• As Australia’s Jewish community mourns those killed in yesterday’s terror attack at a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, we are continuing to monitor the situation. More below.
• U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack is in Israel today, where he is meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
• Tonight, Vice President JD Vance is holding the vice president’s annual Hanukkah party at the Naval Observatory.
• Elsewhere in Washington, the Jewish Federations of North America is holding its Hanukkah celebration with Capitol Hill staff, while Young Jewish Conservatives is holding its “Liberty & Latkes” party, honoring the Heritage Foundation’s Daniel Flesch.
• In New York, outgoing Mayor Eric Adams is hosting a Hanukkah party.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MELISSA WEISS

For the Jews of Sydney, Australia, the horror that unfolded on the popular Bondi Beach during a Hanukkah celebration was a shock, but not a surprise.

Nor was it a surprise for much of the global Jewish community, which, while always on alert and monitoring threats, scales up its efforts around holidays — a task even more critical in the wake of antisemitic terror attacks earlier this year on Passover and Yom Kippur. 

But the deadly attack in Sydney seemed — somehow — to have caught Australian officials by surprise, despite a warning from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu four months ago over the potential for attacks against the Australian Jewish community, as well as a spate of attacks targeting Jewish institutions, some of which were orchestrated by Iran.

An Israeli tourist who was at Bondi during the attack who spoke to JI on Sunday said that he sensed “that [Australian authorities] don’t know how to deal with mass casualty events. … I didn’t see anything on the news for almost an hour, and when I asked locals why they weren’t calling news hotlines or reporting on news apps, they said Australia doesn’t have that. In Israel, it would be in the news three minutes later.” 

Indeed, within an hour of the onset of the attack, Israeli news networks were covering the carnage. International news outlets and networks, as well as Australian media, were slow to note that the attack had taken place at a Hanukkah celebration. Three hours after the attack, the Sydney Morning Herald’s top story was headlined “Ten Dead in Bondi Beach Shooting.” The subhead, too — “Multiple dead, two police officers among injured after shots fired at Bondi Beach” — gave no indication that the attack had taken place at a Hanukkah celebration, and that rabbis and Jewish community members had been shot.

It was a year ago this week that JI reported on concerns from Australian Jewish leaders over Canberra’s response to the antisemitism that dramatically increased following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks and ensuing war between Israel and Hamas.

A travel advisory issued by the Simon Wiesenthal Center more than a year ago specifically cited the Australian government’s response, saying that “in failing to act against the demonization of Jews, Israel and Zionism on the streets of Australian cities, the Australian government has allowed violence against Jews and Israelis to be normalized.” 

“Moreover,” the advisory continued in an ominous and prescient warning, “authorities have failed to take necessary measures to protect Jewish communities from increasingly belligerent and violent targeting by Islamists and other extremists.”

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

Blood on the Beach: In The Wall Street Journal, law professor Peter Kurti, the director of the Culture, Prosperity and Civil Society program at the Australia’s Center for Independent Studies, looks at how Canberra’s response to antisemitism in recent years affected the Australian government’s ability to prevent terror attacks on the country’s Jewish community. “Australia faces a choice familiar to other liberal democracies: whether to confront antisemitism clearly and decisively or to continue managing it as an embarrassment to be explained away. Too often, political leaders have preferred ritual condemnation over moral clarity and bureaucratic language over responsibility. In the U.S., that choice has already forced a reckoning — from congressional hearings on campus antisemitism to the adoption of a national strategy to counter it. Australia’s hesitation stands in contrast, not because the threat is smaller, but because our political class has been slower to accept that antisemitism is a stress test for democratic institutions.” [WSJ]

From Rhetoric to Violence: The Atlantic’s David Frum considers how anti-Israel rhetoric can morph into antisemitic violence. “Yet there has remained, until now, terrible reluctance by Western governments to accept the appearance on their soil of deadly threats to their Jewish citizens from people motivated by anti-Israel ideology. Those movements have progressively tested what used to be red lines: blocking access to synagogues, for example, as happened in recent weeks in Los Angeles and New York City. … People who dress up like Hamas terrorists and brandish their insignia and chant their slogans are not merely opining. They are propagating, recruiting, and inciting the actions they believe in. Among Western liberals is a strong impulse to show respect to people from other cultures — or who hold other beliefs — by interpreting their words and actions in the most benign way. But sometimes the way to show the deepest respect is by taking people seriously, believing their words as they are spoken, heeding their own accounts of their intentions.” [TheAtlantic]

