⚾ Jacob’s Ladder: The Washington Post’s Zach Buchanan interviews baseball pitcher Jacob Steinmetz, the first practicing Orthodox Jew in Major League Baseball. “Steinmetz was embarking on a career that might be at odds with his religion. Would he be able to keep kosher while making his way through the small towns that populate the minors? Would he be able to properly observe the Sabbath, abstaining from riding in cars and buses and using any kind of electricity? Could professional baseball and Orthodox Judaism coexist? Those questions percolated in the wake of his third-round selection, but a day later came a second call. [Arizona] Diamondbacks assistant general manager Amiel Sawdaye had grown up in a Jewish community, and as the post-draft anxiety began to set in for the young right-hander, Sawdaye rang with a salve. Don’t worry about it, he had said. We’ll make sure you have everything you need.” [WashPost]

🕯️ Remembering Richardson:The Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich remembers Ambassador Bill Richardson following the governor and congressman’s death last week. “That September, all of the 2004 Democratic candidates for president — John Kerry, Howard Dean, John Edwards, etc. — were straining to pay respects to Richardson after a debate in Albuquerque. I was working for the Washington Post Style section at the time, and I found Richardson’s full-frontal ‘love of the game’ quite winning. He was over-the-top and unabashed about the enjoyment he derived from the parade of candidates coming before him. ‘It’s fun to get your ring kissed,’ Richardson told me that night, though he might not have said ring. We were walking into a post-debate reception for another candidate, Senator Joe Lieberman. Like most of the Democratic VIPs in Albuquerque that night, Lieberman was an old friend of Richardson’s; they’d worked together on the 1992 Democratic Party platform committee. ‘I wore this to curry favor with you,’ Lieberman told Richardson, pointing to a New Mexico pin on his jacket. ‘You also saw that I spoke a little Spanish in [the debate].’ ‘I thought that was Yiddish,’ Richardson said. Lieberman then got everyone’s attention and offered a toast to El Jefe.” [TheAtlantic]

👵 Aging Well: The Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Kalin looks at a Saudi-funded push to research life-extension efforts. “The prospect of a huge surge of funding into the area, whose budgets pale in comparison to research on diseases like cancer, is causing a stir among scientists who study aging. ‘People in the field are kind of holding their breath to see how the money is going to be spent,’ says Steven Austad, a researcher on aging at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and senior scientific director at the American Federation for Aging Research, or AFAR, a U.S. nonprofit that has received $7.76 million in funding from Hevolution. The Saudi foundation’s chief executive, Dr. Mehmood Khan, says much of the initial grant money is likely to end up at universities and startups in the U.S., where scientists are trying to develop treatments that slow, prevent or even reverse the aging process for humans.” [WSJ]

🍲 Soul Food: The New Yorker’s Hannah Goldfield reviews Gertrude’s, a new bistro in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights neighborhood serving Jewish-inspired fare. “The result transcends expectations you might have for a neighborhood restaurant while also resisting gimmickry — though not humor. The half chicken is brined, cleverly, in dill-pickle juice before it’s roasted. The excellent hamburger is sandwiched on a tall, shiny braided challah roll, which can also be ordered on its own, with a schmear of duck butter. All entrées, including a beautiful whole trout — stuffed with lemon rounds and showered with chopped green olives and herbs — come with a choice of fries, greens, or latkes. The latkes are available as an appetizer, too, topped with celery crème fraîche and trout roe — as elegant as a dish of thin-sliced coins of beef tongue, both tender and crispy, drizzled in a persillade made with parsley, garlic, capers, anchovies, and Fresno peppers.” [NewYorker]

🕵️‍♂️ The Catcher is A Spy: In Smithsonian Magazine, Zachary Clary spotlights the wartime efforts of former MLB player Moe Berg, who served as a spy in South America and Europe after retiring from the major leagues. “Despite his lackadaisical attendance record and general disregard for orders from his superiors, Berg was an effective agent. Kean says he ‘did a good job gathering technical information’ from European scientists, including Antonio Ferri, Lise Meitner, Paul Scherrer and Edoardo Amaldi. Berg, in essence, weaponized both the disarming demeanor he’d perfected by telling stories in the bullpen and the assorted knowledge he’d acquired from years of incessant curiosity to cut through the defenses of his targets. During a period of intense intellectual isolation — Amaldi was the only University of Rome physicist not to leave fascist Italy during the war, and the Jewish Meitner fled Germany for Sweden in 1938 — Berg was an individual who could listen to these scientists and, for the most part, understand them.” [Smithsonian]

🗳️ Biden Ad Blitz: President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign will air an ad in battleground states on Thursday to coincide with the NFL’s season opener, part of a $25 million blitz touting the president’s economic record.

🇸🇦 Saudi Sights: White House senior advisor Brett McGurk is in Saudi Arabia this week for meetings with top Palestinian officials to discuss a potential Palestinian component to a normalization agreement between Jerusalem and Riyadh. 

✈️ CBC + Bibi: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who are also traveling to Rwanda as part of an AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation trip.

✖️ Musky Moves: Elon Musk, the chairman of X, formerly known as Twitter, threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, blaming the group for lost revenue, days after ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt met with Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino and said the two had a “very frank + productive conversation” about antisemitism on the platform.

💸 Sculpting a Sale: Daniel Och is battling with the board of Sculptor Capital Management over a potential sale to Rithm Capital in a deal that Ochs had slammed for its undervaluing of Sculptor.

🇺🇦 A Rabbi’s Mission: The Washington Post interviewed Kyiv-based Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman, who has conducted humanitarian missions to the hardest-hit parts of Ukraine since Russia invaded the country last year.

