When venture capital firm Collide Capital launched last month with the announcement of a $66 million fund, its managing partners could’ve pointed to any number of business successes between the two of them when explaining why they decided to get into the VC world: Harvard and Stanford MBAs, stints at Bain and Goldman Sachs and founding and leading a media company. 

But for Aaron Samuels, the real answer to where he started his career is not in the pages of an economics textbook or a business school case study. It’s poetry — and, in particular, his writings about his experience as a Black Jew. He has experimented with the art form for the better part of two decades, leading to two books (and a third on the way), and performances in venues such as New York’s Lincoln Center. 

“I oftentimes wonder what 13-year-old Aaron would think about 33-year-old Aaron, and it’s funny, you see the threads early on in childhood, for what you’ll become, but you don’t always make sense of it until it’s happening in the moment,” Samuels told Jewish Insider in a recent Zoom interview from his Los Angeles home. 

“I think from a young age, community was always the most important thing to me, and it was specifically the communities that I came from, which was the Black community, the Jewish community and specifically the Jews of color community,” Samuels continued. “So if you asked me at age 13, ‘Aaron, would you be working on something that involved the empowerment of communities you care about?’ I would have said, ‘Absolutely,’ whether it’s through using creativity, through using art or through using the tools of business or the tools of capital.”

Community-building has been at the heart of Samuels’ career. He is best known for co-founding Blavity, a media company geared toward Black millennials, and AfroTech, a networking platform and conference for Black entrepreneurs and tech workers. (This year’s conference, which took place earlier this month in Austin, Texas, drew more than 25,000 attendees.) His co-managing partner at Collide, Brian Hollins, had more VC experience, and joined Collide after making several seed investments in startups. 

At gatherings like AfroTech, Black founders kept approaching Samuels with the same question. “They often say, ‘Thank you for the panel discussion,’ or ‘Thank you for the resources, thank you for the mentorship, but there’s really just one thing that we need. We need you to cut the check, and we need the capital,’” Samuels recalled. “That was a big part that was missing from the equation.”

Startups run by women and people of color tend to have a significantly more difficult experience raising capital. In 2021, just 1.3% of all venture and growth equity financing went to Black-founded startups, according to Crunchbase. Women-led startups received just 2.3% of VC funding in 2020, Crunchbase reported. Collide hopes to help start changing these figures. 

Unusual for a new and unestablished fund, Collide’s $66 million fund has the backing of several major institutional investors. It is anchored by the University of California’s endowment, and it also received significant investments from Amazon, Alphabet and Twitter. Other limited partners in the fund include Bank of America, Citi and Northwestern Mutual. 

Collide is not an impact fund, meaning it is not investing only in startups with particular social-minded goals. But it does intend to focus on startups led by women and people of color. The types of companies that Collide plans to support include enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS), supply chain infrastructure and consumer technology geared toward the Gen Z set. (“When Gen Z comes into dominance, what is the Slack of 2030?” Samuels asked.)

Samuels sees a throughline from his childhood, growing up in what he described as a “queer, multiracial, multiethnic havurah group” in Providence, R.I., to the work he does now in the business world. 

“If you asked me, would I be a venture capitalist? I would have told you I have no idea what a venture capitalist is, and it was definitely a windy path to get here, through the poetry world and then through consulting and through product and through being a founder,” he said. ​​“But it’s no surprise that I’m now still working on projects for the empowerment of underserved and underrepresented communities.”

As he has navigated the business world, Samuels has always remained close to the Jewish community. Samuels created and lived in the first-ever Moishe House for Jews of color, in L.A., and he sits on the board of the Jewish progressive advocacy group Bend the Arc. In 2016, at the group’s first major national conference, Samuels did a poetry reading on the main stage. 

“It really resonated with folks. He shared insights through his poetry into his identity and experience as a Black Jewish person,” said Jamie Beran, Bend the Arc’s CEO. “He’s really influenced the national conversation about how to be a more racially just and inclusive Jewish community.”

In 2020, Samuels co-wrote an open letter to Jewish organizations, urging them to work to fight racism in Jewish communities by investing in community leaders of color and committing to racial justice initiatives. The letter, which was signed by thousands of individuals and dozens of synagogues, independent minyans and other Jewish groups around the country, kicked off the “Not Free to Desist Campaign,” an ongoing project calling for change within Jewish communities. 

“I think a lot of people expect results overnight. But it’s a long — it takes years. It’s a lifetime of work,” said Rachel Sumekh, who led the open letter with Samuels and founded the nonprofit Swipe Out Hunger. “I think that the conversation was started in a way that we are moving beyond just having committees, where we’re saying, What are the actions we’re taking? What are the commitments we’re making? I see the conversation moving forward.”

Samuels collaborated with Reboot and Hillel International to produce a reading of his 2021 poem “Forgiveness,” about experiencing Yom Kippur, and the elaborate security common at many American Jewish synagogues, as a Black Jew. The short film toggles between brief recordings of Black Jews of all ages as they showcase their Jewish identity, with Star of David necklaces, yarmulkes or prayer shawls, as Samuels recites his poem. 

“I walk, covered in white, to the temple steps. I walk past four police officers. I see their weapons. How they make the community feel safe. I ready my body to pray,” Samuels says, his voice strong and solemn, warm and inviting. “I walk through the metal detector, and I am buying candy in a new neighborhood. I exit the metal detector and I am asleep in my own bed. This is my place of worship. These are my people.”

