A bipartisan group of House legislators reintroduced a bill on Monday calling for a State Department assessment of lesson plans created by the Palestinian Authority and United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The legislation comes as UNRWA faces criticism for including material that encourages violence and intolerance in its curricula.
The bill was first introduced in late 2019, during the previous congressional session, and was reported out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee without opposition, but failed to reach the House floor before the end of session.
The Peace and Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act was reintroduced this week by Reps. Brad Sherman (D-CA), Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Brian Mast (R-FL) and David Trone (D-MD).
“Our bill… requires the State Department to issue a report on the curriculum and textbooks used by the PA and UNRWA, including the United States’ diplomatic efforts to encourage peace and tolerance in Palestinian education,” Sherman told Jewish Insider. “The U.S. should review the curricula in both PA- and UNRWA-controlled schools periodically to ensure that Israel is not demonized, and that tolerance, not violence, is being taught to the students in those schools. Our goal is to ensure we have an accurate picture of the curricula and textbooks in PA and UNRWA schools so that any problems can be fixed.”
The bill would mandate annual State Department reports to Congress for 10 years on whether curricula produced by the PA and UNRWA contain “content and passages encouraging violence or intolerance toward other nations or ethnic groups,” what steps the organizations are taking to reform curricula and whether U.S. assistance is directly or indirectly funding curricula containing hateful material.
Sherman told JI that the bill failed to make it to the floor last term due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has slowed legislative progress in the House. But the bill’s backers are optimistic for a better result this term.
“I find it hard to believe that any real, genuine objection to it can be expected,” said Marcus Sheff, the CEO of IMPACT-se — which monitors the content of school textbooks for compliance with international standards. “From speaking to congresspeople on both sides of the aisle, there is absolute support that [education supporting peace and tolerance] is the education that Palestinian children really need.”
Sherman said that a number of Senate offices have expressed support for the legislation. Sheff told JI that IMPACT-se has been communicating with senators about the legislation as well, and expects the introduction of a Senate companion to Sherman’s bill.
Recent reports from IMPACT-se have found that the Palestinian curriculum, which was modified in 2016 and 2017, still contains material which “incites young people to acts of violence, to jihad and to martyrdom” and “rejects absolutely the possibility of peace,” Sheff said.
The bill’s reintroduction comes on the heels of reportsthat the Biden administration has quietly allocated more than $100 million in aid to the Palestinians since taking office, after the Trump administration cut off aid to Palestinian Authority.
“Resumption of assistance to the Palestinians, particularly in light of COVID-19, is important,” Sherman said. “The purpose of this bill is to respond to well-founded concerns with respect to the content in PA-produced textbooks, and the use of those textbooks by UNRWA.”
Sheff indicated that the administration’s moves toward resuming aid make the legislation all the more pressing.
“I think that clearly there is an added impetus for this legislation to be in place if indeed there is going to be a resumption of aid to the Palestinian Authority and to the schools,” he said.
The author of a new biography of Philip Roth pushes back against critics who say he was too pro-Roth, and takes on the matter of the great novelist’s Jewishness
When Philip Roth summoned biographer Blake Bailey to his Upper West Side apartment in the spring of 2012 for what was essentially a job interview, he had one pressing question: How was a gentile from Oklahoma equipped to write about a Jew from Newark?
It was a reasonable concern, if also a somewhat comical one. From the start of his protean literary career, Roth established himself as the preeminent sociologist of Jewish-American neurosis — and as he searched for his own personal Boswell, he must have wondered whether Bailey would understand exactly where he was coming from.
Bailey, the author of a trio of well-received biographies on the novelists John Cheever, Richard Yates and Charles Jackson, had a clever response. “I’m not a bisexual alcoholic with an ancient Puritan lineage,” he told Roth, “but I managed to write a biography of John Cheever.” Bailey got the gig.
Now nearly a decade later, Bailey, 57, is ready to reveal the product of his labor. At nearly a thousand pages, Philip Roth: The Biography — released today by W. W. Norton & Company — is an exhaustive door-stopper of a book that, Bailey argues, lives up to the mandate given to him by his subject: “I don’t want you to rehabilitate me. Just make me interesting.”
For the biographer, that was no small task since Roth was a prolific philanderer who, as Bailey put it, “didn’t have a monogamous bone in his body.” In 1996, Roth’s ex-wife, the actress Claire Bloom, published a damning account of their relationship, Leaving a Doll’s House: A Memoir — a major impetus behind his desire to find an authorized biographer who would tell his story. But Roth was a careful, almost tyrannical custodian of his image, and he had already butted heads with — and abandoned — a previous biographer by the time Bailey came around.
