Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Friday morning!
Ed. note: The next Daily Kickoff will arrive on Wednesday, July 5, in celebration of the July 4th holiday. Enjoy the long weekend!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to Jewish groups following the SCOTUS rulings on religious accommodations in the workplace and affirmative action, and report on Dan Shapiro’s appointment as senior advisor for regional integration in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Steve Cohen, Jonathan Greenblatt and Lexi Reese.
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, eJewishPhilanthropy and The Circuit stories, including: A big tent at the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s tent; In rollout of antisemitism strategy, White House steers clear of the Jewish state; Montana Senate race to test influence of GOP establishment in key battleground state. Print the latest edition here.
Rob Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy on Iran, said on Thursday that he has been placed on leave pending a review of his security clearance. CNN reported that the investigation is related to Malley’s handling of classified documents pertaining to Iran.
Malley has been absent from meetings regarding the administration’s talks with Iran for several months, including a classified briefing with legislators on Capitol Hill last month. The White House’s Brett McGurk traveled to Oman in May for talks with officials over a potential Omani-mediated effort to engage with Iran on its nuclear program. But CNN also reported that Malley has continued contact with the families of individuals being held by Tehran.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Thursday afternoon that Abram Paley, Malley’s deputy, was serving as acting special envoy, despite having told reporters at a press briefing earlier in the day that Malley remained in his role.
Malley was an early addition to President Joe Biden’s efforts to reengage with Iran following the 2018 U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, joining the Biden administration in its first weeks.
A House Foreign Affairs Committee aide told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod that the committee is concerned about the situation and is seeking answers from the administration.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Rich Goldberg, who is a co-host of JI’s podcast, told us, “If the recent reports about secret non-deal deals didn’t prompt congressional investigations, this certainly will,” adding that “understanding the facts of the case may also shed more light on what’s been going on behind the curtain.”
religion in the workplace
Supreme Court expands requirements for workplace religious accommodations
Leading Jewish organizations from across the political and denominational spectrum welcomed the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling Thursday in the Groff v. DeJoy case in favor of a former mailman and evangelical Christian who refused to work on Sundays in observance of the Sabbath, a decision that significantly expands the scope of religious accommodations that employers are required to provide, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
New standard: The justices rejected a standard for evaluating religious accommodations — that they may be rejected if they pose more than a “de minimis” cost to the employer — set out in the 1977 case TWA v. Hardison, ruling instead that employers “must show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.”
Fresh look: Representatives from leading Jewish communal organizations said that the case would prompt re-evaluations by both employers and religious employees of how they approach religious accommodations requests. “The ‘de minimis’ standard was so low that employers didn’t even bother making accommodations and employees thinking that they were going to lose didn’t even bother asserting their rights,” Rabbi Abba Cohen, vice president of government affairs for Agudath Israel of America, told JI. “I think that there’ll be a realization now [that] employers have real responsibilities and employees have real rights. I think we’ll see a difference in the outcome of cases and we’ll see the difference in how the community decides to assert their rights.”
Read the full story here.
Bonus: The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board called the unanimous ruling “another High Court victory for religious pluralism.”
landmark ruling
The Supreme Court eliminated affirmative action. Where does the Jewish community stand?
The Supreme Court effectively disrupted the college admissions process across the nation on Thursday with its 6-3 decision that colleges and universities cannot use race as an admission criteria, outlawing affirmative action programs as they have existed for decades. The Jewish community’s history with racial preferences is complicated. Decades ago, when the use of explicit racial quotas in a university’s admissions process was first challenged at the Supreme Court in 1978 (California v. Bakke), several major American Jewish groups were unitedand vocal in their opposition to such policies. A result of that ruling led to the practice of affirmative action, which allowed for race to be considered as one of many factors in the admissions process. Now, some of the same groups that led the charge against quotas are lamenting affirmative action’s demise, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
ADL reaction: “We are deeply disappointed with the Supreme Court’s decision finding that the admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional. This decision reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the history and present realities of racial discrimination in this country and the reasons why affirmative action is still needed,” Anti-Defamation League Senior Counsel Steve Freeman said in a statement to JI.