Flicker of Light: In The Free Press, Rachel Goldberg-Polin reflects on the recently released video of her son, Hersh, and five other Israeli hostages commemorating Hanukkah while captive in Gaza nine months before they were killed by Hamas terrorists. “Seeing these young, vibrant, and luminous Jews keeping alive their over-2,000-year-old tradition of lighting Hanukkah candles, even when in the bowels of hell on earth, you cannot help but feel something. I won’t suggest what you should feel. … In these dark times, it is a flicker of light. The flame is whispering something. If you are quiet and you lean forward, you will hear it. Did you grasp it? The Beautiful Six did. It is hope. Hope! It’s not a suggestion, or advice. It is a command. Hanukkah teaches us there is light. Even in the darkest of times and the most upside-down of places. The camera sweeps by Hersh and he says, ‘Wishing you a Hanukkah of peace.’ From hell, without a hand, he wished us peace.” [FreePress]

Ben Black was ceremonially sworn in by President Donald Trump to be the CEO of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation…

The Washington Post spotlights Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker — and his vast war chest, owing to a personal fortune nearing $4 billion — as the Democrat mulls a 2028 presidential bid…

Former Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi met former President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the Philadelphia Eagles’ Sunday game against the Las Vegas Raiders…

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin had a basal cell carcinoma removed from his face…

Two U.S. servicemembers and an interpreter were killed in an attack in Palmyra, Syria, by a Syrian member of the country’s security forces who was set to be fired over his extremist views…

Harvard removed the head of its public health school, which had increasingly come under fire over what the school’s antisemitism task force described as programming and curricula that focused “heavily on Palestinians” and “also rarely presented Israeli points of view except those of the state’s harshest critics”…

Conservative lawyer José Antonio Kast won Chile’s presidential election in a landslide on Sunday over Communist leader Jeannette Jara…

Israel’s Cabinet approved the construction of 19 West Bank settlements, including two that had been evacuated during the 2005 disengagement…

Israel killed senior Hamas commander Raed Saad in a targeted drone strike on Saturday; Saad had been involved in preparations for the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks…

U.S. forces last month raided a ship bound for Iran from China that was carrying military-related materials; the cargo was seized from the vessel and allowed to continue on…

Iran seized a tanker transiting through the Gulf of Oman that was carrying 6 million liters of what Iranian state media described as “smuggled diesel”…

The family of Narges Mohammadi said the Nobel peace laureate was arrested by Iranian authorities while giving a speech at a memorial service in the Iranian city of Mashhad…

Rob Reiner died at 78; the actor and director was killed at his Los Angeles home, along with his wife; LAPD is investigating the deaths as homicides…

Israeli President Isaac Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog lit the first Hanukkah candle with the family of Staff Sgt. Ran Gvili, the last hostage still held in Gaza, at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem last night. Gvili was injured in battle and taken hostage during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks on Israel and later died in captivity.

