The former House speaker, who announced she is not seeking reelection, received plaudits for her support of the Jewish state, even as her positions changed during the Gaza war
ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images
US Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, attends a press conference with US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York on the steps of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on October 15, 2025.
Add JewishInsider on GoogleRep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced on Thursday that she would not seek reelection, ending a nearly 40-year career in Congress and earning plaudits across a wide spectrum of Jewish voices, from J Street to AIPAC and many in the San Francisco Jewish community who have worked with her since the 1980s.
Pelosi, who is 85, rose to become the first and only female speaker of the House, a position she held from 2007-2011 and again from 2019-2023, when she presided over a divided caucus and a resurgent far-left flank of the party. Pelosi was known for keeping tight control over congressional Democrats and squashing intra-party squabbles.
“In my view, she was able to keep a pro-Israel consensus in the caucus, but it certainly came at a time when there was more angst around the issue,” said Tyler Gregory, CEO of the Bay Area Jewish Community Relations Council. “While we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye with her on specific policies, she’s always been pro-Israel, and I don’t think anyone can question that.”
Pelosi spoke several times at AIPAC’s annual policy conference. One year, she invoked her father, a former Baltimore mayor and Democratic member of Congress from Maryland, who she said “had a love for the idea of a Jewish state in what was then called ‘Palestine.’”
“Her love and close connection to the Jewish community started in Baltimore, with her father, the mayor,” said Amy Friedkin, a former AIPAC president and a close friend of Pelosi’s. “She used to say that the founding of the State of Israel was the most profound achievement of the 20th century.”
Marshall Wittmann, an AIPAC spokesperson, said that during her tenure as speaker, Pelosi “helped ensure that Israel had the resources to defend itself, which advances American interests and values.”
She sometimes diverged from pro-Israel advocates, particularly in 2015, when she championed the Iran nuclear deal as the leader of the Democratic caucus in the House.
“Nancy Pelosi was an early and steadfast supporter of J Street and a champion of diplomacy,” J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami said in a statement. “She played a pivotal role in securing congressional support for the Iran nuclear deal and consistently advanced pro-Israel, pro-peace policies aimed at strengthening Israel’s security and promoting safety, dignity and self-determination for the Palestinian people.”
Like many Democrats, Pelosi began to take a more critical stance towards Israel during its two-year war in Gaza following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks.
In April 2024, she signed onto a congressional letter urging the Biden administration to withhold some weapons transfers to Israel after the killing of World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza, a public condemnation of Israel that went further than previous actions by the former speaker.
“There are actions and statements that she made that I would disagree with, but when it came down to what was most important, which is Israel’s ability to be a Jewish, democratic state and live in peace and security — never a moment of wavering. Not even the thought process of wavering,” said Sam Lauter, a former longtime AIPAC activist and co-founder of Democratic Majority for Israel. Growing up in San Francisco, Pelosi’s family lived across the street from Lauter’s childhood home.
“Nancy Pelosi wasn’t just a friend of our community. She was part of our community,” said Lauter. “No one had to teach her about Zionism. She grew up believing in it.”
To mark the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, the Jewish Insider team asked leading thinkers and practitioners to reflect on how that day has changed the world. Here, we look at how Oct. 7 changed the U.S.-Israel relationship
two flags: American and Israeli waving in the blue sky
The Democratic House minority leader is also endorsed by AIPAC
(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) speaks during the March for Israel on the National Mall November 14, 2023 in Washington, DC.
The progressive Israel advocacy group J Street endorsed House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on Friday, marking the first time the top Democratic congressional leader accepted an endorsement from the group.
With Jeffries endorsed by J Street, the group has now thrown its support behind the entire House Democratic leadership team: Jeffries, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-CA).
Jeffries, Clark and Aguilar have all also been endorsed by AIPAC, and they have each traveled to Israel on AIPAC-affiliated trips.
“J Street is proud to endorse the House Democratic leadership team at such a critical moment in the US-Israel relationship,” J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami said in a statement Friday. “After 23 months of war, it is important to endorse Democratic leaders who understand the time has come for a just and lasting peace that brings the remaining hostages home and immediately and permanently surges aid to the people of Gaza.”
In recent months, J Street has taken an increasingly critical line toward Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza. The organization has supported measures to withhold or condition American military aid to Israel, a position AIPAC vehemently opposes. Ben-Ami said last month that he has been convinced Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to a genocide.