This poem, Samuels told JI, is “about how, as an entire Jewish community, there are things that perhaps we need to ask forgiveness for, and the video focuses specifically on racial injustice that is within the Jewish community that the Jewish community is adjacent to.” 

Writing gave Samuels an outlet to vent his anger as a kid — both his parents are clinical psychologists — about racism, sexism and homophobia. Today, he stills writes, although anger is no longer the only emotion he is dealing with. “It allows me to, in some ways, have an external hard drive for my feelings,” he explained, although it’s hard to imagine when Samuels has the time. (Sumekh, who also lives in Los Angeles, pointed out that every time she goes to the beach with Samuels, he brings his laptop.)  

Besides, it’s not like he’s a starving artist anymore. But earning a living was never what drove Samuels to write.

“Poetry is a medium that opens us up to interpretation and opens us up to be playful, and so to have a poet in the VC and the entrepreneurial tech space is a gift because he’s bringing the way he thinks as a poet into that space,” said Caroline Rothstein, a poet who has worked closely with, and performed with, Samuels. 

“In some ways, I think that the entrepreneurial journey and the artistic journey have a lot of overlaps,” Samuels noted, “in that both artists and entrepreneurs see their job, in many ways, as to look at the world, and then ask themselves how they can slightly bend it to make it a little bit different, and hopefully better, or at least more interesting.”

House lawmakers are circulating a letter condemning Amazon and urging the online shopping company to take down an antisemitic book and film promoted by NBA star Kyrie Irving, Jewish Insider learned on Tuesday.

The material in question, a book and film titled Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America, shot to public attention after Irving linked to the movie on Twitter. The material is replete with antisemitic tropes, including Holocaust denial and extremist Black Hebrew Israelite ideology that alleges that present-day Jews are not really Jewish.

The letter, circulated by Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Brad Schneider (D-IL) and Brad Sherman (D-CA), is expected to remain open for signatures through the Thanksgiving holiday, according to a source familiar with the letter. It is addressed to Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy and Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos.

“Your company’s decision to profit from the promotion of this dangerous hate speech has substantial real-world costs and consequences for the Jewish community and the greater society,” the letter reads, noting that the book and film have shot up in popularity on Amazon’s charts since Irving’s tweet.

The letter also quotes from Amazon’s own policies regarding review of films, which prohibit  “derogatory comments, hate speech, or threats specifically targeting any group or individuals.” 

“It is alarming that this antisemitic film and book would not immediately qualify as hateful content,” the letter reads. “Amazon should not amplify and profit from this promotion of hate. Pulling this hateful content from your offerings should be a value [judgment] we believe your company should be comfortable making.”

The lawmakers also urge Amazon to modify its search protocols so that users who search for Hebrews to Negroes are not led to similar content.

“​​Amazon has a unique and critical role to play in ensuring its customers do not consume hate- filled propaganda and misinformation,” the letter reads. “And as responsible corporate citizens, Amazon should certainly never profit from hate.”

The letter also criticizes Irving for promoting the film and for “his refusal to disavow its antisemitism.” Irving apologized on Sunday for promoting the film. The night he returned to play for the Brooklyn Nets, a Black Hebrew Israelite group demonstrated en masse outside the arena.

Lawmakers, envoys from various foreign embassies, members of an array of U.S. Jewish groups and congressional staffers packed into a crowded Capitol Hill committee hearing room last Thursday to discuss strategies for combating antisemitism nationwide.

Reps. Mike Quigley (D-IL), Pat Ryan (D-NY), Kweisi Mfume (D-MD), Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and Marc Veasey (D-TX) — none of whom are Jewish — spoke at the forum, which was organized by lobbyist Ezra Friedlander and hosted by the office of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL).  The discussion was moderated by New York-based activist Leon Goldenberg and Martin Korčok, a member of the Slovak delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Aaron Keyak, the State Department’s deputy special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, was also present.

Ryan, whose wife and two children are Jewish, described the concern he feels for his children, saying that “we can… leave no corner for these forces to continue to rear their ugly heads.”

“A week ago, we commemorated the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht and the terror and horror that followed it,” Ryan said. “The fact that my two Jewish children would be under that same threat and that same risk as we see these forces building is just absolutely outrageous.”

Ryan, who represents a district in the Hudson Valley, also recounted his experience dealing with antisemitic vandalism incidents at Jewish summer camps during his time as Ulster County executive.

“We aggressively addressed it, called it out for the vile nature that it was, and made sure that we did the work afterwards to make the whole community aware that this is happening in our own backyard, and we have to address it and call it out,” Ryan said. “So that is something that I think is on every single elected official, every level and every community leader.”

Ryan, a veteran and the newest member of the House Armed Services Committee, said that there are “multiple important amendments” to the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act that would “ensure that we’re addressing and calling out the rise of antisemitism and violent extremism around the globe and acting and responding appropriately.”

Mfume shared a personal story he tells frequently, describing when he first learned about the Holocaust at age 15 from a neighbor in whose grocery store he worked. The man had survived the Holocaust.

“[He] was sitting there crying,” Mfume said, “He said, ‘Come here, I want you to sit down’… I’d never seen his arms before, but he had his shirt sleeves rolled up and I saw all these markings on both of his arms.”

