In one of his first floor speeches as a House member early last month, Rep. Wiley Nickel, a freshman democratic congressman from North Carolina, took a moment to acknowledge the victims of a deadly shooting that had recently occurred outside a Jerusalem synagogue on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The incident in late January, in which seven Israelis were killed by a Palestinian gunman, “was no random act of violence,” Nickel said from the lectern. “This was a heinous and cowardly attack rooted in hate, bigotry and antisemitism.” “In the face of such evil, it is imperative that we come together not as Democrats or Republicans but as Americans committed to fighting against antisemitism and defending the sacred relationship between the United States and Israel,” he added. “‘Never again’ is more than a mere hashtag for social media. It is a solemn oath.” For Nickel, 47, such declarations are personal, he explained in an interview with Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel not long after his speech. 

Shared story: “The Jewish community, their story is my story,” he said. “My mother is Jewish. My great-grandfather fled Poland prior to the Holocaust and would not be here today if he had stayed in Poland. When we talk about antisemitism, we need to continue to speak up.” Despite a verifiable claim to Jewish heritage, Nickel made clear — in contrast to a certain Republican lawmaker from New York — that he is not a practicing Jew and, like his father, identifies as Episcopalian, even as he grew up in a mixed-faith household celebrating Passover and observing the High Holidays with his mother’s family. Nickel’s maternal great-grandfather, Harry Sott, fled Jewish persecution in Poland in 1907 and ultimately settled in Detroit, according to an immigration document provided by the congressman’s office. (The record describes Sott as “Hebrew.”) He met his wife, who had escaped the same Polish town, in the U.S., a spokesperson for Nickel told JI.  

Family history: Harry Sott, who worked on the assembly line for the Ford Motor Company, became a successful textile manufacturer and then retired to California, where he bought land. His son, Herbert, would also prosper, though his effort to become a practicing attorney was not without its challenges, Nickel said of the hardships his grandfather endured before opening a real estate law firm that is now one of the largest in Michigan. “People wouldn’t hire him because he was a Jew,” Nickel told JI. “I certainly have a deep appreciation for the challenges the Jewish community faces.”

On his radar: As a new member of Congress, Nickel, a former state senator and Obama administration staffer, says he is keeping those challenges in mind amid an uptick in antisemitic incidents, including in North Carolina. “This is an incredibly important issue to me,” he vowed. The congressman said he has joined the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, which is now led by a fellow North Carolina Democrat, Rep. Kathy Manning. He has also signed onto legislation promoting Holocaust education as well as a resolution “recognizing Israel as America’s legitimate and democratic ally and condemning antisemitism.”

Israel-bound: Moreover, Nickel said he is planning to take his first trip to Israel this August with a House delegation of freshman Democrats sponsored by the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation, whose annual trips to the Jewish state are a rite of passage for many new congressional lawmakers. “We need to continue to strengthen our military, economic and cultural ties with Israel to make sure that we have peace in the Middle East,” he told JI. Nickel supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiated directly between both parties, he said. “The U.S. has a role to play to facilitate those discussions,” he argued, “but both Israelis and Palestinians have legitimate aspirations.”

Read the full interview here.

PHOENIX — The future is now. Or, at the very least, not far off. And the solution, speakers at the Jewish Funders Network international conference suggested here on Sunday, is to modernize along with it. Representing a range of personal and professional backgrounds, the individuals opening up JFN’s annual confab — the largest in the organization’s three-decade history — expressed optimism that the Jewish community, and those who support it, will adapt to an ever-changing and growing philanthropic and Jewish communal environment, Melissa Weiss reports for eJewishPhilanthropy.

The times they are a-changin’: “[Famed General Electric CEO] Jack Welch once said that when the world outside is changing faster than the world inside, that’s the surest sign that you’re in deep trouble,” Sefaria co-founder Joshua Foer said from the dais. “And right now, the Jewish community feels like the world outside is changing. A whole lot faster. The reason the world out there is changing so fast,” Foer continued, “is because the funding ecosystem out there is continually spawning new initiatives, new companies, new ventures that are like nimble, heat-seeking missiles.” The changes, noted Rabbi Kendell Pinkney, a New York-based theater artist, extend across the Jewish community.