Other side of the coin: The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which focuses on combating antisemitism, filed a brief making the opposite case to ADL, that Harvard’s alleged discrimination against Asian American applicants is comparable to its anti-Jewish quotas. “Over time, Harvard has changed its admissions policies, but it has never changed its practice of engaging in intentional discrimination on the basis of race. Rather than remove the vestiges of its past discrimination, Harvard merely modifies its discriminatory policies and practices to target new and different racial groups,” the brief argues. “Today, Harvard discriminates against Asian Americans in admissions in the same manner in which it discriminated against Jews in the 1920s and 1930s.”
back in town
Dan Shapiro rejoins Biden admin to focus on boosting the Abraham Accords
Amid a concerted U.S. push to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the State Department announced on Thursday that former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro would be appointed the department’s senior advisor for regional integration, a newly created position, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Deepen connections: Shapiro “will support U.S. efforts to advance a more peaceful and interconnected region, deepen and broaden the Abraham Accords and build the Negev Forum,” Secretary of State Tony Blinken wrote in a tweet.
Succession: Shapiro comes to the State Department after serving as director of the N7 Initiative, an Atlantic Council program sponsored by the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation that seeks to further normalization in the Middle East. Ed Husain, a Georgetown professor and former advisor to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, will be replacing Shapiro at N7.
Ambassador status: The appointment comes as the Senate considers whether to approve a bill — which was already passed by the House — that would create an ambassador-level special envoy position focused on the Abraham Accords. In a Thursday press briefing, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller suggested that an ambassador-level position is not needed to advance the Abraham Accords. “The Senate-confirmed piece is — I don’t think is necessary,” Miller said. “There are a number of Senate-confirmed officials already working on this.” He pointed to Blinken, who raised the issue in a recent trip to Saudi Arabia and discussed it at a Wednesday event at the Council on Foreign Relations, and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf, to whom Shapiro will report. “We think he can perform all the duties he needs to perform to advance the agenda as the senior advisor,” said Miller.
the face of anti-antisemitism
ADL chief: WH hesitation to call out anti-Zionism in antisemitism strategy rollout ‘a miss’
In the exclusive environs of elite conferences like the Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colo., or the Milken Institute Global Forum in Beverly Hills, Calif., Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has become a mainstay alongside the business executives and philanthropists who frequent the events. In a recent interview between speaking gigs at Aspen, Greenblatt talked to Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch about why business leaders should take antisemitism and extremism seriously, and why he thinks it’s a “miss” that the White House isn’t talking about Israel in its rollout of the national antisemitism strategy.
On White House officials avoiding Israel: “I think it is addressed in the strategy, and I think the administration needs to continue, when they talk about the issue of antisemitism, [to] acknowledge that it’s a multidirectional threat, that it comes from all sides. There is so much that is meaningful and historic in the strategy. There’s so much that’s consequential and just groundbreaking in the strategy. It elevates antisemitism to a national priority. I think what’s important is that when the administration then talks about it, as they implement policies around the recommendations in the strategy, as they continue to maintain the sort of balance here they did in the paper, which is, again, antisemitism, whether it’s directed against the Jewish people, or to the Jewish state, needs to be countered, forcefully and firmly and without hesitation, and so hesitating to call it out, I think it’s a miss.”
Read the full story here and sign up for eJewishPhilanthropy’s Your Daily Phil newsletter here.
podcast playback
Dealing with death in Judaism
Jewish tradition teaches about honoring a life lost and showing support to grieving loved ones. But even within a society that details how to best care for the dead and dying, dealing with end-of-life issues is still a challenge for many. On this week’s episode of Jewish Insider’s podcast, co-hosts Rich Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein are joined by Rabbi Melanie Levav, executive director of Shomer Collective, and Scott Arogeti, co-founder and CEO of Mi Alma, for a discussion on grief in the Jewish community and approaching end-of-life preparations.