“And he told me how he had been in a concentration camp, how he had lost contact with his other family members, how he never thought that he would ever live to see another day, and how now he was in that room, but that he thought he had an obligation to tell the story,” Mfume said. “And he said, ‘As long as you are alive, I want you to know the story, so that you might tell it so you might understand my pain.’”

Mfume said he saw an “instant nexus” between his neighbor’s experience and the Black American experience of slavery.

The Baltimore congressman and former NAACP president also reflected on his first visit to Auschwitz as a member of Congress.

“That’s when it hit me in a real, real way,” Mfume said. “Because when you get off of the bus, and you see that great big archway, and you understand how many people went through there, or went off the rails, where the trains pulled up, and you go in, and you see those cabinets, all of that shaved hair, those shoes that used to belong to somebody that are dusty and brown and in a cabinet… It hits you in a different way.”

Walking through the former concentration camp and connecting the experience to the stories he had heard from his neighbor, Mfume said that he “knew more than anything else that there’s got to be a way to prevent that sort of thing from happening… we have to be ever-vigilant in pushing back those forces of evil.”

Mfume said that for decades he has been calling out antisemitism and all forms of bigotry in speeches in a variety of forums.

Veasey said that it is “very disturbing” that “there are people that only feel comfortable talking about antisemitism when it’s politically convenient for them,” raising concerns about antisemitism on college campuses and in debates around Israel policy.

He also said that his family was friendly with that of Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker — whose congregation in Colleyville, Texas, was the site of an 11-hour hostage standoff in January — and that their children had played together at McDonalds.

The Texas congressman said he used that incident, as well as the recent “terrible comments” by Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, to discuss antisemitism with his son.

“A lot of people still don’t know what antisemitism is,” he lamented, describing a recent interaction on social media with someone who was unsure what antisemitism was. “A lot of people were coming up with a lot of — I hate to say it — but a lot of uneducated answers, ‘Oh, it’s just hate,’ ‘It’s just stupid,’ ‘It’s terrible,’ not really knowing what the origins of antisemitism [are],” specifically its origins in conspiracy theories about Jewish control.

Quigley said that his parents “insisted” at a young age that his family watch documentaries about World War II and the Holocaust. He said that a recent visit to Bucha, Ukraine, the site of a massacre by Russian forces, reminded him vividly of those documentaries and of the lesson of “never again” that his parents sought to instill in him.

“We all need to be united against this sort of evil, because we understand that antisemitism is often a precursor — historically — a rise in antisemitism and antisemitic conspiracy theory precedes a nation’s descent into autocracy,” Quigley said.

He noted that antisemitism has become an increasingly frequent issue in the Chicago area.

“[Fighting antisemitism] can’t be a single day, a single event,” he said. “It must be embedded in what we do on an ongoing basis.”

Clarke, who represents a Brooklyn district with a sizable Jewish population, described antisemitism as an “unrelenting and undeniable crisis in America and quite frankly, around the world.”

“It’s a real harm to innocent Jewish people due to the steady drumbeat of rhetoric that is weaponized and targeted at the Jewish people with reckless abandon and malicious intent,” she continued, lamenting the “growing normalization of hatred against Jewish communities” and its increasing presence in public discourse.

Clarke referenced her efforts to reform social media to crack down on hate, and also encouraged “people of goodwill to really work against those who use social media platforms to spew hatred,” pushing back on public platforms and working to “undermine” forums that operate on the dark web.

“I’ve been working with CISA, which is our agency that deals with cybersecurity, on how we deal with disinformation, discredit bigotry, discredit of hatred and the weaponization of that,” she said. “It would work with any nation who is interested in building up their defenses online to have one true fact checker. You need to build a bench, you need to make it a profession. So we need to recruit and hire young people that can help to continue to fight this.”

For Chris Deluzio in blue-collar Western Pennsylvania, the key to the Democrat’s midterm victory was “standing up for the union way of life.” In Ohio, Democrat state Rep. Emilia Sykes banked on her roots in the Akron-area district. Anthony D’Esposito flipped a blue seat on Long Island by staying disciplined on the issues of crime and the cost of living. And Republican Marc Molinaro won an open seat in New York’s Hudson Valley by running against entrenched interests in Democrat-controlled Albany.

As the final results from the 2022 midterms continue to trickle in, candidates, strategists and other politicos continue to pore over the election results to suss out why Democrats largely overperformed and the expected red wave largely failed to materialize, outside of a few states. Speaking to Jewish Insider in the weeks following the election, four newly elected lawmakers from purple districts, two Democrats and two Republicans, broke down what they think tipped their races in their favor.

Pennsylvania Democrats overperformed in 2022 relative to the 2020 election, outpacing President Joe Biden in many areas of the state.

“We stuck to some messages that from the beginning were the things I was talking about,” said Deluzio, who won the district represented by Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA), keeping it in Democratic hands. “No. 1 was economic, taking on not just corporate power but fighting to bring back our supply chains and manufacturing and standing up for the union way of life.”

Deluzio said he sees unions as critical to his victory and those of other Democrats across the Keystone State.

He added that his campaign “never strayed from our commitment to protecting reproductive freedom,” citing efforts to engage voters following the Supreme Court’s overturning in June of Roe v. Wade, and highlighted “threats to our democracy and some of those election deniers and others who were running in Pennsylvania and across the country. We were pretty direct about those threats.”

Democratic Ohio state Rep. Emilia Sykes, who won the Akron-area district represented by Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), argued that her history in elected office in the district helped push her over the edge. 