“He knew that there were certain things that he could not filter out of his biography,” Bailey told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. “That didn’t mean he couldn’t do his damnedest, and he bombarded me with hundreds, possibly thousands, of pages of memos, telling me how I ought to think about every single nook and cranny of his life. The idea for Philip was, essentially, to write his biography by proxy, and that’s not what he got in my book.”
Roth, who died in 2018 at 85, isn’t around to see the final product, but Bailey believes he would have approved. Still, as the reviews have come in, Bailey has been surprised to find that some critics regard his portrait as overly forgiving and even exculpatory. “Philip hurt a lot of people in his life,” Bailey acknowledged. “But to say that I’m sympathetic and even complicit with his worst behavior is baffling to me. I don’t know how anyone can read my book in good faith and reach that conclusion. That is astonishing to me.”
In the interview with JI, he discussed his subject’s complicated legacy, the critical response to the book and why he may hold off on publishing a memoir he has already written about his experience working with Roth.
The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Jewish Insider: What do you think Philip Roth would have made of the book now that it’s finally out in the world?
Blake Bailey: What he would have made of the book itself or what he would have made of certain responses to the book?
JI: The book itself, but we can also talk about the responses.
Bailey: Sure. Well, as I quote in my epigraph, Philip said, “I don’t want you to rehabilitate me. Just make me interesting,” and I took him at his word. I think that I certainly emphasize his considerable flaws, as well as his better qualities, and I think he would have generally approved of that. Philip affected a sort of Olympian detachment from the world’s perception of him. He never publicly answered Claire Bloom’s memoir, Leaving a Doll’s House, et cetera. But that was very deceptive. Philip was a very vulnerable, sensitive person, and very obsessive — and he brooded and brooded and brooded. Hardly an hour passed that he didn’t brood about Leaving a Doll’s House. He knew that there were certain things that he could not filter out of his biography. That didn’t mean he couldn’t do his damnedest, and he bombarded me with hundreds, possibly thousands, of pages of memos, telling me how I ought to think about every single nook and cranny of his life. The idea for Philip was, essentially, to write his biography by proxy, and that’s not what he got in my book. Because I emphasize his more darling qualities — and they were considerable — but along with some really mortifying stuff, I think he would see that it sort of all came out in a wash and that his humanity comes through. That’s what he admired about my Cheever book — that I show the worst of Cheever, but the reader never entirely loses sympathy with him.
JI: You mentioned the responses. Cynthia Ozick wrote a pretty glowing appraisal in the Times Book Review, but there have also been some more critical appraisals centering on Roth’s dealings with women and your treatment of that, most notably in The New Republic. That kind of analysis wasn’t new to Roth; what’s your reaction?
Bailey: I think it’s regrettable that there’s been so much cultural pontification about Philip and his messy private life. Certainly, there’s a place for that. Philip hurt a lot of people in his life. But to say that I’m sympathetic and even complicit with his worst behavior is baffling to me. I don’t know how anyone can read my book in good faith and reach that conclusion. That is astonishing to me. And at the same time, I would ask you to remember that David Remnick and James Parker and many other people say the opposite — the opposite — that I am uncowed, that I have let the repellent in on Philip, as a result showing the whole man. And then comes Cynthia Ozick, who finally contends with Philip as a human being and as an artist of massive cultural importance. Thank you, Cynthia Ozick.
JI: Do you feel any sense of validation, given her stature in the Jewish-American literary pantheon, that Ozick has given your book a sort of critical imprimatur? You mention in the acknowledgments section of the biography that when you first sat down with Roth, he wanted to know how a gentile from Oklahoma could possibly capture a Jew from Newark.
Bailey: Do I feel like I pulled it off? I do. And there have been some nice comments about how I evoke the milieu of the early- and mid-century Jewish cultural ethos with some nicety. I’m happy about that. I think what Philip wanted was not to be assessed through a Jewish lens — a Jewish moral lens and a Jewish critical lens. That was something he tried to escape all his life, consistently saying, I am not a Jewish-American writer, I’m an American writer who happens to be a Jew. And that is not to say that Philip had a problem with his own Jewishness. He loved being a Jew. He loved living with Jews. He is now dead and buried at Bard [College] so he could be buried with Jews [the university has a small cemetery on its campus in Dutchess County, N.Y.]. So he didn’t have a problem with the Jews. But he thought that his cultural importance transcended that, and I don’t blame him, frankly.
JI: You say he didn’t have a problem with the Jews, but from the start of his literary career, the Jews had a problem with him, to put it mildly.