Doing it differently: “Shomer Collective is a startup nonprofit — we’re being incubated by the good folks at the Natan Fund — and we emerged after a group of friends started sharing their experiences about the death of a loved one, and recognized that there were things about those experiences that we wish could have been different,” Levav said. “I had this in my own life with the death of my mother-in-law, and really learned only at [her] bedside about things like hospice and chaplaincy support. And in my work in the Jewish community, over the last two dozen plus years, I saw too many families wind up in crisis, because of our inability to talk about death and dying. We’re scared that it might hasten the arrival of the Angel of Death, that’s one of our superstitions, and we don’t know where to go, who to call, what to do. And we realized that there could be a lot to do, further upstream, to help people avoid ending up in this crisis.”
Bridging the gap: “So, Mi Alma, which is Spanish for ‘my soul’ — it’s really more Ladina, but we’ll call it Spanish — is a startup that my wife and I have co-founded, and the goal of Mi Alma is to be the place to support grievers,” said Arogeti. “So what we do, our belief is that there is room and there is a need for a tool, a modern piece of technology, that empowers supporters with the knowledge and resources that they need to direct their compassion in meaningful ways. You think of the composition of a standard funeral: You’ve got a clergy that is officiating, you’ve got members of the family up close, but the largest group by far are the supporters. So we really exist to bridge the disconnect between the supporters and the grievers.”
Worthy Reads
🎆 Historic Holiday: In Tablet magazine, Jenna Weissman Joselit looks at how Jewish immigrants became a target of regulations around turn-of-the-century Fourth of July festivities. “Acting on — and concretizing — the widespread but erroneous belief that rowdiness and noise-making was the handiwork of ‘aliens,’ as immigrants were often called, the Safe and Sane Fourth movement singled out foreign-born Jews for making a ‘low, vulgar’ racket on the Fourth and for endangering everyone else’s health and welfare. Implicit throughout was the notion that they needed to be taught how to salute America and, more damning still, that they were insufficiently grateful to their adopted homeland. More established, middle-class American Jews, always eager to please, or, at the very least, determined not to rock the boat, went along with that assessment; few challenged the notion that their co-religionists were accountable for the mayhem, or that they could do better when it came to acknowledging their good fortune.” [Tablet]
⚾ What Money Can’t Buy: The Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes spotlights Mets owner Steve Cohen’s handling of the team during a season in which it has struggled, despite having the MLB’s most expensive roster. “News conferences such as this one — in circumstances, if not tone — used to be the purview of the owner in the Bronx, where high payrolls were meant to inoculate the other New York team against the ebbs and flows that infect clubs with tighter budgets. Cohen arrived with a fan’s enthusiasm and a similar plan: Spend enough to make the beloved but beleaguered Mets annual World Series contenders. Treat the Mets’ habit of engineering disappointment with enough superstars to prevent a relapse. So far, the only thing the biggest payroll in Major League Baseball history has guaranteed is the Mets’ status as a contender for the most expensive bust ever. ‘It’s kind of weird. It’s actually very strange to me. I don’t know if the players are anxious,’ Cohen wondered aloud, matter-of-fact in his assessment, if not fully empathetic. ‘There’s nobody to blame,’ he added. ‘It’s really across the whole team.’” [WashPost]
Around the Web
🇺🇦 Surprise Visit: Former Vice President Mike Pence met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday during a surprise trip to Ukraine.
💵 Koch Cash: The Koch brothers’ network, Americans for Prosperity Action, has raised upwards of $70 million, as it prepares to get involved for the first time in a GOP presidential primary in an effort to keep former President Donald Trump from securing the nomination.
🏃♀️ She’s Running: Lexi Reese, a Bay Area tech executive who previously worked at Google and Facebook, is joining the race to succeed Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in California.
🗳️ Support for Sheehy: Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte endorsed Tim Sheehy, who announced his bid for Senate earlier this week.