“I am very well-versed in the community. [The district] has seen my leadership, has seen my work ethic, and has known me for a very long time,” Sykes said. “It was very apparent that folks across the district wanted someone who had a track record of success, of working across the aisle, who looked at this position as a servant job and truly wanted to deliver meaningful results for our community.”

Sykes ran against a campaign advisor on former President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and conservative media personality, who won a crowded primary thanks in part to an endorsement from Trump. Candidates tied closely to Trump underperformed in competitive districts nationwide this cycle.

Sykes also said she heard frequently from voters about abortion access, public safety, the economy and protecting democracy.

“My platform was one that was very clear about what my solutions were for those issues,” she said. “And people were at a point where this division, the hatred, the nonstop fighting is getting old.”

One of the few bright spots for Republicans was New York, where several flipped districts — the result of a new redistricting map drawn after a legal battle — helped the GOP win the House. 

Anthony D’Esposito, a Hempstead town councilman and former police officer, and Marc Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive, offered some similar views on why they were able to resist national trends that ultimately favored Democrats.

“I think that a lot of it had to do with us sticking on message, I think the things that mattered most to the voters in the 4th Congressional District and across Long Island,” said D’Esposito, who flipped a Long Island District held by Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY).

He specifically mentioned the cost of living and crime as key issues.

D’Esposito said that he felt Republicans had been successful in New York and other states where these issues were top of mind, and “perhaps [in] the [states] that… we didn’t do as well in, other issues were of importance.”

He argued that Democrats in his district “focused on things that — not saying that the issues that they were focused on weren’t important — but they weren’t the issues that were most important to the people of this district and across Long Island.” 

Democrat Laura Gillen’s campaign heavily emphasized abortion and LGBTQ rights.

D’Esposito also said that he had received “great support” from the Jewish community, which “without a doubt carried me over the finish line.” New York Republicans made significant efforts this cycle to appeal in particular to Orthodox Jewish voters.

Molinaro fell short in a special election this summer, but managed to pull through to victory in November, albeit under different district lines and facing a different opponent. Political pundits attributed his special election loss in large part to concerns about the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Molinaro said he continued to double down on his message from the special election, focusing on cost of living and crime.

“And there’s no question that not everybody has those as their principal issue,” Molinaro said. “But overwhelmingly this part of New York, and I think most New Yorkers, acknowledge and are concerned about the high cost of living policies, the policies of Albany that have made us less safe and a real desire to just have government respect and function for them. That remained our message because it was what residents and voters wanted us to focus on.”

He also argued that turnout and the overall “dynamic” of the election were different between the August special election and the general election in November.

D’Esposito attributed Republican’s successes statewide to the climate in the state, as well as “great candidates” up and down the ballot, particularly gubernatorial candidate Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), a sentiment that Molinaro echoed.

“He was a great candidate, he ran an exciting campaign, he really ignited the base and ignited a lot of people who were just tired of the one-party rule in New York and Washington,” D’Esposito said. “We saw it across Long Island in Nassau County and Suffolk County. I mean, the numbers are huge. And I think [Zeldin] had a lot to do with it.”

Looking ahead to the 2024 cycle, D’Esposito said that he believes the blueprint for Republicans to win in bluer districts includes “appealing to people on both sides of the aisle. You have to show the moderate Democrats and the independents, and, of course, the Republicans and conservatives, that you’re a hard worker, that the issues that matter to them are the ones that matter to you. And they want to see you, they want you to be present, they want you to be accessible.”

For Democrats, Deluzio said his election should serve as a reminder of the importance of unions to the Democratic coalition.

“I said it in my victory speech, I don’t think I’m standing here as the next member of Congress from the 17th District of Pennsylvania without labor with me,” Deluzio said. “I think that has to be such a key part of our constituencies as Democrats. And frankly, how we win in places like Western Pennsylvania is to be solid with labor fighting for workers’ rights, fighting for jobs.”

Sykes told JI that “the most important thing for any candidate or elected official to do is to listen to their communities, they will tell you exactly what they need and what they want from you.”

“So that would be my first suggestion,” she continued, “to truly listen to what people are saying, and understand the challenges that they’re having [and] put forth solutions that meet those goals, rather than any personal professional goals.”

In the first episode of the new FX on Hulu series “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” the camera pans around a diner table. Around it sit familiar faces: Walt from “The Squid and the Whale,” Seth from “The O.C.” and Janis Ian from “Mean Girls,” and they are goofing around as they order sandwiches and pancakes.

It only takes a minute to realize that it’s actually 2022, not the early aughts, and the people around the table are not the teenagers that were household names for the millennial set, but Toby Fleishman and his friends Libby and Seth (to be clear, not the same Seth that lived in Orange County).

And they do feel like old friends — people known to each other and audiences for years, from the time they were teenagers to the present, when they are parents both on- and off-screen.

That’s part of the charm of “Fleishman,” adapted from the 2019 novel of the same name, the debut novel from New York Times writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner about a man whose ex-wife, played by Clare Danes, goes off the grid, upending both his personal and professional lives during one hot New York summer. 

For Brodesser-Akner, the questions that the main characters face are reflective of where many people are in life.

“They are now people grappling with age, same as you who grew up with them,” Brodesser-Akner told Jewish Insider days before the show’s premiere. “And that’s kind of what Fleishman is about, about whether or not you’re old.”

