🛢️ Loud and Clear: The Washington Post’s David Ignatius opines that Saudi Arabia’s recent decision to cut oil production and raise prices sent a clear message to the U.S: “The United States doesn’t call the shots in the Persian Gulf or the oil market anymore. For better or worse, the era of American hegemony in the Middle East is over. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pressed OPEC producers on Sunday to reduce production by about 1 million barrels a day, which boosted the price of crude oil by more than 6 percent to about $85 a barrel. For a Biden administration struggling to contain inflation and avoid recession, the Saudi-led price increase was as welcome as a poke in the eye. Saudi Arabia is hedging its bets, and so is the United States. Neither country wants a break in relations, but leaders in both capitals feel disrespected. It’s not an easy or stable balance — especially for Israel, which wants better relations with Riyadh but depends absolutely on the reliability of U.S. power in the region.” [WashPost]

🥄 ​​The Charoset Diaries: In Tablet magazine, Alexander Aciman concludes a decade-long effort to recreate his great-grandmother’s charoset for Passover, following a request from his father, who had celebrated the holiday in Egypt as a child. “All I have are the highlights, the kind of trite banalities that descendants cling onto in the hope that they mean something, or that they offer some connection to these lost worlds. But if I ever got a sense of who my great-grandmother was, it was through a dish that told the story of my great-grandmother’s life, of her ancestry, of her likes and dislikes, the way she cooked and the way her dishes might have diverged from every codified recipe in any book or on any website, and that she saw herself not as Egyptian, but as a relic of the Ottoman Empire. Here, like her apartment on that last Passover, was a thing that had not changed since before even my dad was born. It is its own earmark; charoset, like a seance, for a split second seems to raise the dead. And this Passover, I cannot help but wonder, in half a century or more, which dish of mine will some stranger, who does not yet exist and who may never exist, finally manage to reproduce?” [Tablet]

📓 Reporter’s Notebook: The New York Times’ Bret Stephens highlights the reporting of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arguing that if Russian President Vladimir Putin had read his articles, he might have “thought a little harder” before imprisoning him on what he calls “transparently bogus” espionage charges. “Had the Russian president read Gershkovich’s reporting over the past year, he might have read a story or two that would have pleased him, like one from last summer about young Russians largely ignoring the war. (That was before a partial draft sent many Russians fleeing to Dubai, Bali and even a remote Alaskan island.) Yet Putin would also have learned, thanks to Gershkovich’s solo reporting in Belarus in the earliest days of the war, that the war was not ‘going to plan,’ in contrast to what Russia’s defense minister kept telling him. He would have learned how utterly incompetent his war machine is, thanks to an inside account from a Russian paratrooper who participated in the invasion and later fled to France. He would have learned that despite last year’s energy-revenue windfalls, Russia’s economy is coming undone under Western sanctions and that his old pal Oleg Deripaska has warned: ‘There will be no money next year. We need foreign investors.’” [WSJ]

🏫 School Blues: Tess Winston, a third-year student at Stanford Law School, reflects in the Washington Post on the threat to inclusive discourse amid pressures by classmates to withhold certain views. “It’s even worse outside the classroom. Expressing nuance about certain matters — whether on Israel or policing — is essentially taboo for anyone who doesn’t want to invite social ostracizing. I know this from helping organize a spring-break trip this year to Israel and the Palestinian territories. Far-left, pro-Palestinian students opposed the trip, urging classmates to abstain from visiting the ‘apartheid state’ of Israel. One student, who ended up going anyway, was first subjected to an intervention-like meeting with critics of the trip. Others, intimidated, dropped out. One told me, ‘It’s not my fight.’ On another occasion, a message that invited classmates to meet to discuss anti-Black police violence declared: ‘All are welcome, but the conversation will be explicitly abolitionist (so we will not be entertaining convos that seek to reform, rather than abolish, the police).'” [WashPost]

🗳️ Elections Results: Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson was declared the winner of Chicago’s mayoral election, beating Paul Vallas in yesterday’s runoff. In Wisconsin, Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz was elected to the state’s open supreme court seat, giving liberals the majority in the purple state.

⚖️ In the Courts: GOP fundraiser Elliot Broidy, who was pardoned by former President Donald Trump after pleading guilty to conspiring to violate foreign agent laws, testified before a federal jury in a case involving a Malaysian financier whose current whereabouts are unknown. 

👩‍🔬 Alzheimer’s Aid: The Lauder family is pledging $200 million to their Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, which Leonard Lauder said “sets the stage for the next generation to tackle and ultimately end this devastating disease,” from which their family matriarch Estée Lauder suffered.

🏦 Don’t Bank on It: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon released his annual message to shareholders, saying that in the wake of the collapse of two major banking institutions, “This wasn’t the finest hour for many players.”

🎙️ Podcast Playback: Former Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz, the co-founder and chair of Maoz, joined Michael Eisenberg’s “Invested” podcast to discuss philanthropy and social impact investing.

🗞️ Ousted: Los Angeles magazine Editor-in-Chief Maer Roshan was fired amid a shake-up at the publication, months after its acquisition in December by ​Engine Vision Media.​

🎞️ Coming Soon: National Geographicreleased the trailer for the upcoming limited series “A Small Light,” which is based on the experiences of Miep Gies, one of several people who helped to hide the Frank family and others during the Holocaust.

👪 Family Roots: Tablet magazine looks at how an effort to debunk rumors about Leonardo da Vinci’s family ancestry revealed that the artist was likely the son of a Jewish woman.

🎓 Campus Beat: The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is opening an investigation into The George Washington University, a week after the school released findings from an internal probe that found “no evidence” that the professor who is the subject of the federal complaint created a hostile learning environment for Jewish students.