👨 Savage Ending: Ben Savage’s former “Boy Meets World” co-stars said in a recent podcast that the actor-turned-congressional-candidate has “disappeared” from their lives, after years in which the group was in regular contact.
🕍 Tree of Life Testimony: A forensic psychologist testified that Robert Bowers, who was convicted earlier this month in the Tree of Life attack, was “blatantly psychotic” in the lead-up to the 2018 synagogue massacre in which 11 congregants were killed.
👗 For Sale: Arielle Charnas’ Something Navy is exploring a potential sale, following the departure of the company’s CEO, the closing of two of its stores and a halt in production of this year’s clothing lines.
⚖️ Vandalism Charges: A member of a white supremacist group was indicted for conspiring with others and defacing the Temple Jacob synagogue in Hancock, Mich.
📽️ Neo-Nazi Hunter: A PBS series spotlights a veteran who fought in Iraq and is now working with other veterans to infiltrate neo-Nazi hate groups and compile evidence to stop them.
✡️ Steeped in History: Plans are moving ahead for the creation of a Jewish heritage center in Norwich, U.K, with organizers citing the city’s “foundational” role in the rise of antisemitism centuries ago.
🇬🇧 Across the Pond: An ally of U.K. Labour leader Keir Starmer said that party members are now seeing Starmer’s “real politics” after appealing to Labour voters as he sought to lead the party in 2020.
🕵️♂️ White House Warning: The National Security Council warned U.S. companies that any acquisition of Israel’s NSO Group could lead to a review of whether the transaction poses a counterintelligence threat to the U.S. government.
✈️ Rivals Unite: Delta and El Al airlines announced a new strategic partnership including reciprocal frequent-flier perks.
🇮🇱🇮🇸 Reykjavik Route: Icelandic air carrier Icelandair has launched direct flights between Tel Aviv and Reykjavik, running three times a week.
🕵️ Aired Interrogation: The Mossad said yesterday that it had arrested an Iranian terrorist who was planning to carry out a terror attack against Israelis in Cyprus, and released a video recording of his confession.
🇨🇦 Canada in Court: Iran is suing Canada at the International Court of Justice, charging that it is breaching the Islamic republic’s state immunity by designating it a sponsor of terrorism.
🕯️ Remembering: Longtime TV critic and satirist Marvin Kitman died at 93.
Pic of the Day
The Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., hosted a Pride celebration last night, with special guests including Eurovision winner Netta Barzilai (second from right) and Adm. Rachel Levine (second from left), the assistant secretary for health.
Birthdays
Applied mathematician, statistician and physicist, professor emeritus at Harvard, Herman Chernoff turns 100 on Saturday…
FRIDAY: Rapid City, S.D., resident, Leedel Chittim Williamson… Palm Beach Gardens podiatrist, Dr. David Peter Bartos… Executive coach to nonprofit leaders, he was the founding director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, David Altshuler… Former New York State assemblyman for 36 years, Dov Hikind turns 73… Former Harvard professor and author of books on the Holocaust and antisemitism, Daniel Goldhagen turns 64… Staff writer at The Atlantic and author of ten books, David Frum turns 63… Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, Stuart Jeff Rabner turns 63… Professor of astrophysics at McGill University, Victoria Michelle Kaspi turns 56… Founding executive director and now a senior advisor at JOIN for Justice, Karla Van Praag… Professor at Penn State University, he is the co-editor of a handbook on 25 different Jewish languages, Aaron David Rubin turns 47…
Columnist, author, poet and screenwriter, Matthew “Matthue” Roth turns 45… Sports business analyst and reporter who works for The Action Network, Darren Rovell turns 45… Reggae and alternative rock musician, known by stage name Matisyahu, Matthew Paul Miller turns 44… Partner in OnMessage Public Strategies, Kyle Justin Plotkin… Actress Elizabeth Anne Caplan turns 41… Senior software engineer at Bloomberg LP, Noam Lustiger… Chief operating officer at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Stephanie Hausner… Head coach of the men’s lacrosse program at Long Island University, Jordan Levine turns 37… Rhythmic gymnast who represented the U.S. at the 2012 Olympic Games, Julie Ashley Zetlin turns 33… English teacher in Tel Aviv, Michal Adar… Area director for the North Shore of Long Island at AIPAC, Abbey Taub…