The series — and the book it is based on — is told from the perspective of Lizzy Caplan’s Libby, a wife and mother living in the New Jersey suburbs who has reconnected with Toby and Seth, friends from a gap year in Israel.

Libby serves as a reliable narrator, her life more stable than that of either Toby — who is navigating online dating and single parenting while his children are on summer break — or Seth, a party boy reluctant to trade in late nights for stability.

The eight-episode series follows the trio as they navigate the quintessential challenges of middle age: when to buy a preteen their first cellphone, discovering a child has used the family computer to look at pornography, feeling disconnected from suburban family life, debating the right time to settle down, attempting dating for the first time in decades. The characters are not caricatures; though they inhabit a world of New York prestige and wealth, their struggles are relatable.

The title character, Toby Fleishman, played by Jesse Eisenberg, is the first of the group to hit the life-cycle benchmarks. Though Libby narrates both the book and the series, Toby is the central character.

In the first minutes of the series, you are transported to his apartment, a bachelor pad with broken blinds in a building with grim, fluorescent-lit hallways — “like a hovel compared to the palace I just moved out of,” Toby explains to Libby. A mezuzah is posted outside his front door, but at no point does Toby draw attention to it. 

It’s one of several subtle references to the characters’ Jewish backgrounds — flashbacks to a family Shabbat dinner and preparations for Toby’s daughter’s upcoming bat mitzvah serve as vehicles to move the story forward, but don’t draw outsized attention. Brodesser-Akner is quick to point out that although the characters are Jewish, Fleishman isn’t a Jewish book.

“I think about you know, The Corrections, right, or Crossroads, the Jonathan Franzen novels. Crossroads is literally about a youth minister, and nobody ever called it a Christian novel,” she explained. “And yet this is called a Jewish book. And to me, what that says, when people think that — even you, even me, even my mother, even people on the street, even the fact that you guys are interested in interviewing me — it says to me that…Jews, I always thought we had finally integrated into being American. And to me, these questions sort of indicate that we haven’t.”

“Why is Crossroads not a Christian novel when it takes place inside a church, with a minister as its protagonist?” she asked. “And it is so much about faith. And [Fleishman] is just Jews walking around, sort of wearing the clothing, the sort of thematic clothing of how they were raised.”

A number of recent TV shows and films that center around Jewish characters have come under criticism for casting non-Jewish actors in leading roles. In “Fleishman,” three of the four central characters — whose friendship was cemented during a year abroad in Israel — are played by Jews.

The decision, Brodesser-Akner pointed out, wasn’t intentional. 

“It’s such a complicated question, because I didn’t think about it. As an equal-opportunity employer, I extra did not ask anybody what their religion is,” she said. “But when I thought about who the right people were for this, that’s who there was. I don’t know what elements of them make them right for it. I’m not smart enough to know that. Like, I don’t know if it’s their genetics, it’s their cultural influences, I don’t know. I just know they were perfect for it, and I didn’t have to grapple with this question.”

Eisenberg had been Brodesser-Akner’s first choice for Fleishman, a divorced doctor navigating hospital politics and parenting. In flashback scenes to Jerusalem, or in the early days of his courtship with his ex-wife, he looks as he did in “The Social Network” — youthful, and almost impossibly young to be a hepatologist leading a team of interns. 

The 39-year-old actor was actually too young for the role when planning for the series began. But the pandemic delayed production, and by the time filming began, Eisenberg more comfortably inhabited the role of a mid-40s doctor. Eisenberg was not Brodesser-Akner’s only top pick — Caplan, Adam Brody and Danes were also Brodesser-Akner’s first choices for their roles.

One of her producing partners, Brodesser-Akner said, “saved me in her phone — my icon — as a witch, because she said that no one ever gets their first and only choice of casting.”

Brodesser-Akner will soon return to the Times, from which she has been on leave in the run-up to the show’s release. Her sophomore novel, Long Island Compromise, comes out next fall. The book centers around a family living in Long Island that loses its fortune.

“It’s about inheritance, but mostly it’s about inherited trauma and the essential question about whether or not wealth dooms your children to a lesser life because they… don’t have to strive for their survival,” she explained.

It’s a different kind of opulence than the fictional Fleishman family was accustomed to — and the Fleishmans lived a good life. In one scene, a family friend decides to organize a group trip to Gstaad. “I couldn’t even figure out a place that was fancier than Vail to ski,” Brodessor-Akner quipped, noting that her assistant came up with the reference to the Swiss ski town. “I was like, ‘How do you spell that?’”

While Brodesser-Akner’s fiction — and even her profiles in the Times, which have taken her skydiving with actress Melissa McCarthy and to the set of the filming of a “Real Housewives” reunion — focuses on the extravagant and the elements of life that are beyond most people’s reach, the core of “Fleishman,” and of most of her work, highlights the challenges facing everyone at their core.

The show, she said, “is something that strives to exist in realism. And realism is the only place where you can have all the factors that are affecting your life lead to an inevitable conclusion.”

The FBI sparked a political firestorm last week when Israel announced that the American law enforcement agency is investigating the death of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed in May during a skirmish between Palestinian militants and Israeli security forces in the West Bank city of Jenin. 