🐶 Why Is This Dog Food Different…?: The Wall Street Journalspotlights the market for kosher-for-Passover dog food.

👨‍⚖️ Sticking to its Guns: A Swiss court upheld the conviction of Beny Steinmetz, who was found guilty last year of bribing foreign officials tied to mining rights in Guinea.

🇷🇺 Sharanky’s Call: Former Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky, who as a Soviet refusenik was imprisoned for nine years in Russia, called on Moscow to release detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich; in Washington, the White House said securing the journalist’s release is a top priority.

☎️ Phone Call: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan, in a conversation in which “the two leaders agreed to continue their dialogue in a personal meeting in the near future,” according to a readout from the Prime Minister’s Office.

🛢️ Saudi Strategy: The Wall Street Journal explores how Riyadh’s oil production strategy is tied to the country’s efforts to fund large-scale domestic development projects.

🕯️ Remembering: Klaus Teuber, the creator of the Settlers of Catan board game, died at 70.

Western Wall Heritage Foundation workers remove the tens of thousands of notes left in the Kotel in Jerusalem over the last six months, ahead of the start of Passover.

British novelist, author of over 50 books specializing in mystery and suspense, his Alex Rider series is estimated to have sold 21 million copies worldwide, Anthony Horowitz turns 68…

Ed. note: In yesterday’s Daily Kickoff, we mistakenly published the April 5 birthdays a day ahead of schedule. Happy birthday to all who celebrated or are celebrating this week!

April 4: Author of books about her childhood experiences as a Jewish girl in the Netherlands during the Holocaust, Johanna Reiss turns 91… Retired MLB player for the Orioles, Senators, Athletics, Rangers and Angels, Mike Epstein turns 80… Southern California resident, Gloria Margulies… French-German politician who is a Green Party leader in Europe, Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit turns 78… Hungarian dramatist, novelist and essayist whose recent works are focused upon Jewish characters, György Spiró turns 77… Professor of history at American University in D.C., Allan Jay Lichtman turns 76… Poet and professor emeritus of English at the University of Pennsylvania, Charles Bernstein turns 73… Senior non-resident fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, Bruce Wolpe turns 72… Petah Tikva-born, Emmy Award-winning film director, producer and writer, Simcha Jacobovici turns 70… Retired partner from the M&A group at Skadden, David J. Friedman… Founder and president of Stutzman Public Affairs in Sacramento, Robert Stutzman… Chairman of The Western Wall Heritage Foundation and rabbi of the Kotel since 1995, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch turns 53… Tel Aviv-born animator and film director, now a freelance director in NYC, Tatia Rosenthal turns 52… Former member of the Knesset, he last served in 2019 as a member of the Hatnua party, Yoel Hasson turns 51… Journalist and author, he is a great-grandson of famed Talmudist Rabbi Yehezkel Abramsky, Sasha Abramsky turns 51… Israeli social activist promoting the rights of the disabled, Hanna Akiva turns 49… NYC-based artist and founder of the Midnight Society, an artist-run curatorial project, Abshalom Jac Lahav turns 46… Actress since she was six years old, Natasha Lyonne (born Natasha Bianca Lyonne Braunstein) turns 44… Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur turns 42… Actress and YouTube personality, Lisa “Lisbug” Schwartz turns 40… Israel’s top men’s tennis player, who had broken into the top 30 of world rankings, David “Dudi” Sela turns 38… Fashion editor for Hearst Digital, Daisy Melamed Sanders… Writer at HBO Max and young leader in the Los Angeles Jewish community, Leslie Schapira… Figure skater, he competed for Israel at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Ronald Zilberberg turns 27… Phyllis Wilner…

April 5: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, he was the executive editor of The New York Times, Joseph Lelyveld turns 86… Former vice-provost of the California Institute of Technology where he also served as a professor of applied physics, David L. Goodstein turns 84… Research scientist and former CEO of the Ontario Genomics Institute, Mark J. Poznansky turns 77… Marketing consultant Eugene Kadish… Professor emeritus in the Department of Jewish thought at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Daniel J. Lasker turns 74… Engineer, inventor, businessman, best known for his invention of the Segway, Dean Kamen turns 72… CEO of Hess Corporation, John Barnett Hess turns 69… Founder of merchant bank Alnitak Capital Partners and chairman of the board of Sodastream, Stanley B. Stern turns 66… Russia editor for BBC News, Steven Barnett Rosenberg turns 55… Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle P. Walensky turns 54… Israeli actress and model, Sendi Bar turns 47… Film and television writer, producer and co-founder of Quantity Entertainment, Lee Eisenberg turns 46… Assistant managing editor for CNN Politics focused on legal and justice issues, Dan Berman… Senior director of global sanctions policy and strategy at PayPal, Howard Wachtel… Boston-based musician and fine artist, Marissa Nadler turns 42… VP at D.C.-based Porter Group, Benjamin J. Rosenbaum… Israeli screenwriter and political activist focused on disability benefits, Alex Fridman turns 35… Program director at 2U educational technology company, Adam Maslia… Director at Bully Pulpit Interactive, Sarah Horvitz… British Labour party Member of Parliament, Charlotte Louise Nichols turns 32… Congressional analyst at GovTrack Insider and box office analyst at BoxOffice Media, Jesse Rifkin… Manager at Schmidt Futures, Wilson Shirley… Executive and brand consultant at Creative Artists Agency, Camila Seta… Adam Ross Rubenstein… Harvey Levin… Dubai-based chief of Middle East division for Steinreich Communications, Ariella Steinreich…