“Hakeem Jeffries is a pro-Israel leader and a champion for strengthening and expanding America’s partnership with our democratic ally, none of which J Street supports,” AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann told Jewish Insider on Friday.
A spokesperson for Jeffries did not respond to a request for comment.
Slotkin, in an appearance on an anti-Israel podcast: ‘I was the first Jew elected to the Senate that was not endorsed by any Jewish group — AIPAC, J Street’
Paul Sancya/Pool/Getty Images
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) rehearses the Democratic response to President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) indicated in an interview on the “Breaking Points” podcast on Tuesday that she’s open to considering cutting off offensive weapons sales to Israel — comments that came a day before the Senate is set to vote on blocking two arms sales to Israel — as well as distanced herself from “Jewish group[s]” like AIPAC and J Street.
At the same time, while offering criticisms of Israel and its operations in Gaza, Slotkin refused to embrace and pushed back on some of the more heated anti-Israel rhetoric offered by the podcast’s hosts. The podcast, which brings together a progressive and a libertarian host, generally takes an isolationist view toward U.S. foreign policy and is opposed to the close U.S.-Israel relationship.
Asked about cutting off offensive aid, Slokin said, “That certainly, to me, would be a place to look, but I’m not going to cut off a blanket next sale on a defensive weapon that comes through, no.”
One of the hosts, the progressive Krystal Ball, pressed Slotkin over the distinction between offensive and defensive systems, arguing that the U.S. does not provide defensive weapons systems to Russia or Iran — malign global actors and longstanding adversaries.
Slotkin responded by noting her support for the U.S.-Israel relationship in the long term, and argued allies should be treated differently than adversaries even in times of disagreement between the two countries.
“Sometimes we have big breaks with allies, right? Sometimes we have difficult moments with allies. Sometimes it goes the wrong way with allies. But an allied relationship is a long-term relationship,” Slotkin told the duo.
“I think about this from the mirror image way because I do not support the things that Donald Trump is doing, right? But I’m an American. So, do I want other countries to look at America and be like, ‘We can’t stand Donald Trump so we’re going to end the long-standing relationship we have with the American people. We’re going to cut off any support we give them on information sharing or intelligence sharing,’” she continued.
Slotkin also distanced herself from “Jewish group[s],” mentioning that she’d declined to seek endorsements from AIPAC and J Street specifically.
Asked if AIPAC should be forced to register as a foreign lobbying organization, Slotkin said she did not have an answer beyond that she knew “plenty of people who think they should” but would “have to look at the definition.”
Accusations from both political fringes that AIPAC — whose members are American citizens — constitutes a foreign influence operation, have often invoked antisemitic dual loyalty tropes.
After being accused of providing a “cop-out answer,” Slotkin replied by saying that she had stopped accepting money from the group over disagreements about policy and overall strategy in 2021, after having support from AIPAC members when she first ran for Congress in 2018. The group did not officially endorse or fundraise for candidates until the 2022 election cycle.
“You’ve got to get your facts straight. I have not been endorsed by AIPAC. I have not, I’m sorry. I was the first Jew elected to the Senate that was not endorsed by any Jewish group — AIPAC, J Street. In 2018, when I first ran [I was endorsed by] people who were [AIPAC] members, yes, but I’ve not been endorsed since then,” Slotkin said. “And I’ve just got to be honest, like I think that this is where facts really matter. I’ve had very, very difficult conversations with my colleagues in that organization and made a choice back in 2021.”
“2021, so that was the first time I was up for reelection. So I understand that there’s a sort of like, again, cornered position, but to me like I call balls and strikes as someone who served in the Middle East,” she added.
Slotkin was endorsed by one Jewish group, the Jewish Democratic Council of America, which maintains a pro-Israel stance, in 2024.
Slotkin, pressed by Ball on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, said she had signed onto a letter accusing Israel of pursuing a “policy of starvation,” adding that, as an “occupying power,” it has a responsibility to ensure food is supplied to Gaza. But she stopped short of endorsing Ball’s framing of Israel’s actions as a “crime against humanity.”
She also did not embrace Ball’s claims that Israel is pursuing “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza, while criticizing plans from the Israeli government for relocating people within or out of Gaza as illegal.
“I’ve been clear about that,” Slotkin said. “So I would ask for a little bit of an open mind.”
Ball responded by accusing Slotkin of failing to take meaningful action on the issue and criticizing her for voting for aid to Israel, for the Antisemitism Awareness Act, for legislation describing anti-Zionism as antisemitic and for sanctioning the International Criminal Court.