Washington, D.C.-based chef and restaurateur, Spike Mendelsohn turns 45… 

Former member of the New York State Assembly, attorney general of New York and member of the New York City Council, Oliver Koppell turns 85… Senior rabbi emeritus at Congregation Mt. Sinai in Brooklyn Heights and EVP of the New York Board of Rabbis, Rabbi Joseph Potasnik turns 79… Film, stage and television actress and voice artist, Melanie Chartoff turns 75… Owner of the largest construction company for gas pipelines in Russia, Arkady Rotenberg turns 74… University of Wyoming professor for over 20 years, now president of the Colorado Hebrew Chorale, Seth Ward turns 73… President and CEO at Jewish Family & Children’s Services of the Suncoast in Sarasota, Fla., Dr. Helene Lotman… Founder and former chairman of BizBash, David Adler turns 72… Sportscaster, he was the radio voice for the Alabama Crimson Tide football team for 36 years, Eli Gold turns 72… U.S. senator (D-VA), Mark Warner turns 71… Executive chairman of South Africa’s Resolve Communications, Tony Leon turns 69… Executive director at Silicon Couloir in Jackson Hole, Wyo., until 2024, Gary S. Trauner turns 67… Partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz specializing in M&A, Adam O. Emmerich turns 65… Actress, singer and songwriter, she appeared in the title role of the 1984 film “Supergirl,” Helen Slater turns 62… Television and movie producer, screenwriter and executive, producer of the first eight seasons of the “Pokémon” TV series and writer of most of the “Pokémon” films, Norman J. Grossfeld turns 62… Rabbi serving communities in California’s Central Valley including as a prison chaplain, Paul Gordon… Chicago-born stand-up comedian and author, Joel Chasnoff turns 52… Director of community relations and Israel affairs at the Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte, Tal Selinger Stein… Actor, writer and musician, he is known for his role as Seth Cohen on “The O.C.,” Adam Brody turns 46… Former mayor of Bal Harbour, Fla., he is an attorney and public speaker, Gabriel Groisman turns 45… Israeli singer-songwriter and actress, she played the role of Hila Bashan on Season 3 of “Fauda,” Marina Maximilian Blumin turns 38… Client solutions manager at Samsung Ads, Julie Winkelman Lazar… Musician and actress, her first major film, “Licorice Pizza,” was released in 2021, Alana Mychal Haim turns 34… Associate partner at Activate Consulting, Lily Silva… and her twin brother, a special policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security until earlier this year, Nicholas Silva… Figure skater who represented the U.S. at the 2014 and 2022 Winter Olympics, Jason Brown turns 31…

• The White House is holding a briefing for Jewish community leaders this afternoon.
• The House Education and the Workforce Committee is holding a hearing today with Education Secretary Linda McMahon on the department’s policies and priorities.
• Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) is speaking at the Hudson Institute this afternoon about the future of American foreign policy in the Middle East.
• The Congressional Israel Allies Foundation is hosting a belated Jerusalem Day celebration today on Capitol Hill. MK Gila Gamliel, Israel’s minister of innovation, science and technology, will address the gathering.
• In New York City, WNBC, Politico and Telemundo are hosting a mayoral primary debate at 7 p.m. tonight for nine of the candidates vying for the Democratic nomination later this month.
• Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar is traveling to Germany today, where he’ll meet with his German counterpart, Johann Wadephul, and other senior officials, as well as Jewish communal leaders, in Berlin.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’s mELISSA WEISS

The holiday of Shavuot is one of prayer and celebration, marked by all-night learning, indulging in cheesecake and communal events.

But across the U.S., this Shavuot was marked with a fear and unease that has become abnormally normal in recent months, following the Passover arson at the home of Gov. Josh Shapiro and the murders of two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum last month, and deepened further by the horrific attack in Boulder, Colo., on Sunday in which an Egyptian national threw homemade Molotov cocktails at marchers calling for the release of the remaining 58 hostages being held in Gaza. Twelve people, including a Holocaust survivor, were injured.

The reverberations from the attack are already being felt in Washington, where legislators are reviving a bill to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. More below.

Two days before the attack, we reported on the Trump administration’s full FY 2026 budget request for Congress — which did not recommend an increase in funding to the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, instead holding it at its current level of $274.5 million. Fewer than half of the requests — which are submitted by organizations at elevated risk of being targeted in a terrorist attack — were fulfilled in 2024. 

The attack in Boulder is likely to garner additional calls from the Jewish community for increased funding for the program. In the wake of last month’s deadly attack at the Capital Jewish Museum, a coalition of leading Jewish groups called for the federal government to increase NSGP spending to $1 billion. “The rising level of anti-Jewish incitement, which inevitably leads to violent acts … requires governmental action commensurate with the level of danger,” the organizations said.