Whether the Abu Akleh investigation originated with a small team at DOJ, or was authorized at the top by Attorney General Merrick Garland, has not been specified. The scale of the investigation is also not known. The Department of Justice has not commented on the matter, and the White House and State Department told Israeli leaders they were not involved in the FBI’s decision to investigate, according to Axios. 

“Nobody’s actually mentioned what the potential crime would be. [Supporters of an FBI probe] use terms like accountability and justice, but the FBI doesn’t do accountability. The FBI doesn’t do fairness. The FBI does crimes. And so it’s unclear precisely what crime would be investigated, if indeed any crime is being investigated,” said one person who works on foreign policy in Washington and requested anonymity to speak freely. That individual’s attempts to reach contacts in the federal government, they told Jewish Insider, have gone unanswered. 

An Israel Defense Forces investigation completed in September found that Abu Akleh, a longtime Al Jazeera reporter, was likely killed unintentionally by Israeli forces, and authorities concluded that no disciplinary actions would be taken. In light of the investigation, the State Department vowed to press Israel to “closely review its policies and practices on rules of engagement,” deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said in September, and to “consider additional steps to mitigate the risk of civilian harm, protect journalists, and prevent similar tragedies in the future.”   

Several Democratic lawmakers signed letters over the summer criticizing the Biden administration’s response to Abu Akleh’s death and urging the U.S. to investigate further. 

The FBI probe into Abu Akleh’s death is not the first time the agency has investigated the deaths of American journalists abroad in the past. But the bureau does not have a hard-and-fast policy with respect to investigating the deaths of American journalists killed abroad. For instance, the parents of Christopher Allen, a dual American-British citizen who was killed reporting in South Sudan in 2017, have spent years urging the FBI to take up their son’s case, to no avail. ​​

Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian-American journalist known for her reporting in Chechnya, was found shot dead in her apartment building in Moscow in 2006. Several suspects were charged and acquitted at trial in Russia, but there is no public record of an official FBI investigation. And in 2019, an American court ruled that the Syrian government was liable for the death of American journalist Marie Colvin, who died in 2012 covering the Syrian civil war. But the FBI did not investigate her death. 

The FBI has operated a legal attaché office in Tel Aviv since 1996, and in that time the agency has closely collaborated with the Israel Police on terrorism and international fraud cases. In 2017, the two departments worked together to identify and arrest an Israeli accused of making bomb threats to dozens of Jewish organizations in the U.S. 

But Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz pledged last week that Israel will not participate in any external investigation into Abu Akleh’s death.

Critics of the FBI investigation argue that it will be disastrous for the U.S.-Israel relationship, and that an investigation of an allied nation’s military could in turn encourage other nations to investigate America’s military. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a critic of President Joe Biden’s Middle East policy, called for the impeachment of any DOJ official, including Garland, involved with the matter. (Cruz has called for Garland to be impeached on numerous other occasions.)

The U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC) for Israel and the Palestinian Authority conducted a forensic examination of the bullet that struck and killed Abu Akleh. In July, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the USSC could not reach a “definitive conclusion” about whether the bullet was shot by an IDF soldier or by a Palestinian militant, and noted that “gunfire from IDF positions was likely responsible” but that the shooting was likely unintentional.

Nadine Farid Johnson, the Washington director of the free-expression advocacy organization PEN America, said an FBI investigation would serve to provide legitimacy, even if it reaches the same conclusion as the IDF and the USSC.

“Even if it doesn’t come to a different conclusion, the fact of the conducting of the investigation, I think, sends a strong message about the safety of journalists being able to do their job, knowing that that job is respected,” she told JI, and added that members of Abu Akleh’s family, who have criticized the IDF’s investigation, would not be able to have closure until the U.S. takes a closer look at what happened. “Having this credible, thorough, independent investigation into the death of an American citizen journalist would provide the information essential for Ms. Abu Akleh and her family to obtain justice.”

In the instances where the U.S. did investigate the deaths of American journalists killed abroad, the entities being investigated were not close American allies. 

“The FBI should not be distinguishing whether someone is a political ally, a friend or an enemy. We have a dead journalist who has died in disputed circumstances,” said Robert Mahoney, director of special projects at the Committee to Protect Journalists. “What we would like to see is that because this is a U.S. citizen, that the United States independently leads an inquiry.” 

Similar examples, Mahoney said, are the 2002 killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi, and the 2014 murders of freelance journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff by the Islamic State.

Pakistan, where Pearl was killed, is an American ally. But he was murdered by terrorists affiliated with the Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Kashmir-based Jihadist group. FBI agents worked closely with Pakistani law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend a suspect.

Foley and Sotloff were both beheaded by ISIS militants in Syria. Then-Attorney General Eric Holder publicly announced a criminal probe of the case just days after Foley died. Earlier this year, a top-ranking ISIS fighter involved with the murder of Foley and two dozen other hostages was sentenced to life in prison by a Virginia jury. 

“My sense is that it is not unusual for the FBI to try to investigate when Americans are killed overseas,” said Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at Israel Policy Forum. “I can’t recall it ever happening in the Israel context. So it certainly seems to me to be unusual with regard to Israel.”

As thousands of Israeli soccer fans head to Qatar this month for the World Cup tournament, Israel faces a complicated and delicate diplomatic task to secure its citizens’ well-being in a country with which Jerusalem has no formal diplomatic relations or presence.