Bailey: They had a problem with him because, look, it’s 1959 when he published Goodbye, Columbus; Leon Uris had just published Exodus. Elie Wiesel’s Night was just being published, The Diary of Anne Frank was being staged on Broadway, and a consciousness of the Holocaust was dominant in the lives of American Jews. Not only the tragic dimension of the Holocaust, but the shame of it, the shame of almost being eradicated as a population because you were viewed as lower than animals. And to have one of your own glibly making fun of these parvenu vulgarians in Short Hills trying to pretend like they’re country-club Americans — they didn’t take kindly to that. But that was Philip’s sensibility as a sardonic and rather gifted and condescending young man, and it’s a wonderful book. And people nowadays reading Goodbye, Columbus, I don’t think they find it so shocking as people did in 1959, 14 years after the Holocaust.
JI: Sure. To jump a decade or so later to Portnoy’s Complaint, which was extremely controversial for its time, I didn’t personally find it that shocking when I read it in the late aughts. It was shocking at the time of its publication in 1969, of course, but it read, to me, more like a cultural artifact of Jewish neuroses.
Bailey: Remember what Alfred Kazin said. Kazin didn’t particularly like the book because he thought it was shallow. But he and all Jews of that second and third generation had that shock of recognition — that, yeah, that’s what it’s like, that’s what it’s like to be a son in a Jewish home and have that constant care, care, care and torturing with guilt and ‘I gave you everything’ and ‘Where are my grandchildren?’ That’s not me talking. That’s Kazin and critics of his magnitude talking.
JI: And Gershom Scholem somewhat famously wrote that Portnoy was worse than The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. That kind of criticism bothered Roth throughout his life, it seems.
Bailey: It was a constant refrain that “if I had to do it all over again, I would have never published Portnoy’s Complaint,” which means he would have never become a millionaire and an international celebrity. But not only the fact that he was regarded as a self-hating Jew, but he was regarded as unserious. People were always focusing on his sort of transgressive side, and Philip thought, certainly toward the end of his career, that he deserved a measure of respect, and he never got as much as he wanted from the so-called cultural journalism, especially the newspaper of record [The New York Times], which was a bête noire of Philip’s.
JI: Do you think he really meant it, that he wouldn’t have published Portnoy’s Complaint?
Bailey: Yes, I do. I mean, I think he liked not having to worry about money. He liked his lovely place in Connecticut and all of that kind of stuff. But being perceived as this unserious jerk-off artist was nothing that appealed to him even remotely.
JI: You say in the acknowledgments that at some point you might write about your experience of interviewing Roth. Have you given any more thought to that? Is that something that you might get to eventually?
Bailey: You mean, write a sort of memoir about working with Philip? I’ve already written it, actually. Whether I will publish it or not is another question. The reaction to the biography from certain quarters has been so disturbing that I don’t want to really throw kerosene on the fire. At the very least, I will wait a few years.
JI: When did you finish the memoir?
Bailey: To be exact, I finished it in Colorado this summer, where I was doing a fellowship in Green Mountain Falls.
JI: It seems appropriate that you’ve written an unpublished memoir about working with Roth, given that he seems to have written so many unreleased memoirs, like Notes for My Biographer and Notes on a Slander-Monger.
Bailey: Well, look, Notes on a Slander-Monger was never, ever meant for publication, and it’s incoherent and repetitive. But Notes for My Biographer was copy-edited professionally and listed on Amazon, so we missed that one coming out into the wider world by kind of a hair’s breadth.
JI: Do you think it’s unfortunate that Roth’s papers may never be released to the public — and may even someday be destroyed by his literary executors?
Bailey: If they do so, it will be in accord with whatever Philip’s final wishes were, and I think that’s his prerogative.
JI: You must feel somewhat privileged to have been privy to all these documents as you worked on the book.
Bailey: I was enormously privileged in that respect. Philip did not want there to be a lot of biographies. He wanted one to be essentially accurate. So he gave everything to me, and then he said, “After that, that’s that.” I don’t know of a precedent for that with a major literary figure like Philip, so I feel enormously fortunate. I’m sorry it’s at other people’s expense, if that’s how they see it, but obviously, I’m happy with it.
JI: Did you expect to receive some blowback for this book? Philip Roth does seem to be kind of the third rail of American literature these days.
Bailey: Right. The third rail. That’s well put. That’s how David Daley put in a consoling note he wrote me yesterday. Did I expect it? Yes, I expected it, but I did not expect it to be as bad as it has been. You’re not going to please everybody with a biography of Philip Roth. But to sort of make this a moment, a sort of moratorium on proper conduct, it’s reductive, at least where Philip is concerned — because Philip had enormously noble qualities, as Lisa Halliday, for one, and any number of other former friends and lovers will tell you — a generous, darling man — but he also had these other things. I mean, I’m not denying his worse qualities. They’re in my book.
JI: Did you approach the project with any sense of weariness or anxiety, given the grudges that Roth held throughout his life, particularly his falling-out with a previous biographer, Ross Miller?