Ball told the Michigan senator that her progressive positions on domestic issues like health care and housing policy were irrelevant to her if she was “still supporting a genocide in Gaza.”
“I’m speaking for myself, but I know there are millions of other people who feel the same, that you have to at least cross this sort of moral threshold,” Ball said.
While Ball framed the conflict in the Middle East as a central issue in the New York City mayoral race, Slotkin, looking to her own senatorial race in 2024, argued that its political significance has been overplayed.
“This issue is motivating people in a very visceral and personal way. But it’s not the only issue that my voters in Michigan care about,” she said. “The online world is extremely, extremely focused on this, but that doesn’t always represent the majority.”
She said it’s the top issue in some areas, but outside of the Detroit area, “it’s not in the top 40.”
Slotkin also said she was proud that she had won a majority of both Jewish voters and the three cities with the largest Muslim populations in Michigan during her Senate campaign, which she attributed to “calling balls and strikes” and leaning on her background in Middle East policy.
The Michigan senator also appeared to argue that the pace of anti-Israel protests has dropped off significantly since the end of the Biden administration
“I just think it’s interesting that there were a ton of protests when Democrats were in charge” against the war in Gaza, adding that it’s “fair to say, just to be honest, that … the number of protests that go on now, versus before,” though she was cut off by the show’s hosts.
She generally declined to weigh in on the results of the New York City mayoral race, saying primarily that she believes the results reflect concerns about the cost of living and the need for a new generation of leadership.
“I can have plenty of disagreements with what I’ve heard Mr. [Zohran] Mamdani propose, and I do,” she said. “I am here because we lived the American dream through capitalism. A lot of free stuff to me is not the answer. … But I can have those disagreements. I would be thrilled to have that conversation with him or anyone else.”
Asked about her condemnation of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for using the phrase “from the river to the sea,” and if she would also condemn Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) for his comments saying Gazans should “starve away,” Slotkin said she did not know who Fine was but had no reservations denouncing such remarks.
“I have no problem condemning Randy Fine, who I don’t know. I don’t, I’m sorry. I don’t know who that person is. I have no problem condemning someone who talks like that,” she told the hosts.
Slotkin was also asked if she believed that financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein “had any connections to U.S. or Israeli intelligence agencies.” Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, said she would be “very surprised” if that was the case.
WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 22: Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) speaks during a news conference to advocate for ending the Senate filibuster, outside the U.S. Capitol on April 22, 2021 in Washington, DC. With the Senate filibuster rules in place, legislative bills require 60 votes to end debate and advance, rather than a simple majority in the 100 member Senate. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
👋 Good Thursday morning!
Ed. note: There won’t be a Daily Kickoff on Friday. We’ll see you on Monday!
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 JI stories, including: Who’s in the majority now?; What was Bakari Sellers thinking in Ohio 11?; Jewish groups hear echoes of Hitler’s Games in run-up to 2022 Beijing Olympics; New York Jewish leaders recognize a familiar face in Kathy Hochul; Yogi Oliff, Jewish hoopster, gets D1 offer from West Point; and From the Archives: 20 years later, Joe Lieberman reflects back on the moment he was picked by Gore. Print the latest edition here.
Actress Mayim Bialikwill join “Jeopardy!” as one of the show’s new co-hosts, alongside executive producer Mike Richards. Bialik will host the show’s primetime specials.
One year ago yesterday, Joe Biden selected then-Sen. Kamala Harris (CA) as his running mate. Here’s what California Jewish leaders shared with us at the time.
the room where it happened
St. Louis Jewish leaders meet with Rep. Cori Bush staffers
WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 22: Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) speaks during a news conference to advocate for ending the Senate filibuster, outside the U.S. Capitol on April 22, 2021 in Washington, DC. With the Senate filibuster rules in place, legislative bills require 60 votes to end debate and advance, rather than a simple majority in the 100 member Senate. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Staffers for Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) met for the first time on Tuesday with leaders from St. Louis’s Jewish federation and Jewish Community Relations Council and the local chapters of the National Council of Jewish Women and American Jewish Committee, days after the Missouri congresswoman drew national attention for her successful sit-in at the Capitol to protest the end of the eviction moratorium, reports Jewish Insider‘s Marc Rod.
Background: Bush, who supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, has staked out a stridently anti-Israel stance, drawing connections in a May House floor speech between “militarized policing, occupation and systems of violent oppression and trauma” in the Palestinian territories and Ferguson, Mo., referring to Israel’s capital as “Jerusalem, Palestine” and describing Israel as an “apartheid” state.