Last week, ahead of Sunday’s opening ceremony, a team of Israeli officials arrived in the Gulf state, setting up a special mission for the duration of the month-long tournament that will cater to any emergencies or needs that might arise among Israeli nationals who are there. In addition, Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate, together with the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Sports, the Israeli Football Association and the Israel Airports Authority, launched an awareness campaign urging Israeli visitors to the conservative Muslim nation to behave in accordance with local rules and, specifically, to avoid friction with other fans.

Speaking to Jewish Insider from Doha, Alon Lavi, spokesperson for the temporary Israeli mission set up in the Qatari capital to assist citizens, said that the delegation’s most obvious concerns were related to the use of alcohol and drugs, which are “strictly forbidden here.” But, he added, that visiting Israelis needed to be conscious of teams and fans from other nations — particularly those from countries considered enemy states — and abide by the rules of the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), soccer’s international governing body. One of those restrictions is on the waving of flags of countries not competing in the games — Israel has no team in the tournament.  

“Due to the fact that we are Israelis in a Muslim country without diplomatic relations and there are competing teams, and their fans, from countries where we also have no diplomatic relations, we are saying to Israelis, ‘You need to take even more steps to make sure you’re really behaving properly in order to avoid any type of friction or danger,’” Lavi explained.

In a video put out by the Israeli government on Wednesday, celebrated soccer player Tal Ben Haim warns Israeli fans to act in accordance with local customs while in Qatar. “Going to the World Cup? From my personal experience, seeing the world’s biggest players is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but in Qatar the rules are different, so behave appropriately,” warns Ben Haim, who has played for several international teams.

“Use of alcohol or any types of drugs are not allowed. The punishments and fines are high,” he says in the video. “If there are fights with locals or other fans, you could be arrested. In the World Cup there are clear rules, so pay attention and respect them.”

Lavi estimated that as many as 10,000 Israelis are expected to arrive in Qatar for the games, with nearly a dozen Israeli diplomats on hand to provide them with consular services, including replacing lost or stolen passports, catering to medical emergencies or dealing any criminal incidents. The first-ever direct flight between Tel Aviv and Doha took off on Sunday.

“We are working under an agreement that was reached between the government of Qatar, FIFA and the State of Israel to allow a presence of Israeli diplomats to assist Israeli citizens that are coming to watch the games,” Lavi explained, adding that “according to FIFA regulations, when a country is hosting the games it needs to be open for all people around the world.”

“Every Israeli who has purchased a FIFA World Cup ticket for a game basically is automatically getting a visa to go into the country,” he said.

So far, Lavi continued, the Israeli mission has been well-received, with no incidents, although they have faced some basic challenges, such as purchasing a local SIM card using an Israeli passport and credit card, as well as a few surprised reactions from local residents glimpsing an Israeli passport for the first time.

An Israeli presence in the tiny, oil-rich nation is not new, however. Israel and Qatar established economic relations in the 1990s, with Israel maintaining a trade office in the country for a short time though 2009, before it was closed due to tensions over Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip. Israeli athletes have also competed in the Arab country in recent years, beginning with tennis player Shahar Pe’er, who played in the Gulf nation in 2008. Since then, Israeli swimmers, gymnasts and judo competitors have competed in international tournaments in the country.

Over the next month, however, how Israelis are received in the country is expected to be closely monitored, at least from the Israeli side, to gauge the possibility of a more permanent doorway for Israelis to enter the country. In 2020, Israel signed the Abraham Accords with two other Gulf states — the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — and reached normalization agreements with two more Muslim-majority nations, Morocco and Sudan, but there are doubts that Qatar, a key backer of Hamas, will join into any sort of agreement to normalize ties.

“If you watch Al Jazeera or look up other media outlets funded by the state of Qatar, you will never learn that 15,000 Israelis have started to arrive in Doha, or that Israeli media outlets have already started broadcasting live from Qatar,” Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), who has been watching the buildup to the games closely, told JI.

“Only in non-Qatar media you’ll find reports about Israel establishing a temporary consular office in Doha for the duration of the World Cup,” he said. (The World Cup Final is set for Dec. 18.)

Qatar, which has courted controversy over its human rights record, particularly its treatment of the thousands of migrant workers who built the stadiums for the games, is consistently one of Israel’s fiercest critics, even as it has actively worked to ease tensions between Israel and Hamas in Gaza by providing financial aid to millions of Palestinians living there.

“From what I’ve seen so far, I think Qatar’s arrangement with Israel is only temporary, made to serve Doha’s interests in organizing a flawless World Cup,” Abdul-Hussain concluded. “Once the tournament is over, expect Qatar and its media to go back to attacking Israel as they’ve been doing for decades.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) sent shockwaves through the political world with their announcements on Thursday that they will step down from Democratic leadership next year. But pro-Israel Democrats, who praised the two longtime Democratic leaders’ record on Israel and Jewish issues, said that the community is in safe hands with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as Pelosi’s anticipated successor.

Pelosi’s announcement cements the 52-year-old Jeffries, currently the Democratic Caucus chair, as the likely next Democratic minority leader. Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark (D-MA) is expected to become Jeffries’ No. 2 as minority whip, and Caucus Vice Chair Pete Aguilar (D-CA) is likely to become caucus chair. Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), currently the third-ranking House Democrat, aims to stay in leadership as assistant Democratic leader, becoming the fourth-ranking Democrat.