Bailey: I think I would have been pretty damn stupid not to. He told me about Ross Miller’s shortcomings as a would-be biographer, and these were certainly borne out by what I discovered going over the materials he gave me — the taped interviews that Ross did and so on and so forth. But what I told Phil very firmly, at the beginning, was, “You and Ross were best friends. I’m very fond of you, Philip, but I’m not your best friend, I’m your biographer, and I’m going to give you the same deal that I had with the estates of my previous subjects, which is you have to give me everything, and you have to give me complete independence. And you will be able to check my manuscript for factual accuracy, but not interpretive content, and that’s the deal. Are you willing to accept the deal?” And he was.
JI: Of course, he died before the book came out.
Bailey: He was already terminally sedated, but I said goodbye to him on his deathbed. The only person I’ve ever watched dying is Philip Roth, which was actually a surprisingly enriching experience because Philip made it look very natural to die. I was sad on a human level. Nobody who ever got even a little close to Philip wouldn’t feel his absence keenly, and I do. But certainly, as a biographer — and this is a very compartmental distinction — I breathed a little easier.
JI: Do you feel as if there are any parallels — thematically, stylistically — between Roth and your previous subjects?
Bailey: A writer’s work either engages you or it doesn’t, and I was crazy about Philip’s work from a very young age. Why was that? Well, to me it’s like, what’s not to like? Though, of course, there’s plenty not to like: Our Gang and The Breast and The Great American Novel. You’re going to write some dogs. But I loved his work. There are five or six books that I will re-read till the day of my death. I think what Philip has in common with my other subjects is the excellence of his work, his cultural importance and sort of the dilemma between the person who lives the inner life, the person who lives inside of himself all the time, and the sort of precarious persona that that person formulates to meet the world. I don’t think I’m putting that very well, but it’s kind of fascinating to me.
JI: Do you think Roth deserved a Nobel?
Bailey: Oh, absolutely. I mean, the London Telegraph actually said that if the Swedish Academy continues to deny Philip Roth the Nobel Prize, they will lose all credibility. That’s the Telegraph talking, not me. So, yes, he deserved it.
JI: Roth was known for examining Jewish identity and documenting the Jewish-American experience, but he really didn’t seem to know that much or care that much about Judaism itself. Did you talk to him about that?
Bailey: Well, Arnold Eisen, who was the chancellor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, said that Philip Roth is the greatest sociologist of American Jewish life alive, when he was alive. I certainly think he was concerned with the social predicament of American Jews — and Israeli Jews, for that matter — and the political predicament. But he was not — at all — interested in sort of the mystical and ethnic ritual and esoterica. That just didn’t engage him on any level. Philip just didn’t have a religious bone in his body, just like he didn’t have a monogamous bone in his body.
I think that Philip had a very pronounced and Jewish sense of filial piety. The first thing that occurred to him, at his happiest moments in life — when he got finally the validation of the Jewish cultural establishment with his degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary, when he was celebrated in Newark for his 80th birthday, when they had Philip Roth Day in Newark in 2005, these happy, happy occasions — he always wished, above all, that his parents were there.
JI: What did his parents think of Portnoy?
Bailey: Oh, you know, Herman’s praise of his son’s accomplishment was always, “I’m busting my buttons!” And Bess, she kept scrapbooks of every mention of her son in the press — bad, good or in-between. She was just proud. She revered her son.
JI: Is Roth still in your head, now that you’re done with the book?
Bailey: Yeah, and it’s a nice presence. I was just doing Chris Lydon’s Open Source, and he was playing, as part of our show, his old interviews with Philip, and listening to Philip hold forth. Philip, in his maestro persona, spoke with such effortless elegance and wryness. That’s fun to hear again.
JI: You spent so much time with him, and in such an intimate manner — including hearing the stream of his urine from a bathroom in his Connecticut home, as you note in your book. Is there anything that you left on the cutting-room floor you want to mention?
Bailey: There’s something I left on the cutting-room floor that I don’t want to mention. That’s why I left it on the cutting-room floor. I mean, just to generalize, I had enough sordid anecdotes; I didn’t need anymore. Let me just hasten to clarify. When I say sordid, I don’t mean anything illegal. I don’t mean anything coercive. That’s not the nature of Philip’s sins, such as they are, and I want to make that very clear that it’s nothing ominous like that. It’s just embarrassing.
Since taking office in 2019, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has maintained a noticeably distant relationship with mainstream Jewish organizations in New York City, despite repeated overtures from Jewish leaders seeking face time with her.
But on Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez signaled that she is more willing to engage, joining the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, which represents the Jewish community to New York government officials and counts more than 50 local Jewish groups as members, for a virtual conversation touching on antisemitism, Holocaust education, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other issues.