In the wake of Sunday’s attack, many legislators condemned the attacks, most denouncing the antisemitic nature of the firebombing. But three Squad members — Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Summer Lee (D-PA) — condemned the attacks without mentioning Israel or antisemitism. President Donald Trump, in his response, did not mention Israel or antisemitism either, choosing instead to rail against former President Joe “Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy, which has hurt our Country so badly.”

The identities of the victims of the attack and the perpetrators’ declared motivations are political inconveniences to legislators and activists on both sides of the political spectrum — and their decision to erase both perhaps reverberates the loudest.

Other lawmakers focused their comments on the shooter’s immigration status. Mohamed Sabry Soliman had come to the U.S. in 2022 and received a work visa, which expired earlier this year. That the attack was perpetrated by an individual who had been approved for a visa by the Biden administration and remained illegally under the Trump administration is expected to produce more calls for stricter immigration policies. Last night, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that Soliman’s wife and five children had been apprehended by immigration officials and faced potential deportation.

But while politicians debate the best approaches — from designating terror groups to calling for immigration crackdowns — Jewish communities remain on edge, feeling unsafe and unheard. 

Perhaps nothing underscores Jewish communal concerns at this moment better than an op-ed published in The New York Times on Tuesday by National Council for Jewish Women CEO Sheila Katz. 

“When antisemitism emerges within progressive spaces, cloaked in the language of justice, too often it is met with silence and discomfort, creating echo chambers where dangerous ideas are amplified rather than confronted,” Katz wrote. In response to sounding the alarm about antisemitism in left-wing circles, she said, “we have been gaslit, ignored and told that our fear is overblown, our outrage unjustified. Among many groups that have fought to secure and reclaim civil rights, voting rights and reproductive rights, we have seen antisemitism dismissed as not bad enough to matter, our grief met with cynicism, our safety treated as optional.”

Some Americans waking up to their morning news on Tuesday saw “Jews Are Afraid Right Now” as the Times headline accompanying Katz’s piece. But for the first several hours it was posted, the op-ed had a different headline: “American Jews Are Paying for the War in Gaza” — an approach to both the Israel-Hamas war and antisemitism in America that plays into the dual-loyalty tropes that American Jews have fought long before the Oct. 7 attacks.

The Times quietly changed the op-ed’s headline to the milquetoast “Jews Are Afraid Right Now” — which, while correct, missed Katz’s core point: “At rallies and on campuses, in coalition rooms and online spaces, slogans sometimes directly drawn from Hamas’s terrorist manifesto have been chanted and painted on placards, and shouted from stages and in the streets. ‘Globalize the intifada.’ ‘By any means necessary.’ ‘From the river to the sea.’ ‘Zionists out.’ These are not simply words; they can be interpreted as calls for violence.”

The Boulder attacker told investigators he wanted “to kill all Zionist people” — not dissimilar from comments made by the Capital Jewish Museum shooter, who declared, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,” after gunning down Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. The arsonist who set the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion on fire said he committed the crime because of what Shapiro, one of the most prominent Jewish politicians in the country, “wants to do to the Palestinian people.”

From academia to activism to journalism, there is a reticence in left-wing circles to acknowledge that inciting language around the Israel-Hamas war can have a dangerous impact. 

A year and a half ago, Ivy League administrators were pressed on whether “From the river to the sea” was a genocidal chant. The response, given by the since-ousted presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, was that “it depends on the context.”

In this case, the context is the firebombing of elderly Jews calling for the release of hostages in Gaza. Last month, the context was the gunning down of a young couple outside a Jewish organization’s event focused on humanitarian aid in Gaza. In April, the context was the arson of the residence of a Jewish governor on the first night of Passover.

The recent attacks in Harrisburg, Washington and now Boulder are not surprising. They are what happens when ideology-driven activism trumps ethical journalism, when antisemitism becomes a political football and when the boundaries between free speech and calls for violence blur — creating a dangerous and deadly reality for American Jews.

