East, we are exposing that whole region to China. If you want to focus more on China, you’re not only going to look at the Pacific area, you’re going to look at the Middle East and you’re gonna look at Africa, because that’s where China is on the move. So it would actually be unwise for us. It was a poor choice of words to talk about a ‘pivot to Asia,’ when those first terms came out, we’re going to ‘pivot to Asia,’ because that gave the impression we’re going to pivot away. I think instead, it should have been, ‘we’ve lost enough focus on Asia and we need to make sure that we’re also paying attention there,’ rather than implying we’re pivoting away from the Middle East towards China, and now we’re not going to pay attention to the Middle East. I think it’d be unwise for the United States to pivot away from the Middle East.”
Bonus Lightning Round: Favorite Hebrew, Yiddish or Arabic word or phrase? “The term ‘lo ruhama’ was also a child’s name, and it means ‘no compassion,’ and it’s been kind of a running joke with my wife and I for years and years and years. If I say something sarcastically, she’ll look back at me and she’ll go, ‘lo ruhama,’ meaning, ‘Come on, have a little bit of compassion here, as well.’” Favorite place visited in any of the Abraham Accords countries? “It’s going to be Israel. I’ve been to Israel five times…The City of David, the excavations that are happening there are so incredibly moving. To be there, to see the excavations, to see them just pulling back history and to be able to walk through that area, it’s just a remarkable excavation. If anybody gets into Jerusalem ever, there’s a million things to be able to see and to be able to do there, but getting to the City of David…I encourage everybody to go and see it.” Favorite Jewish food? “It would not be matzah, I would just go and tell you that. Favorite Mediterranean foods: I really like lamb, I really like hummus, but I don’t know if there’d be a favorite Jewish food in that sense. My wife and I actually really do enjoy Mediterranean food, period.”
theater circuit
Alfred Uhry won’t let antisemites rain on his ‘Parade’
For the celebrated playwright Alfred Uhry, the trial and lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager who was hastily convicted of raping and murdering a 13-year-old girl more than a century ago in Atlanta, has long been a source of morbid fascination. “The story has haunted me all my life,” he told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel in a recent phone interview from his apartment on the Upper West Side.
Timely tale: The show centers on the relationship between Frank and his wife, Lucille — played, respectively, by Ben Platt and Michaela Diamond — as he finds himself scapegoated through a fatal miscarriage of justice so egregiously antisemitic that it would precipitate the creation of the Anti-Defamation League. Decades after its initial run, the updated musical is no less timely, Uhry observed, amid a recent profusion of antisemitic attacks and conspiracy theories, which the decorated book writer hopes to expose with his revival.
‘Always burbling’: “Unfortunately, it has a lot of resonance right now because all of this antisemitism seems to be in the air,” Uhry, 86, told JI. “It’s always burbling underneath, but it seems to be bubbling up right now — and this addresses that.” Even more than 100 years after Frank was abducted from a prison cell and hanged by a bloodthirsty mob in 1915, his harrowing tale still serves as a stark and uncomfortable reminder, Uhry suggested, that some age-old hatreds may never entirely fade away.
Hateful hecklers: As if to underscore that point, a small group of neo-Nazis gathered outside the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in Manhattan on Tuesday night to heckle attendees who were lining up for the musical’s first preview before it opens in mid-March. The protesters, some of whom held posters identifying with the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group in Florida, distributed antisemitic fliers, accused Frank of pedophilia and criticized the ADL, according to video footage and photos posted to social media.
‘These people are sick’: Uhry, who attended the preview, said he was largely unfazed by such efforts, even as he expressed concern that the show had been targeted for its association with Frank. “It was disturbing, but it’s happened before with ‘Parade’ in other iterations,” he told JI somewhat wearily, hesitant to describe instances where the musical has, he said, provoked street protests from similar groups as it has toured the country in previous years. “These people are sick,” he emphasized. “It makes us even more determined to present our show to the world.”
Sense of urgency: The show’s producers released a similar statement condemning the protesters. “The big thing we’ve seen in the past 20 hours is that this is a story as urgent as ever,” Alex Levy, a co-producer of “Parade,” told JI by phone on Wednesday. “For many Jews, and certainly even beyond the Jewish community, it’s a forgotten episode in the history of antisemitism,” he said of the Frank case. “There are lessons to be learned from it.”
court considerations
Jewish groups weigh in on Supreme Court cases linking social media platforms to terrorist activity
Several Jewish groups are taking an active role in two cases currently being considered by the Supreme Court, which could have significant impacts for how social media companies address extremist content — including content posted by known terror groups, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Social media showdown: On Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh. In Gonzalez, the family of the victim of an ISIS attack is suing Google, alleging that YouTube’s recommendation algorithm helped the terror group recruit, and is arguing that Google should be subject to liability for its recommendations. The case has the potential to drastically modify Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which broadly exempts websites from liability for the content their users post and undergirds the internet’s functionality. The Gonzalez family’s arguments have been rejected in lower courts.