The discussion with JCRC’s outgoing CEO, Michael Miller, posted on YouTube Monday morning, is the first occasion in which Ocasio-Cortez has publicly addressed such topics with a mainstream Jewish group in New York.
In the interview — part of a series of conversations with New York representatives in lieu of an annual congressional breakfast, which was canceled this year because of the pandemic — Miller asked Ocasio-Cortez to address the feeling among members of the organized Jewish community that she has been ignoring their calls.
“I’m very proud to have been deeply engaged in our local community and our local Jewish community from the very beginning,” said Ocasio-Cortez, pointing to her involvement with the Jackson Heights Jewish Center in Queens, the Jewish Community Council of Pelham Parkway and the Bronx House, a Jewish community center in the Bronx.
Still, the 31-year-old progressive congresswoman, whose district includes sections of the Bronx and Queens, acknowledged the frustration felt by Jewish leaders in New York who have been eager to meet with her. Her reticence, she suggested, shouldn’t be interpreted as a personal snub.
During her first term in the House, “especially with the crushing volume of everything that was going on at the time, I was really focused on our backyard,” she said, stating that she had put off conversations with citywide Jewish groups in an effort to address the more immediate concerns of her own district.
“I think that’s maybe where some of that feeling and sentiment had come from,” she told Miller. “But I’m very happy to be engaging now, and now that we have some time, in this transition recovery out of COVID, to be able to do that citywide and statewide connecting as well.”
The congresswoman’s office did not respond to a request for comment about any future plans to engage with Jewish organizations in New York. But her communications director, Lauren Hitt, pushed back against the suggestion that Ocasio-Cortez’s engagement with Jewish groups has so far been lacking.
“I’d just note that this isn’t her first event with JCRC, let alone a Jewish leader in New York,” Hitt said in an email to Jewish Insider, noting that Ocasio-Cortez had participated in a march against antisemitism in January of 2020. “She also met with the president of J Street and visited the Jewish Association Serving the Aging.”
For JCRC, however, last week’s virtual conversation with Ocasio-Cortez was notable. Miller had first inquired about setting up an in-person meeting with the congresswoman in 2018, not long after she pulled off a surprise primary upset over Democratic incumbent Joe Crowley. By the end of her first term in office, Miller had yet to hear back — as he recounted in an interview with JI last fall after Ocasio-Cortez, facing mounting pressure from pro-Palestinian activists, withdrew from an Americans for Peace Now event commemorating slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
“There is a lot of frustration,” Miller said at the time.
The effort to set up an interview this term went more smoothly. JCRC reached out to Ocasio-Cortez’s office about the virtual conversation on January 26, according to Noam Gilboord, the organization’s chief operating officer, and heard back in mid-February.
“I will tell you that her staff was very easy to deal with,” Gilboord told JI. “Once they had agreed to the interview it was pretty smooth in terms of getting us to the interview date and keeping the date.”
Throughout the conversation, Ocasio-Cortez seemed at ease as she discussed, among other things, her own “sense of spirituality” as well as her belief that social media platforms have allowed antisemitism and other forms of bigotry to flourish online.
“At its core, hatred, and the radicalization that we are seeing, is directly connected to digital platforms in general and Facebook in particular,” she told Miller. “We really need to make sure that we focus and hold these CEOs responsible for the algorithms that they know — they know, Michael — what they’re doing.”
But on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the congresswoman spoke mostly in broader strokes, and at points sounded less sure of herself. “When we talk about establishing peace, centering people’s humanities, protecting people’s rights, it’s not just about the what and the end goal, which often gets a lot of focus,” she said near the end of the interview, “but I actually think it’s much more about the how and the way that we are coming together and how we interpret that what and how we act in the actions that we take to get to that what — and so what this is really about is that it’s a question, more than anything else, about process.”
“That being said, I think there’s just this one central issue of settlements,” she added, “because if the ‘what,’ if the ‘what’ that has been decided on is two-state, then the action of settlements — it’s not the how to get to that ‘what’ — and so I think that’s a central thing that we need to make sure that we center and that we value Jewish — rather, we value Israeli — we value the safety and the human rights of Israelis, we value the safety and human rights of Palestinians in that process.”
Ocasio-Cortez, who emphasized that she has “done a lot of policy work in this space,” told Miller that it was “important to apply” such principles universally.
“Just like here in the United States, I don’t believe that children should be detained,” she said, alluding to an oft-repeated charge, particularly popular among some on the far-left, that Israel detains Palestinian minors. “Starting on those basic principles of human rights, I think we can build a path to peace together.”
Despite several potential areas of disagreement, Miller was deferential throughout the 38-minute discussion. “These programs are not debates,” he told JI in an interview on Monday. “What we’re trying to do is elicit from each member their point of view on the issues of the day and the priorities of the Jewish community.”