SATURDAY: Former U.S. assistant secretary of education, Diane Silvers Ravitch turns 85… Nobel laureate in Economics for 1997 and co-creator of the Black-Scholes model for valuing options and other derivatives, Myron Scholes turns 82… Noted British art dealer and founder of an eponymous London art gallery, Victoria Marion Miro turns 78… Born in a DP Camp to her Holocaust survivor parents, she was the first Jewish woman to serve on the Canadian Supreme Court, Rosalie Silberman Abella turns 77… Former U.S. ambassador to Israel and assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, now at the Council on Foreign Relations, Martin Indyk turns 72… Partner in the Century City-based law firm of Greenberg Glusker, Douglas E. Mirell… Hall of Fame player and coach in the Women’s National Basketball Association and now an NBA broadcaster, Nancy Lieberman turns 65… Attorney and longtime Democratic activist in Pittsburgh, Steven Irwin turns 64… CEO of the A-Mark Foundation, Rob Eshman…
President emeritus of the Orthodox Union and a retired partner at Ropes & Gray, Mark Irwin (Moishe) Bane… Under secretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Jane Nuland (family name was Nudelman) turns 62… Journalist, filmmaker and educator, he is the co-founder of Aish[dot]com, Shraga Simmons turns 62… Professor of Jewish thought at Hebrew University, Benjamin Brown turns 57… Member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Marcus Bertram Simon turns 53… U.S. senator (R-IA), Joni Ernst turns 53… Screenwriter, producer and film director, Marc Silverstein turns 52… Los Angeles resident, Adam B. Siegel… NASA astronaut, on her 2019 trip to the International Space Station she took socks with Stars of David and menorahs, Jessica Meir turns 46… Co-founder of Edgeline Films, Elyse Steinberg… Hasidic musician mixing elements of dancehall, reggae, hip hop and R&B, known by his stage name DeScribe, Shneur Hasofer turns 41…
SUNDAY: Director of Hebrew Studies (Emerita) at HUC-JIR, Rivka Dori… Nobel laureate in Medicine in 2004, he is a professor at Columbia University and a molecular biologist, Richard Axel turns 77… Co-creator of the “Seinfeld” television series and creator of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” comedian and producer Larry David turns 76… Swedish author and screenwriter, she wrote a novel about Jewish children who escaped the Holocaust, Annika Thor turns 73… Former CEO of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, she also served as a State Department special envoy on antisemitism, Hannah Rosenthal turns 72… Montclair, N.J.-based philanthropic consultant, Aaron Issar Back, Ph.D…. Israeli Druze politician who served as a member of the Knesset for the Kulanu and Kadima parties, Akram Hasson turns 64… Maryland State Senator since 2015, Cheryl C. Kagan turns 62…
Member of the Knesset for the United Torah Judaism alliance, Ya’akov Asher turns 58… Chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, Peter E. Baker turns 56… Reading specialist at Wayne Thomas School in Highland Park, Illinois, Stephanie Rubin… Co-founder and dean at Mechon Hadar in Manhattan, Shai Held, Ph.D. turns 52… Global industry editor for health and pharma at Thomson Reuters, Michele Gershberg… Motivational speaker, media personality and CEO at The Ayven Group, Charlie Harary turns 46… Author of fiction and non-fiction on a variety of Jewish topics, Elisa Albert turns 45… Israeli journalist, TV anchor and popular lecturer, Sivan Rahav-Meir turns 42… Actress, singer and producer, Ashley Tisdale turns 38… Managing director at JPMorgan, Daniel A. Alter turns 45… Actress and internet personality, Barbara Dunkelman turns 34… Journalist for The Wall Street Journal, now unlawfully detained in a Russian prison, Evan Gershkovich turns 32…
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