Lighting the Fuse: In The Atlantic, Bruce Hoffman considers the impact that anti-Israel rhetoric plays in stoking antisemitic sentiment. “Words matter. The protester at Columbia University in 2024 holding a sign labeling Jewish demonstrators who were waving Israeli flags as ‘Al-Qasam’s next targets’ was dismissed as being hyperbolic. So were the ‘By Any Means Necessary’ banners carried at demonstrations and the red inverted triangles, similar to those Hamas uses to mark Israeli targets, spray-painted on university buildings, a national monument, and even the apartment building of a museum director. When demonstrators wave the flags of terrorist organizations, wear headbands celebrating those same groups, and publicly commemorate the martyrdom of terrorist leaders such as Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, they’re not throwing the bomb, but their message can light the fuse.” [TheAtlantic]

The Battle Over Food Aid: In The Free Press, Eli Lake looks at how the misreporting about aid distribution in Gaza is being pushed by Hamas and its affiliates in the enclave. “In other words, Hamas wants to sabotage Israel’s plans to cut out the terrorist group from one of its remaining sources of control and leverage in Gaza: distribution of food and aid. That is an important piece of context missing from nearly all of the first-day stories on the alleged massacres. It also may explain why on Tuesday morning, the world awoke to more reports of Palestinians being shot as they awaited food deliveries. At a bare minimum it’s reasonable to conclude that Hamas is instigating confrontations with the IDF in order to provoke the shootings of hungry aid recipients. This, however, does not eliminate the possibility that Israeli soldiers have in some cases fired in the direction of Palestinians awaiting aid. Israel is attempting to deliver food in the middle of a war zone. Even the most professional armies make mistakes. If the accounts of these shootings are accurate, then the Israelis have fired warning shots as crowds approached a site before the aid distribution was ready. That’s a tragedy, but not a massacre.” [FreePress]

Credit Risk:The Wall Street Journal’s David Cloud reports on efforts by Iranian-backed militias to exploit a currency-exchange scheme that allowed the groups to bring in billions of dollars. “Regulators in Iraq and U.A.E. limited daily withdrawals and cracked down on the card smuggling. In one case, more than two dozen Iraqis carrying a total of around 1,200 cash cards loaded with more than $5 million were arrested at Iraqi airports and border crossings. An Iraqi traveler was arrested at the airport in the city of Najaf with 300 bank cards hidden in cigarette packs in his luggage. In another, multiple Iranians and Iraqis were caught by border guards while attempting to smuggle Mastercards to Iran. The militias adjusted, and began persuading merchants in the other countries with access to Visa and Mastercard networks to run fake purchase transactions in return for a kickback. In an example described by bankers familiar with the scheme, a luxury-goods store in the U.A.E. charges a Visa or Mastercard cash or debit card $5,000, even though no merchandise changes hands. In return for a 5% payment, the shop gives the cardholder the $5,000 in cash or the equivalent in U.A.E.’s currency, the dirham, which is pegged to the dollar. The card company debits the card at the official Iraqi dollar rate. The funds then move back to Iraq for the market exchange.” [WSJ]

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday rejected a nuclear deal with the “rude, insolent” U.S. that would require the Islamic Republic to stop enriching uranium, one of President Donald Trump’s core requirements for any nuclear agreement, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports; the Trump administration had reportedly been negotiating an interim deal that would allow Iran to enrich uranium to 3% until a final agreement is reached in which the Islamic Republic can no longer enrich its own uranium…

Trump withdrew the nomination of Jason Isaacman to be the head of NASA, with a White House spokesperson saying that it is “essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda”…

Rev. Johnnie Moore was named the new head of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation following Jake Woods’ departure last month; Moore’s appointment came a day after the Boston Consulting Group, which had been advising the effort, withdrew its team from the project…

The GHF paused operations on Wednesday with plans to resume on Thursday, following a string of security incidents in the vicinity of distribution sites in which Israeli forces fired at Palestinians who had mistakenly strayed from pre-approved routes to the sites; the GHF reportedly asked the IDF to improve instructions and directions for Palestinians to safely access the aid sites…

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) introduced a resolution honoring the 129th anniversary of the Jewish War Veterans organization…

Reps. Dan Goldman (D-NY), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) introduced a resolution honoring the 100th anniversary of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research…

A group of four House Democrats introduced legislation on Wednesday that aims to exempt Israel and Ukraine from the global tariffs that Trump imposed by executive order, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…