Ultimately, Miller said he was optimistic that the conversation would serve as a springboard for further discussions with Ocasio-Cortez about issues of concern to the Jewish community.
“The interview has concluded and we still want to continue to engage,” he told JI. “From my perspective, this was an opening.”
The bipartisan legislation instructs the State Department to study how the U.S. and partners can help promote normalization
Mark C. Olsen
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker addresses family, friends, elected officials, and New Jersey National Guard leadership during the farewell ceremony for more than 180 New Jersey Army National Guard Soldiers from Alpha and Charlie Companies, 2nd Battalion, 113th Infantry Regiment, at the Prudential Center, Newark, N.J., Feb. 4, 2019.
A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill on Thursday aimed at promoting normalization between Israel and Arab states. The bill directs the Department of State to conduct a series of studies and submit reports to Congress on ways the U.S. and its international partners can reinforce and expand upon the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
The legislation is sponsored by Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Todd Young (R-IN) and James Risch (R-ID), and seeks to promote normalization by developing and encouraging economic and development cooperation and people-to-people contact between Israelis and Arabs.
The bill argues that the recent normalization agreements “have the potential to fundamentally transform the security, diplomatic and economic environment in the Middle East and North Africa,” as well as “enhance efforts towards” a two-state solution.
The bill would impose a five-year mandate on the Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development to develop and submit to Congress an annual strategy for expanding and strengthening the Abraham Accords, through efforts including cultural, economic and security cooperation as well as plans for how existing State Department officers and programs, including the special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, can contribute to normalization efforts.
It would also require the federal government to examine how international donors, institutions and partner countries and existing investment funds and other U.S. government programs can be used to promote normalization. The legislation requires the State Department to consider options for creating an inter-parliamentary exchange program for members of Congress, the Knesset and Arab states’ parliamentary bodies, and to examine creating an “Abrahamic Center for Pluralism” to bring together scholars to combat religious and political extremism.
The bill further mandates that the Department of State submit a report detailing anti-normalization laws and other penalties for expressing support of Israel in Arab countries.
“The Abraham Accords between Israel and like-minded nations have the potential to fundamentally change the Middle East for the better,” Risch, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. “Former opponents and rivals have come together to address shared challenges, and I am proud to co-sponsor this legislation that reaffirms the United States’ commitment to strengthen and expand these historic agreements.”
“The recent peace and normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states will advance vital United States national security interests,” Cardin said. “I am proud to introduce this bipartisan legislation with my colleagues to expand and strengthen the Abraham Accords. This significant legislation would encourage other nations to normalize relations with Israel and ensure that existing agreements produce tangible security and economic benefits.”
In their own statements, Portman and Booker both highlighted the bipartisan nature of the legislation, which they said underscores American unity on this issue and the bipartisan commitment to Israel’s security.
Thirteen other senators have already co-sponsored the legislation: Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Chris Coons (D-DE), Susan Collins (R-ME), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), John Boozman (R-AR), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Josh Hawley (R-MO).
Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) is planning to introduce a companion bill in the House, and is working with both Republicans and Democrats on the legislation, a Schneider spokesman told JI last week. He did not immediately respond when asked when Schneider plans to introduce that bill.
AIPAC lobbied members of Congress on the bill, though the language had yet to be finalized, during its virtual conference last week.
Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) are urging President Joe Biden to swiftly re-enter the Iran nuclear deal in a letter they’re circulating for signatures from other senators.
The letter, a copy of which was obtained by Jewish Insider, calls for a return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action using a “‘compliance for compliance’ approach” — an approach in line with what the Biden administration has proposed — “as a starting point to reset U.S. relations with Iran.” Should both the U.S. and Iran rejoin the deal, the letter endorses the lifting of U.S. sanctions as per the terms of the JCPOA.
The senators lambast the Trump administration’s approach to Iran. The “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign launched by the prior administration, the letter argues, “not only failed to yield results, but has brought Iran closer to developing nuclear weapons.” The letter also criticizes former President Donald Trump’s military strikes against Iran and its proxies.
“The Trump Administration’s numerous military incidents in the Middle East repeatedly and needlessly brought us to the brink of war,” the letter reads. “These missteps have made Iran a more dangerous and destabilizing force in the region, leaving our country and our allies visibly less safe than when President Obama left office.“
The letter praises a Biden-era policy reversing a ban, implemented by the Trump administration, on Iranians traveling to the U.S.
Upon any future re-entry into the JCPOA, the senators urge Biden to conduct discussions with the parties to the Iran deal, Israel and the Gulf States, to extend the nuclear limitations on Iran and address the regime’s missile program and other regional malfeasance.