Keeping it light: Jewish community leaders offered to provide information to Bush’s office on Israel issues going forward, but the conversation did not go into specifics on policy, according to St. Louis JCRC Executive Director Rori Picker Neiss. Bush’s support for BDS also did not come up.
Diverging opinions: Picker Neiss told JI, “They acknowledged that this could be an area where we might have more disagreement, but that because it’s an area where we know we have differing opinions, that’s why we need to talk about it more. We felt like they left that door wide open for us to continue that conversation with them.”
Reaching out: She also told JI that there has been a “getting to know you process” with Bush’s staff, given that Jewish organizations do not have long-running contacts in the freshman congresswoman’s office, but that Bush’s chief of staff, Abbas Alawieh, “made the initiative to reach out” to Picker Neiss to set up Tuesday’s meeting.
Next steps: The staff was also “committed to keeping an open channel of communication with the Jewish community, with future meetings taking place with Rep. Bush,” according to AJC St. Louis Director Nancy Lisker.
scene the other night
Turkish ambassador’s event seen as signal of warming ties between Ankara and Jerusalem
Credit: Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C.
In an apparent sign of warming ties between Ankara and Jerusalem, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. and U.N. Gilad Erdan was slated to attend an event at the Turkish ambassador’s residence on Tuesday night, but thunderstorms in the Northeast prevented him from getting there, an attendee told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch.
Azerbaijan angle: Turkish Ambassador Hasan Murat Mercan hosted a farewell dinner for Azerbaijani Ambassador to the U.S. Elin Suleymanov, who is leaving Washington after 10 years at the embassy. Last week, Azerbaijan opened its first trade mission in Israel to boost economic ties between the two nations, and Israel has negotiated arms deals with Azerbaijan in the past.
History lesson: Ties between Israel and Turkey were first formalized in 1949, but relations between Israel and Turkey grew strained in 2010 when armed activists aboard the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara attempted to break through to Gaza, leading to a clash with Israeli soldiers. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israeli President Isaac Herzog last month to congratulate him on becoming president, and a spokesperson for Erdogan announced that the two countries agreed to work toward improving relations.
Rebuilding ties: “We need to focus on the ability to get the chain back on the bicycle, and continue the wonderful journey of many centuries which marks the relationship between Turkey and the Jewish people, in Israel as well as the Diaspora,” said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), who spoke at the event.
Who’s who: Attendees at the event included ambassadors from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Monaco; Jonathan Missner, board chair of Pro-Israel America; George Kent, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs; Tom Kahn, former staff director and chief counsel of the House Budget Committee; Nechama Shemtov; and Andrew Schofer, co-chair of a negotiating group for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
podcast playback
Murphy urges U.S. to deprioritize Iran, tells Saudis to ‘come to terms’ with Hezbollah influence
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) speaks during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the nomination of Linda Thomas-Greenfield to be the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on January 27, 2021.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee focusing on Middle East issues, believes the U.S. should deprioritize Iran deterrence and urge Saudi Arabia to “come to terms” with Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon, he said in a Tuesday podcast interview with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Rollback: “How much does it matter to the United States what share of power Iran and Saudi Arabia have in the region 10 or 20 years from now? We act as if that question is existential to the United States. I’m not sure that it is,” Murphy said, adding that he is skeptical whether “providing security guarantees big enough to provide deterrence against the Iranians — for instance, creating red lines about what they can and cannot do in a place like Lebanon… is commensurate with our interest in the region. We have an interest in keeping the Iranians at bay. We have an interest in continuing to work with our partners, but I don’t know that it is such a significant interest that we should be dramatically increasing the security presence of the United States in the region.”
Targeted: Murphy recounted that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif “always reminds” him that Iranian missiles are pointed at Saudi Arabia, not Israel. He acknowledged, however, that he takes “everything [Zarif] says with a large shaker of salt.” Rather than increasing security aid to Gulf allies, which Iran finds “provocative,” Murphy said the U.S.’s priority should be reentering the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal and reaching other long-term diplomatic agreements with Iran.