The State Department is launching a pilot program to vet student visa applicants’ social media profiles in an effort to crack down on the matriculation into American universities of foreign students with antisemitic beliefs; the pilot program is focused on individuals “seeking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose”…

In Foreign Policy, Aaron David Miller assesses the state of relations between the Trump administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu…

The House Education and Workforce Committee threatened on Monday to subpoena Bowdoin College, accusing the school of failing to comply with the committee’s requests for information regarding antisemitism on campus, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…

In a recent appearance on the “Unholy Podcast,” former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan praised Trump for his strategy of engagement with Iran on their nuclear weapons program and predicted that the Trump administration would reach a deal that “is going to look and feel pretty similar to the” 2015 nuclear deal reached by former President Barack Obama, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports…

In a newly surfaced clip of New York Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani from 2021, the legislator, who is currently mounting a bid for New York City mayor, acknowledged that he identifies as an anti-Zionist, saying, “In the anti-Zionist movement that I believe in and belong to, there is no room for antisemitism”… 

CBS News interviews the family of Sarah Milgrim, one of two Israeli Embassy employees killed in a terror attack outside the Capital Jewish Museum last month…

The French National Assembly unanimously voted to promote Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general more than a century after the Jewish army officer was stripped of his rank in an incident widely attributed to antisemitism…

Several Jewish institutions in Paris, as well as the city’s Holocaust memorial, were vandalized over the weekend…

U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who is also serving as the Trump administration’s Syria envoy, said that the U.S. would eliminate seven of its eight bases in Syria as part of a broader drawdown of troops from the country…

Israel conducted a series of airstrikes on weapons targets in southern Syria following the launch of projectiles from the area into Israel on Tuesday evening…

Betsy Berns Korn assumed the role of chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations over the weekend, succeeding Harriet P. Schleifer…

Macroeconomist Stanley Fischer, who served as governor of the Bank of Israel and vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, died at 81…

South African author Lynn Freed, whose writings focused on her childhood in a Jewish community in apartheid South Africa, died at 79…

Israeli President Isaac Herzog met on Tuesday with released hostage Omer Wenkert and his parents, Niva and Shai, at the president’s residence in Jerusalem.

Israeli supermodel, Bar Refaeli turns 40… 

Co-founder of Boston Properties and owner of U.S. News & World Report, Mort Zuckerman turns 88… Professor emeritus of organic chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science and winner of the 2012 Israel Prize, David Milstein turns 78… Retired chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, Stephen J. Markman turns 76… Judge on the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia since 2018, he was the longest tenured member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (42 years from 1974 to 2016), Mark B. Cohen turns 76… Lineman for the Miami Dolphins for 11 seasons, which included three Super Bowl appearances and four Pro Bowls, then a judge on the 11th Judicial Circuit of Florida (Miami-Dade County), Ed Newman turns 74… British journalist, author of 11 books and columnist for The Times of London, The Jerusalem Post and The Jewish Chronicle, Melanie Phillips turns 74… First-ever Jewish governor of Hawaii and then chief operating officer of Illinois, she serves on the board of directors of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Linda Lingle turns 72… President and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC until 2023, now a professor at Johns Hopkins, Daniel H. Weiss turns 68… Co-founder of Ripco Real Estate, Todd Cooper… Chair in Human Cancer Genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. Matthew Langer Meyerson turns 62… Law professor at both the University of Toronto and University of California, Berkeley, Ayelet Shachar turns 59… U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) turns 54… French-Israeli entrepreneur, angel investor in over 360 startups, Jeremie Berrebi turns 47… D.C.-based photographer and founder of Revamped Media, Daniel Swartz… Reporter for The Washington Post, Colby Itkowitz… Senior planning analyst at Con Edison in NYC, Adam E. Soclof… Director at Dentons Global Advisors, Jason Hillel Attermann… Managing editor at eJewishPhilanthropy, Judah Ari Gross… Gena Wolfson… Political coordinating producer for NBC, Emily Gold… Former member of the New York State Assembly, now VP of government relations at UJA-Federation of New York, Daniel Rosenthal turns 34… Ken Moss…