“These issues must be addressed with the same urgency as our efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions,” the letter reads.
The letter comes shortly after a bipartisan group of 43 senators sent a different letter to Biden, which urged the president to reach a comprehensive agreement with Iran addressing both nuclear and non-nuclear issues. That letter did not offer a clear endorsement of re-entry into the 2015 deal or sanctions relief for Iran. Liberal activists worried that that letter would be used by opponents of the 2015 deal as a sign of opposition to the Biden administration’s approach to the deal.
Former Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) joined Rich Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein on this week’s episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast.” Cantor shared his thoughts on the state of the Republican Party and the trajectory of bipartisan support for Israel in Washington.
Who leads the GOP: “Clearly Donald Trump has demonstrated that he’ll do what’s good for him, no question about it,” Cantor said. “And so it’ll be an interesting primary season for the midterm elections in 2022 to begin to understand what Donald Trump will do. If he wants to maintain his importance, obviously, he’ll need to play ball with the party, if you will. If he wants to do what’s good for him and believes he can be of outsize [importance] on his own. That’s a different story. And then in the meantime, clearly, the other leaders in the party nationally, [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has stated very definitively that it is his job to go in and make sure that Republicans regain the majority in the Senate. My former colleague and successor, [Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)] has said, without qualms, that his job is to make sure that Republicans regain the majority in the House. So at that point, I don’t think you have a national voice speaking for the Republican Party. And naturally that will come as we then pass the midterms and begin the primary season for the presidential race, which will occur in ‘24.”
Suburban living: Asked about the key steps Republicans would have to take in order to win back the House and Senate, Cantor recalled his early days in Congress with fellow Republican (Goldberg’s former boss) then-Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL): “I first went to Washington, and I was in Mark’s class, and Mark was famous for the suburban agenda. I will say today, that that’s what my party needs to regain its footing within the electorate that it seems to have lost during the last four, six, eight years. And it is about speaking to the suburban professional voter, because I worry that without those voters, states — like mine in Virginia, and others throughout the country — it’s just becoming increasingly difficult for my party to be electorally competitive….You’ve seen it take place in a state like Colorado, obviously, you’re seeing it increasingly take place in sunbelt states like Arizona and Georgia. So there is a real question.”
Growing up Jewish: “I grew up in a not-so-Jewish community. It was, obviously a suburban Richmond city in Virginia, small Jewish population, fairly prominent, but small. And so the district had maybe 1%, or less Jewish [population]. I went to a private school in Richmond, and I went to chapel every single day — it was a Protestant school. I often tell people I was exposed to prayer in school early on. And at the same time, in the afternoon, I’d go to Hebrew school. So it was sort of a great upbringing for me, because I think it brought it closer to the faith and who I am as a Jew… When I first got elected to Washington, being in such a minority within a minority, it was almost like people would parade through my office just to see this individual, like this creature — like a freak show. But again, I do think that I was able to project the notion that both of our parties should be open to all faiths.”
Special relationship: “Increasingly, I think two things happened on Israel. One is, as we saw, the more radicalization, if you will, of the progressive left. That term they use of intersectionality — I don’t quite understand all of it — but if you’re a victim, then we’ll be for you because we’re a victim. And it almost became [like] Israel after the Yom Kippur War proved to the world that it was no longer the underdog, and that it was actually the strongest player, certainly in the Levant, and in the eastern Mediterranean, if not throughout the Middle East… Secondly, during the Obama administration, there’s no question about it, [then-White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel — [Rich’s] fellow Chicagoan — was unequivocal at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: he was not supportive of Bibi [Netanyahu] as prime minister. And the sharing of political talent on both sides that played out in Israel reflected what we had going on here. So I do think those two issues really started to cloud the support for Israel? I do think it’s still somewhat bipartisan, but there’s definitely a lot more difficulty at it.”
Lightning round: Favorite Yiddish word? “The term, for which there is no English word and only Yiddish, is Machatunim” said grandparent-to-be Cantor, who earlier in the episode described meeting his wife, a Florida Democrat, on a blind date in New York City. Favorite part of Passover? “The eighth day at sundown.” Current reading list? Dealing with China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpowerby Hank Paulson, and We Should Have Seen It Coming: From Reagan to Trump — A Front-Row Seat to a Political Revolution by Gerald Seib. Favorite place in Virginia nobody has heard of? “Colonial Trail, which is a new bike trail between Richmond and Williamsburg and goes along the plantation alley along the James River, is a great new addition.”
When she became an internet sensation as the woman behind Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) viral mittens, Jen Ellis, a 43-year-old Vermont schoolteacher and craft hobbyist, decided that, rather than profit from her newfound celebrity, she would use her platform to promote charitable causes. With that ambition in mind, she has since auctioned off select pairs of mittens while partnering with companies like Vermont Teddy Bears and Darn Tough Vermont to raise money for local nonprofits.