🔨 Auction Angst: Auction house Christie’s canceled the planned second sale of jewelry that had belonged to an Austrian heiress whose husband had profited from the looting of Jewish businesses ahead of WWII, citing “intense scrutiny” by Jewish groups and opponents of the sale.

🇩🇪 Nazi Detained: Germany arrested a 98-year-old man who worked as a guard at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, charging him with aiding and abetting the murders of thousands of people.

🤨 Dayan Drama: U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt and State Department ​​Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues Ellen Germain denounced an alleged attempt by Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch to remove Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan, citing the importance of the museum’s independence. 

🇯🇴 Envoy to Amman: U.S. Ambassador to Jordan Yael Lempert presented her credentials to King Abdullah II. 

👮 Detained in Larnaca: Israeli diamond king Beny Steinmetz was arrested at an airport in Larnaca, Cyprus, on a Romanian warrant; Steinmetz was convicted in absentia of real estate fraud and sentenced to a five-year prison term by a Romanian court in 2020.

🇮🇱 Migrant Matters: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for all unauthorized migrants living in the country to be deported following a violent confrontation between pro- and anti-Eritrean regime demonstrators that saw dozens of people injured over the weekend.

🇧🇭 Cohen in Manama: Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, who made his first visit to Bahrain since the signing of the Abraham Accords, was on site for the opening of Israel’s embassy in Manama.

⚠️ Joint Warning: Officials from the U.S., U.K. and E.U. plan to jointly warn the UAE against trade with Russia that could potentially aid Moscow in its ongoing war in Ukraine.

🛬 Presidential Visit: Israeli President Isaac Herzog met his Slovakian counterpart in a state ceremony at the Grassalkovich Palace in Bratislava yesterday. Herzog also visited the grave of Rabbi Moses Schreiber, known as Chatam Sofer, and met with representatives of the Jewish community, before traveling to Austria.  

🔌 Power Plan: Israel’s Finance Ministry will deduct funds collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority to pay the Israel Electric Company to supply the PA with electricity, resolving a decades-long challenge.

🇪🇺 Held in Iran: An E.U. diplomat from Sweden has reportedly been held in Iran’s Evin prison for nearly a year and a half after traveling to the country as a tourist last spring; months after his detainment, Iran said it was holding a Swedish national on charges of espionage.

😡 Blame Game: Iran accused Israel of sabotaging its ballistic missiles program by supplying faulty parts through foreign intermediaries.

🕵️‍♂️ Rushdie Probe: A Western New York district attorney’s office said the federal government is looking into the possibility of international involvement in the attempted assassination last year of writer Salman Rushdie.

🇰🇷 Unfrozen Funds: South Korea is working to transfer the roughly $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds to Tehran, following an agreement with Washington that included the unfreezing of the Iranian assets.

🕍 Doors Open: Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly inaugurated Cairo’s Ben Ezra synagogue, believed to be one of the world’s oldest synagogues, after more than a decade of renovations.

➡️ Transition: Former Los Angeles Magazine Editor-in-Chief Maer Roshan is joining The Hollywood Reporter as co-editor-in-chief alongside Nekesa Mumbi Moody.

🕯️ Remembering: Edith Grossman, who translated Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote died at 87. Tangent Agency CEO Marc Becker died at 37. Attorney David Rowland, who worked to repatriate hundreds of pieces of art looted by the Nazis, died at 67. AI researcher Douglas Lenat died at 72. Emmy Award-winning documentarian ​​Nancy Buirski died at 78. TV and stage costume and set designer Franne Lee, who worked on “Saturday Night Live,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Candide,” died at 81.

Singer Ishay Ribo became the first Israeli artist to ever perform at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday.

COO of The New York Public Library, she has been married to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) since 1980, Iris Weinshall turns 70… 

Member of Knesset for 25 years and a law professor at Reichman University in Herzliya, Amnon Rubinstein turns 92… Author, educator, and activist, Jonathan Kozol turns 87… Front-end web developer, Catherine Nelson… Rabbi emeritus of Congregation Rinat Yisrael in Teaneck, N.J., and Rosh Yeshiva of the Torah Academy of Bergen County, Rabbi Yosef Adler turns 72… Judge of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, JoAnne Fishman Kloppenburg turns 70… Principal at Watershed Associates, Stuart Shlossman… Heidi Beth Massey… New York-based real estate developer, Jacob Frydman turns 66… Chief judge, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, for the Southern District of Florida, Laurel Myerson Isicoff turns 66… Russian investigative journalist, Yevgenia Albats turns 65… Member of the Knesset until five weeks ago, she is the first woman in the IDF promoted to major general (the IDF’s second highest rank), Orna Barbivai turns 61… Canadian lawyer and investor, he is a past chairman of Cirque du Soleil, Mitch Garber turns 59… Nationally syndicated newspaper columnist and a senior editor at Reason magazine, Jacob Z. Sullum turns 58… Entrepreneur and investor, he is the chairman of education technology platform Mentored, Eric Aroesty… Supreme Court and USDOJ editor for USA Today, Holly Rosenkrantz… Academy Award-winning filmmaker, Ari Devon Sandel turns 49… Member of the Knesset for the Yisrael Beiteinu party, Yulia Malinovsky turns 48… Staffing analyst at Apex Global Solutions, Jeremy C. Frankel… Voice actor for English versions of anime, animation and video games, Maxwell Braden Mittelman turns 33… Director in the D.C. office of Baron Public Affairs LLC, Jeremy Furchtgott… Anthony (Tony) Klor… Shoshanna Liebman… National director of Israel Policy Forum’s Atid young professionals network, Shanie Reichman…