New reality: Murphy warned that Lebanon, which is facing a series of crises, is on the brink of becoming a failed state and a source of instability and terrorism that could last decades. He blamed the deteriorating situation in part on a lack of Saudi engagement due to Hezbollah’s influence inside Lebanon. “[The Saudis] are deeply uncomfortable with the role that Hezbollah plays. The Saudis should come to terms with the fact that — at least in the short term — Hezbollah is going to be part of the political infrastructure there,” he said. “It would be much better for the Saudis to be a partner with the United States, with the French and other countries to try to offer the kind of economic support that might provoke political reform that would eventually allow for technocrats and non-sectarian actors to have greater influence in the government. That would lessen the influence of Hezbollah.”
travel plans
J Street postpones congressional trips to Israel
J Street/WikiCommons
J Street, the left-leaning Israel advocacy group, has delayed two August delegations to Israel, including one for House members and another for congressional staffers, amid mounting concerns over the surging Delta variant of the coronavirus, reports Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel. “We’ll be closely monitoring the outlook and hope to get our delegations to the region up and running again as soon as it’s safe and viable to do so,” J Street spokesperson Logan Bayroff told JI. The group hopes to reschedule the trips for the fall but has not made “any definitive timing decisions,” Bayroff said.
New direction: The postponements come as J Street seeks to advance a new policy that represents a change in direction for the lobbying group amid growing divisions over Israel within the Democratic Party. While J Street says it’s opposed to conditioning aid to Israel, the organization has recently begun advocating for restricting aid to the Jewish state. The group, which supports a recent bill that would restrict foreign security assistance to Israel, argues that this policy is different from conditioning aid. A spokesperson told JI in May that the group favors “end-use restrictions” to ensure that Israel uses U.S. aid only for “legitimate security purposes.”
Policy push: The group sought to advance this policy in New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District special election this past spring. Melanie Stansbury, the Democratic candidate who was endorsed by J Street, called for restricting aid to Israel “if it is indeed being used in any way that goes against U.S. interests and values, endangers Palestinian people or threatens the basic human rights of Palestinians,” as she put it in a statement to JI at the time. Stansbury, a former New Mexico state legislator, now serves in Congress.
‘No names to share’: J Street has yet to announce its full slate of congressional endorsements for the 2022 midterms, but earlier this summer confirmed to JI that it was backing Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) for reelection next cycle. In June, following the conflict between Israel and Hamas, Davis told JI that he had been invited by J Street to participate in the now-postponed August delegation but had not yet decided if he would make the trip. Bayroff said J Street was planning to “roll out” a list of participants for the upcoming congressional delegation “once a trip is confirmed” but had “no names to share” at this point.
Worthy Reads
🔬 Paying It Forward: In an interview with The Hill’s Jim Saksa, Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) reflects on his grandfather’s service during World War II — instead of being sent overseas to fight, the government enrolled him at Purdue University to study biomedical engineering, and he went on to become a pioneer in the field of artificial limbs. “I just think about that,” Auchincloss said. “in one of the lowest moments of World War II, one of the lowest moments for Jews in our history, the U.S. government sent a Jewish kid in the Marine Corps to school. They gave him an opportunity, and he seized it. And this was a chance for me to pay that forward and to serve. It was also a way to challenge myself in a totally new realm.” [TheHill]
📉 Bad Bet:Institutional Investor’s Michelle Celarier speaks to some of the individuals who lost significant amounts of money investing in Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Tontine Holdings, which failed to seal a high-stakes deal with Universal Music Group earlier this summer. “These men — and they all happen to be men — are immigrants, first-generation Americans, and children of the blue-collar working class who have excelled in their professions. They are now engineers, small-business owners, doctors, consultants. Some went to Harvard, Princeton, UCLA. Many were the first in their families to attend college; a few are still students. They are millennials — ranging in age from 24 to 39 — who live in New York, California, Illinois, Maine, Utah, and Texas, as well as Germany and Canada. They all lost money in Tontine — in at least one case more than $2 million — as SPAC mania swept through the stock market like wildfire over the past year.” [InstitutionalInvestor]
🦸 Thou Shall Not: In the New York Post, John Podhoretz, using outgoing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as an example, warns against the idolization of political figures. “The psalmist warned us: ‘Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of a man, in whom there is no help.’ It isn’t just the mortality of princes that should make us wary of putting them on a pedestal. It is the fact that as mortal men, they are prone to deep human weaknesses: greed, vanity, lust, including the lust for domination. And yet we can’t help ourselves. We want to believe that the people we elect — or even, as in the case of the psalmist’s time and much of the planet even now, the strongmen who rule through force alone — are made of better stuff. And so we often impute to them moral strengths they don’t have, simply because we are so hungry to have someone to believe in.” [NYPost]
👨💻 Scaling Up: In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Israeli Minister of Science, Technology and Space Orit Farkash-Hacohen announced Israel’s intention to provide professional opportunities in the tech sector to Israelis who are otherwise underrepresented in the field, such as Israeli Arabs, Bedouins and the ultra-Orthodox. “The plan aims to help the Arab community develop skills to work in science and technology. It will include educational programs, vocational training, and technology incubators for entrepreneurs and startups. We plan to establish technology and science centers for Arabs, an incubator hub with seed funding for promising minority entrepreneurs, and two new research-and-development centers, one of them for the Bedouin community.” [WSJ]
Around the Web
🎤 Questionable Ties: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is scheduled to participate in a town hall hosted by an organization whose CEO recently said that “some of our toughest battles today… are against corporations run by Jews.”