Terror trouble: In Taamneh, the family of another ISIS victim is suing the social media platform under an antiterrorism law for failing to take down content promoting terrorism. The plaintiffs allege that Twitter’s failure to address the content makes the platform liable for knowingly aiding and abetting terrorism. Lower courts have sided with the family, and Twitter is seeking to overturn their judgements, arguing that the case does not satisfy the antiterrorism law’s standard for liability.
Getting involved: An Israeli legal nonprofit, Shurat HaDin (Letter of the Law), which sues companies allegedly aiding terrorists, has played a role in both cases. The group helped the Gonzalez family file suit after meeting through a member of the Los Angeles Jewish community, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the president of Shurat HaDin, told JI earlier this week. A lawyer for Taamneh approached the NGO to join their case.
Home front: In addition to Shurat HaDin, U.S. Jewish groups have filed “friend of the court” briefs in both cases — the Zionist Organization of America filed a brief supporting the Gonzalez plaintiffs, while the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (AAJLJ), the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Zachor Legal Institute filed a brief supporting the Taamneh respondents. The Anti-Defamation League filed briefs in both cases, one supporting the Taamneh respondents and the other supporting neither party in Gonzalez.
Worthy Reads
👵 A Fein-stein Moment: In The New York Times, Frank Bruni highlights the achievements of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), urging that she be given her “considerable due” in her remaining two years in the role. “By the milestones and the numbers, she’s extraordinary, a giant: the first woman to be president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (that’s what they call the city council out there), then the first woman to be mayor of San Francisco and then, in 1992, the first woman to be elected to the Senate from California, the nation’s most populous state. In 2021, she became the longest-serving California senator in history. In 2022, she became the longest-serving female senator ever. She’s 89 now, the oldest current senator, and there has been much talk about whether she brings adequate vigor and optimal acuity to the job. That coincides with a larger conversation, tied to President Joe Biden’s apparent determination to seek a second term that would end when he’s 86, about age, ability, optics and when a leader should cede the reins. It’s a fair and necessary discussion. But it should never diminish, or distract us from, all that a person accomplished. It should never minimize the kind of moral authority that can come from an accretion of years — from all that a person has lived through, all that she has seen and survived. It should never delete scenes from her highlights reel.” [NYTimes]
🌱 Israel in the Balance: In Foreign Policy, Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, describes the protests against the Israeli judicial overhaul plans as an “Israeli Spring of sorts. Unlike their counterparts in the Arab world though, where the protests formed against cruel dictators seeking to maintain a repressive authoritarian status quo, protesters in Israel are rallying to oppose an extremist and fundamentalist government that is trying to change the status quo and reshape the country’s character. The Arab Spring ended badly in most countries, with massive state violence, civil war, and ultimately the triumph of authoritarian repressors. With a robust — if imperfect — democracy, Israelis are certain to fare far better. But as Israel approaches its 75th independence day in May, the identity of the country and the borders that define it remain very much unsettled. This year may well hold both promise and peril for a country that has experienced more than its share of both.” [FP]
🔥 Intifada Impact: In Newsweek, Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, considers the damage a third intifada would cause to the Palestinian people, including loss of lives, economic impact, political chaos, increased religious extremism and negative consequences to the Palestinians’ statehood mission. “Today, the data suggest another intifada is possible. A mapping project by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies identified more than 1,120 violent incidents in the West Bank and Israel since last March. The young Palestinians who welcome an intifada are too young to remember the last one. A 20-year-old today would have been just two years old when it ended. And crucially, few Palestinians remember that all three uprisings were disasters for their people.” [Newsweek]
🙉 Selective Hearing: The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg argues that there is selective attention to antisemitic incidents, depending on whether or not they fit a preset political narrative. “Why do some anti-Semitic incidents capture broad attention, while others languish in relative obscurity? What distinguishes comments made by leaders of the Women’s March from the actions of New York–township officials, or a synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh from one in Los Angeles? In my decade reporting on such stories, I’ve come across many answers. Only one has consistently held true: Anti-Semitism is acknowledged when it conforms to one of two overarching partisan narratives that many journalists know how to tell and the public knows how to digest. On the one hand, there is the anti-Jewish bigotry that stems from white supremacists and neo-Nazis. This prejudice is right-coded, and typically attributed to conservatives. On the other, there is the anti-Jewish animus that results when anti-Zionism strays into anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel turns into vilification of Jews. This prejudice is left-coded, and typically attributed to progressives. Although these stories are simplifications, they should sound familiar because debates over them dominate our public discourse, not just in the press, but in the halls of Congress and the hothouse of social media.” [TheAtlantic]
Around the Web
💣 Policy Play: The White House changed its policy on the transfer of arms to foreign countries to condition the transfers on a stricter review of the weapons’ likelihood to be used for human rights abuses.