Building up: “This is a time of growth,” Pinkney, who grew up attending a Black megachurch in Texas before converting as an adult, said. “It’s a time of expansion. And if I’m telling the truth, I repeated that our spiritual ancestors in D’varim would be extremely proud of the communities that we have created. So, now that we are looking forward into our Jewish future, it is that much more important that we redouble our efforts and commit to building the most robust and richly inclusive and creative communities that we can, so that way, our descendants in 10, 20, 30 years will look back on us with gratitude and thank us for the inspiring decisions that we’ve made today that made their lives possible.”

Concrete steps: In her remarks to the nearly 700 attendees, JFN’s board chair, Marcia Riklis, highlighted efforts to help JFN, and its members, move forward, citing the organization’s partnership with Impala, an online repository of financial and organizational information of both grantmaking institutions as well as recipients, and SparkIL, which allows individuals to directly fund small businesses in Israel. “We plan to be the go-to place in the Jewish world for the new ideas that will enhance the field of Jewish philanthropy, and provide that field with badly needed tools,” Riklis said.

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Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA) said on Sunday that she cautioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel could see a significant drop-off in support from Congress as more young Democratic lawmakers are elected, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Looking ahead: “What I said to him was, ‘I’m worried that in a decade, let’s say — it’s not going to be this year, next year — in a decade, maybe a little longer, Israel may find itself not enjoying the broad-spread support that it currently does from the U.S. Congress,’” Wild said. “I think that it is a very real threat to Israel.” The Pennsylvania congresswoman visited Israel in February on a J Street-sponsored delegation.

New generation: Wild, speaking in a Zoom event organized by Democratic Jewish Outreach Pennsylvania, attributed a potential shift to changing demographics among Democratic lawmakers. “We have repeatedly seen younger and younger members of Congress,” the Pennsylvania legislator, who traveled to Israel with J Street, said. “Their views tend to be much less solidified about being pro-Israel. And so I think the long term is not good.”

Poll patrol: At the same time, Wild, who is Jewish, said that she’s “not sure how much faith” she would put in a recent Gallup poll showing that a majority of Democrats now sympathize, for the first time, more with Palestinians than Israelis. She argued that responses to the poll were likely mostly not “well-informed”: “the vast majority of Americans know far less about Israel than they probably should considering the amount of our tax dollars that go there and the importance of Israel generally to democracy and security around the world.”

Read more here.

In the heyday of Bitcoin, the four co-founders of the Rain cryptocurrency exchange saw a tantalizing opportunity when the Central Bank of Bahrain issued regulations allowing certain digital assets to be used for payments and handled by commercial banks. The move in 2019 toward normalizing crypto trading under a regulatory framework established the small island kingdom as an influential player in the notoriously unregulated industry and generated the interest of venture capital firms from the Gulf to Silicon Valley. Among the early funders of Rain was Bahrain’s Al Waha Fund of Funds, lending credibility when Kleiner Perkins, Paradigm and other top venture firms later decided to invest their own money, The Circuit’s Jonathan Ferziger reports from the Gulf state’s capital city of Manama.

Sovereign-backed fund: In fact, the money from Al Waha was dispensed through a variety of Gulf venture capital firms such as Middle East Venture Partners, VentureSouq and 500 Startups, which helped Rain establish itself as a regional leader among cryptocurrency exchanges. Little public note was made that the money originated in Al Waha, an arm of the Bahraini government that is backed by the tiny island kingdom’s $15.4 billion sovereign wealth fund, Mumtalakat. Al Waha, which has $100 million under management, prefers to stay behind the scenes, its director and fund manager, Areije Al Shakar, told The Circuit. Similarly, Al Waha provided funding for Calo, which analyzes a user’s nutritional needs and delivers meals custom-cooked according to the data, through 500 Startups.

Huge opportunity: “There’s a huge opportunity that we’ve seen, and I think our success has shown that as a fund of funds, we’ve been able to back a number of Bahrain-based founders and their companies that springboard out of here and then work across the entire Gulf [region],” Al Shakar said in an interview on the sidelines of last week’s Connect2Innovate conference in the capital city of Manama. The event, organized by the Bahraini Ministry of Industry and Commerce and Israel’s Start-up Nation Central, brought together some 500 participants from the two countries, according to the organizers. 

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