🗳️ Reflecting: Rabbi Pinchas Landis chronicles his volunteer efforts during the heated Democratic primary in Ohio’s 11th Congressional District, which pitted Shontel Brown against Nina Turner, a race that garnered national attention and underscored deep ideological divides within the Democratic Party.
🎙️ Overheard: C-SPAN’s Howard Mortman, author of When Rabbis Bless Congress: The Great American Story of Jewish Prayers on Capitol Hill, appeared on a podcast hosted by Reason’s Nick Gillespie to discuss the evolution of the modern media landscape.
📗 Making the List:Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl was included on Time’s list of the 100 best young adult books of all time.
🎭 Hello, Gorgeous: Beanie Feldstein will star as Fanny Brice in a Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” next spring.
⛔ Access Revoked: Two NYU researchers investigating the spread of misinformation on the social media platform claim that Facebook blocked their access to the site, citing users’ privacy concerns in its decision.
🖥️ Tough Sell: Some vendors at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota are selling merchandise with Nazi imagery.
✍️ Will’s Quill: Writing in Religion News Service, Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin describes the parallels he sees between modern anti-Israel demonstrations, which he views as guises for antisemitic political activity, and the mobs in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.”
🏦 Recovery Road: Israel has nearly reduced its risk to its financial systems to pre-pandemic levels, according to a report from the European Central Bank.
📈 Super Store: Israeli supermarket company Shufersal reported a rise in second-quarter profits despite a sustained hit from the pandemic-induced sluggish economy.
☢️ Last Bid: German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas called on Iran to return to the nuclear talks in Vienna “with the necessary flexibility and readiness for compromise to strike a deal.”
👨 Free Press: Secretary of State Tony Blinken said he believes that journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared nine years ago in Syria while covering the early years of the country’s conflict, is alive and that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has the ability to release him.
🕯️ Remembering: Marcia Nasatir, one of the first female executives in Hollywood, died at 95.
Pic of the Day
Credit: The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore
The Elijah Cummings Youth Program in Israel (ECYP) unveiled a mural of the late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) at the Baltimore courthouse named in his honor. Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD), second from left, a friend of Cummings and his successor in Congress, was on hand for the event to honor the late congressman, who founded the organization in 1998.
Birthdays
U.S. diplomat, Karyn Allison Posner-Mullen turns 70…
Hungarian-American investor, George Soros (born György Schwartz) turns 91… Retired Beverly Hills attorney, Sheldon S. Ellis turns 89… Television writer, creator of Dallas and Knots Landing, David Jacobs turns 82… Television screenwriter, producer and author, Gail Parent turns 81… NYC-born historian and author, William Rubinstein turns 75… Attorney in Ontario, Canada, who served as president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Lester Scheininger turns 74… Director of management operations at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Fredi Bleeker Franks turns 69… Sales manager of Illi Commercial Real Estate in Encino, Calif., Stuart Steinberg turns 65… Israel’s resident ambassador to Albania and non-resident ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Noah Gal Gendler turns 64… Former member of Knesset from the Yesh Atid party, Haim Yellin turns 63… Founding editor of The Times of Israel, David Horovitz turns 59… Rabbi at Brookline’s Temple Beth Zion, Claudia Kreiman turns 47… SVP for external engagement at NYC’s Educational Alliance, Anya Hoerburger turns 44… Chief marketing officer at Cross Campus, Jay Chernikoff turns 42… Senior product manager at NYC-based Dynamic Yield, David Fine turns 32… CEO and co-founder of Forsight, a leading prop tech AI and machine learning company, Ariel Applbaum turns 27…