Ξ Crypto King Charges: Federal prosecutors added four new charges to an indictment against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, including conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, securities fraud and fraud in the connection of the purpose or sale of a derivative.
📚 Nazi ‘Fun’: The couple who ran a neo-Nazi homeschooling network defended their pro-Hitler content as “fun extras” to a “wholesome” dialogue.
🔫 Suspect’s Background: The man accused of carrying out a deadly mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs in November ran a neo-Nazi website that circulated a video featuring attacks on synagogues and mosques.
🚨 On Alert: Law enforcement groups are urging Jewish and other religious communities to be vigilant after a small antisemitic group based in eastern Iowa reportedly designated Feb. 25 as a “day of hate,” with other white supremacy and hate groups subsequently joining.
📺 Goodbye Goldbergs: “The Goldbergs,” a comedy series about a Jewish family, will conclude after its 10th season.
🎤 Backstreet’s Back: The ‘90s boy band the Backstreet Boys will return to Israel for their third performance in the country, set for May 13 in Rishon Lezion as part of an upcoming tour that will take the pop stars to Iceland, Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
👨🏫 School Suspension: An English teacher at Hayward’s Mt. Eden High School in the San Francisco Bay Area was put on a leave of absence after allegedly making antisemitic statements and putting antisemitic materials in the curriculum.
👀 CUNY Probe: The New York State Division of Human Rights is probing whether CUNY’s School of Law discriminated against Jews when its faculty council passed a resolution supporting the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement last year.
🏆 RBG Award: Barbra Streisand will receive the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award this year — the singer had been mentioned by the late Supreme Court associate justice when she discussed with philanthropist Julie Opperman the establishment of the awards for women who strove to make positive changes in society.
👋 Walking Away: The New York Timestalks to Israeli executives mulling an exodus from the country due to the judicial reforms that are making their way through the Knesset.
⚖️ Reform Ruminations: In the Washington Post, Israeli author Yuval Noah Harari likens the government’s plans to overhaul the justice system to an antidemocratic coup.
✋ PA Move: The Palestinian Authority is threatening to pull out of a security summit set for Sunday with the U.S., Israel, Jordan and Egypt, after 11 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli military raid in the West Bank on Wednesday, Axios’ Barak Ravid reports.
☢️ Be Prepared: Israel is reportedly preparing for possible military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held five secret meetings with top defense and intelligence officials.
🕍⛪🕌 First Look: Sir David Adjaye, the architect of the Abrahamic Family House, shares a first look at the interfaith complex in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
✍️ Division of Powers: The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office announced that an agreement was reached regarding the division of powers between Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a minister in the Defense Ministry, including a transfer of control of the Civil Administration and Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) to Smotrich.
🇮🇷 Eye on Iran: CNN’s international investigative unit exposes a network of secret torture centers used by the Iranian regime in an attempt to crush an uprising.
🕯️ Remembering: American billionaire financier Thomas H. Lee, considered a pioneer in private equity, died at 78.
Pic of the Day
Bahraini Ambassador to Israel Khaled Yousif Al-Jalahma visits the PICO Kids Makerspace in Jerusalem on Wednesday, where he met with 20 local teens who had traveled to the Gulf nation as a delegation of PICO Kids Ambassadors in December 2022, together with PICO Kids founder, Elie Wurtman.
In remarks on Wednesday, Al-Jalahma called the student mission — the first-ever youth delegation of its kind to promote partnership between the two countries — “a remarkable example of how the power of the younger generation can contribute to building bridges between our two nations through a spirit of creative collaboration.”
Birthdays
U.S. ambassador to Israel and the youngest of eight children, Thomas Richard Nides turns 62 on Saturday…
FRIDAY: Former U.S. senator and Democratic nominee for VPOTUS, Sen. Joe Lieberman turns 81… Chairman of Safir Intelligence and Security, Howard Safir turns 81… Former chairman and CEO of Warner Bros and later chairman and CEO of Yahoo, Terence Steven “Terry” Semel turns 80… Professor of mathematics at Yale University since 1991, Grigory Margulis turns 77… Encino resident, Faye Gail Waldman… Rabbi and author of a book about chocolate and Judaism, Deborah R. Prinz turns 72… President of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Clifford D. May turns 72… Member of the New Jersey Senate since last year following 18 years in the N.J. General Assembly, Jon M. Bramnick turns 70… Head coach of Ironi Nes Ziona in the Israeli Premier League in 2021, he has been on NBA and college basketball staffs in the U.S., Brad Greenberg turns 69… Film critic for Entertainment Weekly and then for Variety magazine, Owen Gleiberman turns 64… Former member of the Knesset for the Likud party, Nurit Koren turns 63… Founder of the Baltimore Center of Advanced Dentistry, Gary H. Bauman, DDS… Managing director at SKDKnickerbocker, Karen Olick… Israel’s minister of health in the previous government and leader of the Meretz party, Nitzan Horowitz turns 58… Professor of piano and artist-in-residence at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Yakov Kasman turns 56… Author, survival expert, anthropologist and TV host, Josh Bernstein turns 52… Member of the Knesset for the Likud party, now serving as minister of intelligence, Gila Gamliel turns 49… Founder of WhatsApp, Jan Koum turns 47… Professor of history at the Hebrew University, his books has been translated into 65 languages and have sold over 40 million copies, Yuval Noah Harari turns 47… NYC-based independent filmmaker, who, together with his older brother Joshua, directed and wrote the 2019 film “Uncut Gems” starring Adam Sandler, Benjamin Safdie turns 37… Partner at MizMaa Ventures Limited, Aaron Applbaum… Israeli actress and model, Dar Zuzovsky turns 32… YouTube beauty guru known as RCLBeauty101, Rachel Claire Levin turns 28… Mitchell Brown…
SATURDAY: Former talk show host, Sally Jessy Raphael turns 88… Owner of both the MLB’s Chicago White Sox and the NBA’s Chicago Bulls, Jerry M. Reinsdorf turns 87… Former president of the Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore, then EVP of the UJA-Federation of New York and first-ever CEO of United Jewish Communities, Stephen Solender turns 85… Science and medicine reporter for The New York Times and author of six books, Gina Bari Kolata turns 75… Graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Steve Gutow turns 74… Jerusalem-based attorney and chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel, Marc Zell turns 70… Former minister of foreign affairs for Israel and chief of the general staff of the IDF, Gabi Ashkenazi turns 69… Opinion columnist for The New York Times, Andrew Rosenthal turns 67… VP of communications at CNN until recently, Barbara Levin… Policy editor at The Bulwark, Mona Charen Parker turns 66… CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Buffalo since 2015 after a 20-year career at Hillel, Rob Goldberg… Co-president of Paterson, N.J.-based JNS-SmithChem, Michael F. Smith… Mayor of Burlington, Vt., Miro Weinberger turns 53… Founder of “News Not Noise,” she was previously the chief White House correspondent for CNN, Jessica Sage Yellin… Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, she is now the director of global curation for Meta / Facebook, Anne Elise Kornblut turns 50… Travel planner, she was previously SVP of marketing and communications at NBC News, Lauren Raps… Comedian, actress and writer, Chelsea Joy Handler turns 48… Actress best known for her roles in NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” and Fox’s “Boston Public,” Rashida Jones turns 47… Managing director of Covenant Wines in Berkeley, Calif., Sagie Kleinlerer… Assistant director at San Francisco-based EUQINOM Gallery, Lyla Rose Holdstein… Founding partner of Parallel Capital and board chair of the Holocaust Museum of Los Angeles, Guy Lipa… Actor best known for his role in Fox’s “Malcolm in the Middle,” Justin Berfield turns 37… CNN’s Jerusalem correspondent, Hadas Gold turns 35… 2013 U.S. national figure skating champion, now an advisor consultant at ProShares, Maxwell Theodore “Max” Aaron turns 31… Julie Goldman…
SUNDAY: Professor emeritus of sociology and Jewish studies at Rutgers University, Chaim Isaac Waxman, Ph.D. turns 82… Businessman, art collector and president of the World Jewish Congress since 2007, Ronald Lauder turns 79… Las Vegas resident, Chantal Reuss… Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter, Michael Bolton turns 70… President of Turkey since 2014, Recep Tayyip Erdogan turns 69… Julie Levitt Applebaum… Member of Knesset for over 30 years, he has held eight different cabinet posts, he now serves as the head of Israel’s National Security Council, Tzachi Hanegbi turns 66… Former U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, now a partner at Arnold & Porter where he heads the crisis management team, Paul J. Fishman turns 66… Professor of sociology and bioethics at Emory University, Paul Root Wolpe turns 66… CEO and chairman at Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals, Jonathan Sporn, M.D. turns 65… U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) turns 65… Partner at Unfiltered Media and digital strategist at turner4D, Alan Rosenblatt, Ph.D…. COO of the Paramus-based Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, Lisa Harris Glass… Former president of MLB’s Miami Marlins, a contestant in the 28th season of “Survivor,” David P. Samson turns 55… Motivational speaker, focused on anti-bullying, Jon Pritikin turns 50… First violin and concertmaster for the D.C.-based National Symphony Orchestra, Nurit Bar-Josef turns 48… Founder and editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine, Alana Newhouse turns 47… Freshman member of the House of Representatives (D-NY), Daniel Sachs Goldman turns 47… Brett Michael Kaufman…
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