“The Democratic Party and the pro-Israel camp needs someone just like Hakeem to lead us into the future. In fact, I would say, if the pro-Israel community wanted to create a Democratic leader for the future, we would create Hakeem Jeffries,” former Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) told Jewish Insider. “Hakeem is not just interested in these issues, he’s devoted to them. He’s respectful of the American Jewish community. He identifies with it. And he’s just a really nice guy on top of it.”

Jeffries’ Brooklyn and Queens district includes a sizable Jewish community, including a large population of Russian-speaking Jews, and has touted the importance of the relationship between the Black and Jewish communities. Jeffries would be the first Black party leader in congressional history.

Former Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), who served as the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee when Jeffries was first elected in 2013, said that Jeffries is “completely consistent” with Pelosi and Hoyer on U.S.-Israel relations. Israel told JI in a 2020 interview that he was “immediately impressed” with Jeffries’ knowledge of the U.S.-Israel relationship even before he began his candidacy.

“He came to Congress as a voice of pro-Israel activism. And he served with the same voice and he has an ability to organize coalitions across a very diverse spectrum that will support U.S.-Israeli relations,” Israel said on Thursday. “So his continued leadership, assuming that the caucus comes to agreement on his candidacy, is a very positive and heartening step in the right direction for U.S.-Israeli relations.”

In addition to Jeffries’ local Jewish ties, he has also cultivated longtime relationships with figures in the national Jewish community.

Gideon Taylor, the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, described Jeffries as a “close friend” of the New York Jewish community. His ties with the JCRC go back “since he started in electoral politics” as a New York state Assembly member, Taylor said, when the group took him on his first trip to Israel. Jeffries has also been active on issues relating to antisemitism and hate crimes and supported funding for community safety, he added.

“It’s a wonderful thing when you have an official like him, who’s so connected both to the city and to the Jewish community, rising to the highest ranks in the Congress,” Taylor said.

“We’re very lucky to be, in all likelihood, getting him as the new leader of the Democrats in the house, because he too is a great friend of the American Jewish community and of the American-Israeli alliance,” said Norm Eisen, a former U.S. ambassador who served as a counsel on the House’s first impeachment of former President Donald Trump, who has known Jeffries for more than two decades.

Israel said he anticipates Aguilar and Clark to also “reflect the current leadership’s support for Israel.”

“I do not see any diminution of commitment and passion for U.S.-Israeli relations in the new leadership,” he continued. “What I do see is a new generation of leaders that will be around for the next 10 to 20 years that will build on the caucus’ commitment.”

As a party leader, Pelosi has often managed to keep her fractious and ideologically divided caucus together. Israel, who served for years in House Democratic leadership, said that Pelosi’s step back from leadership indicates that she feels Jeffries is a capable successor.

“I sat with Nancy Pelosi in 2012, ‘14 and ‘16 when she was considering turning the leadership over to others. And each of those occasions her No. 1 criteria for a successor was who could hold this dynamic and diverse caucus together,” he explained. “She wouldn’t be leaving the leadership today if she didn’t believe that the next generation had the skills and the ability to hold the caucus together.”

Jeffries, who describes himself as a progressive, has nevertheless found himself at loggerheads with far-left activist elements of the party, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — who considered recruiting a primary challenger to Jeffries — and the Justice Democrats, the Sunrise Movement and the Working Families Party.

“There’s a difference between progressive Democrats and hard-left democratic socialists,” Jeffries told The Atlantic last year. “There will never be a moment where I bend the knee to hard-left democratic socialism.”

He also campaigned in person for Rep. Shontel Brown (D-OH), who was running against far-left Israel critic Nina Turner, specifically highlighting Brown’s support for Israel in a stump speech to a largely Jewish audience.

Pelosi, the first female speaker of the House, and Hoyer both built records as reliable voices in defense of the U.S.-Israel relationship during their combined decades in Democratic leadership, forging close ties with Jewish and pro-Israel Americans.

“Speaker Pelosi has a legacy decades long of staunch support for Israel,” former Wexler told JI, “for an unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel, and a devotion to the American Jewish community that could not be greater.”

Israel said he had “witnessed her commitment to U.S.-Israeli relations up close, not just as a matter of her legislative priorities, but as a matter of her value systems,” having visited Jerusalem with her to commemorate Israel’s independence.

Wexler applauded Pelosi’s work both on shepherding through funding bills to support security cooperation and having “kept the Democratic caucus united in support of a staunchly pro-Israel set of policies, even though there are obvious divisions within the caucus at times.”

Eisen praised Pelosi for “presiding over a period of expansion and great achievement in the U.S.-Israel alliance.”

“She has helped steer the majority of the Democratic Party to maintain and deepen that relationship,” Eisen continued. “She’s also been a beacon to American Jews on the issues that we care about so much, including the priority as a community that we place on social justice.”

Israel likewise praised Hoyer’s commitment to the U.S.-Israel relationship, including his tradition of leading biennial trips with members of Congress to Israel, traditionally sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation. A Hoyer-led trip, Israel said, was his first visit to the Jewish state as a House member.

“One of Steny’s extraordinary legacies is how he organized members of Congress to support Israel with their votes as well as their voices,” he continued, predicting that Hoyer would also remain a prominent pro-Israel voice in the House despite stepping back from leadership. Hoyer said he plans to seek a seat on the Appropriations Committee, which controls government funding.

Wexler described Hoyer and Pelosi, longtime leadership partners, as having been “really an ideal duo for the American Jewish community.”