“It has been a crazy few months!” Ellis, who has launched a website, Generosity Brings Joy, to broadcast her many projects, told Jewish Insider in an email earlier this week.
On Wednesday, Ellis — who lives outside Burlington with her partner, Liz Fenton, and their kindergarten-age daughter — participated in what she characterized as one of the most meaningful, though unexpected, experiences to have resulted from her recent success. In a virtual interview filmed by PJ Library, the popular free subscription service for Jewish-themed children’s books, Ellis spoke with a former student, Owen, about the Jewish concept of bal tashchit — which discourages wastefulness.
The idea for the interview came from Alli Thresher, PJ Library’s director of digital content, who reached out to Ellis shortly after the presidential inauguration, when Sanders wore her mittens on national television and photos began to circulate on social media. Thresher was impressed that the mittens — which Ellis had given to her senator as a gift five years ago — were made from repurposed wool sweaters and recycled plastic, and asked if she would be willing to discuss her process with a child participant.
“One of my personal favorite values that we talk about in our books is the value of bal tashchit, not wasting needlessly,” Thresher told JI. “It’s one of the easiest values to teach kids about.”
Ellis, who isn’t Jewish, was nevertheless enthusiastic about the request — and suggested bringing in Owen, now a third-grader who subscribes to PJ Library, for a Zoom discussion. “His mother came in a couple times to teach us about Jewish traditions and read books to us when he was in my class in first and second grade,” recalled Ellis, who said that Owen is one of just two Jewish students she has taught throughout her 15-year career in public education.
“I have been intentional to give them a platform to talk about being Jewish if they want to, and both of them have,” Ellis emphasized. “I am intentional about teaching the kids about all different religions, cultures and identities.”
In conversation with JI on Thursday afternoon, Ellis said the interview with Owen, who is 9, had exceeded her expectations. “He came prepared with all kinds of great questions,” Ellis remarked, “which he had numbered and written on note cards and clearly practiced.”
They discussed, among other things, why Ellis believes it is important to use materials that would otherwise go into a landfill — and she briefly demonstrated how to salvage old sweaters to make her mittens, which she describes as “swittens,” a portmanteau of sweater and mittens.
“We talked about how when you reuse something you give it a second life,” she said.
Ellis said she was at times amused by the line of questioning, as when Owen — whose mother did not respond to a request for comment from JI — asked his former teacher how big a snowball she imagined one could pack together with her rustic, paw-shaped mittens. “I said, ‘I think a pretty big snowball,’” Ellis chuckled. “‘The question is, what are you going to do with that snowball?’”
Ultimately, they concluded that the mittens would be best put to use for a snowman.
The video, according to Thresher, will be released online sometime between Passover and Shavuot. “My hope is that we can create a really fun piece about a really wonderful value,” Thresher said, adding that the discussion had “touched on many other valuable Jewish lessons in action: kindness to animals, welcoming guests, feeding the hungry.”
In the past couple of months, Ellis has leveraged her fame in an effort to bring attention to charitable causes. Still, there have been moments in which she has been able to sit back and simply enjoy the benefits of her rare status as a kind of internet celebrity. She spoke with Sanders, whom she long admired but never met, and is now at work on a memoir about her recent experiences.
Her discussion with Owen, particularly amid the pandemic, ranks high among them, she suggested.
“It was wonderful to talk to him,” Ellis told JI. “Normally, when I send a kid to third grade, I would still get to see them in the hall and in the lunchroom and at recess. But this year, because of the pandemic, we’ve been really isolated.”
Sven Kanz/Geisler-Fotopress/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
The Zoom virtual meeting program from Google is one of the most important programs for virtual lessons, video conferences and online meetings worldwide during the coronavirus period.
In March 2020, as in-person events were rendered impossible by the then-nascent COVID-19 pandemic, Jewish Insider began cataloguing the new world of virtual gatherings, held over a variety of streaming platforms. From organizations holding weekly, scheduled “Zoominars” to large-scale holiday celebrations, events that were once limited to those in a specific location were suddenly opened up to anyone around the world.
In many cases, virtual events provided an opportunity for organizations to continue to engage with their constituencies. But the shift to a virtual community provided an opportunity for smaller organizations and collectives that lacked the access or funding to book big-name speakers for events. With many of the nation’s top Jewish thinkers and policy experts — largely based on the East Coast — no longer able to travel, they addressed virtual forums from Illinois to Minnesota to California, beaming into homes and onto phones around the country.
Jewish Insider broke down the numbers and looked at which events topped the charts each of the past 52 weeks: