On Wednesday, The Atlantic published an essay by McKay Coppins for the magazine’s January/February issue on “The Most American Religion,” exploring what the third century of Mormonism could look like. The article quickly generated immense interest on Twitter, especially from Jewish journalists (Yoni, Yair, Rosie, Emma, Jeff, Bethany) and others. Jewish Insider asked Coppins, himself a practicing Mormon, to expound on why his article may have particularly resonated with Jewish readers.
Jewish Insider: There are a number of similarities between the Jewish and Mormon communities in America. In fact in the article, you recall an awkward incident where the CEO of the company you worked at explained internet virality by giving a presentation comparing Judaism with Mormonism and how Mormonism was growing faster because its members knew how to “spread it.” That episode aside, what do you think these two communities of ‘outsiders’ who’ve achieved a good measure of success in America have in common and what can they learn from the other? What do you think Jewish readers should take away from the article?
McKay Coppins: It’s funny, Jeff Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, predicted that this piece would resonate with Jewish readers for some of the reasons you allude to. I think both faiths are rooted in a certain outsiderness, which is a source of both pride and anxiety. I can’t speak to the Jewish experience specifically, but I do think the stuff I write about is not limited to Mormonism — the craving for external validation, the drive to succeed, the tension between wanting to fit in and clinging to the distinctiveness of your identity and traditions. Jewish writers and thinkers have been chewing on these questions for a lot longer than Mormons have, of course. If there’s one area I’d like to see my faith follow the example of Judaism, it would be in developing a richer intellectual and literary tradition.
JI: In the piece, you write about your experience attending a non-Mormon school and recalling “If my classmates liked me, I reasoned, it was a win for Mormons everywhere. In the pantheon of minority-religion neuroses, this was not wholly original stuff. But I wouldn’t realize until later just how deeply rooted the Mormon craving for approval was.” Can you expound on that? Does American society presuppose conformity or do minority religions pressure themselves to conform?
MC: Well, I think high school presupposes conformity, and that’s where I first felt the tug toward “cool Mormon” posturing that I describe in the piece. But in general, I think minority religions’ craving for mainstream approval or assimilation is often wrapped up in a sense of mission — it’s not just about feeling personally comfortable or accepted, it’s about representing our people. The danger is that chasing that validation can lead you to sell out everything that makes your faith tradition special.
As in-person convenings across the country have been rendered impossible due to the coronavirus pandemic, organizations have taken to the internet to connect with supporters and expand their reach. Since the start of the pandemic, Jewish Insider has compiled statistics, released weekly, on the webinars and online events being held across the community.
Weeks of Dec. 11 – Dec. 17:
2,743 — Jews United for Democracy and Justice and Community Advocates, Inc., 12/15: “America at a Crossroads” feat. Jonathan Greenblatt, Derrick Johnson, Sindy Benavides and Kathy Ko Chan
861 — Hadassah, 12/16: “One Book, One Hadassah: Live with Jennifer Rosner and The Yellow Bird Sings”
595 — American Jewish University, 12/17: “Talking Jeopardy, Mental Illness and Living with Loss” feat. Buzzy Cohen and Rabbi Sherre Hirsch
452 — American Jewish Committee, 12/14: “Hanukkah, Greeks and Jews, Then and Now: A Conversation with H.E. Archbishop Elpidophoros of America”
448 — American Jewish Committee, 12/17: “A Special Conversation with Miss Iraq Sarah Idan”
436 — World Jewish Congress and Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, 12/15: “Women in Contemporary Judaism: Jewish Unity and Religious Diversity”
337 — My Jewish Learning, 12/15: “The History and Artistry of the Menorah” feat. Jeannette Kuvin Oren
220 — The Forward, 12/15: “Why Can’t We Solve Homelessness Now?”
183 — The Forward, 12/16: “An Interview with Max Rose”
82 — Maccabi USA, 12/17: “The President’s Forum: ‘Miracle of Maccabiah Ice Hockey’” feat. Mike Hartman, Billy Jaffe and Jeff Schulman
69 — Maccabi USA, 12/16: “Israeli Parasports and the Israel Sports Center for the Disabled”
62 — Maccabi USA, 12/15: “From ‘Impossible’ to Olympian, the 2018 Winter Games and Road to ’22 with American-Israeli skeleton event and bobsledder, AJ Edelman”
59 — Brandeis Hillel, 12/15: “Political Protest from Hanukah to the War in Vietnam: a Personal Odyssey” feat. Reuven Kimelman
All figures are verified by Jewish Insider prior to publication. To be considered for future reports, email [email protected]
Former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), whose father, former Sen. Thomas Dodd (D-CT), served as a prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials — which began just over 75 years ago — reflected on the legacy of his father and the trials, as well as the lessons they offer for the future.
Dodd authored a recent letter to the editor in The New York Times about the trials, which he told Jewish Insider was meant to remind people of the significance of the Nuremberg Tribunal, the rule of law and the U.S. role in advancing global human rights.
“I don’t think there’s a single person left who was a prosecutor at Nuremberg,” Dodd explained to JI in an interview Thursday. “And so history fades.” [Benjamin Ferencz, who turned 100 earlier this year, is the last living Nuremberg prosecutor.]
The former senator said he sees the U.S. role in pushing for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg as pivotal.
“The United States insisted this was not about property and colonization and land or riches and wealth, the winner takes all, [it was about] the rule of law,” Dodd said. “It wasn’t to give these thugs… a fair trial, it was to lay out the evidence and facts.”
Dodd was quick to emphasize that the problems which necessitated the Nuremberg trials are by no means a phenomenon of the past, pointing to the rise of anti-democratic nationalist governments across the world and the authoritarian regimes in North Korea, Russia and China — and specifically called out China’s mass detainment of Uighur Muslims.
“We’re also going through a time where facts and the truth and the rule of law seem to be under assault, not only here at home, but around the world in various places,” he said. “And so I thought the timeliness of the letter was not only to check the box historically and remind a generation with no memory, except what they’ve heard from parents and grandparents or witness to history what happened 75 years ago.”
Dodd, a longtime friend of Joe Biden from their days serving together in the Senate, is optimistic that the U.S. can become a leader on human rights and the rule of law under Biden — after President Donald Trump, in Dodd’s words, “neglected” these issues — given Biden’s long tenure on the Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees and his previous stint in the White House.
“I’m confident with Joe Biden because I’ve known him so well. We sat with each other for 30 years on the Foreign Relations Committee,” said Dodd. “We’ve been friends for almost 40 years. He cares deeply about these issues. I can still hear his voice talking to Milosevic,” he added. “He’s certainly not been shy about lecturing our allies in Iraq and Syria and elsewhere about these issues… He argued that the only reason we ought to stay in Afghanistan was because of the human rights issue.”
While he’s not currently involved with Biden’s transition team, Dodd has a unique insight into Biden’s thinking on personnel choices, both as a longtime friend and a member of Biden’s vice presidential selection committee.
Dodd said that Biden seems to be prioritizing “competency” and those he knows and trusts for many administration picks, explaining that “we don’t have the luxury of having people come in and spending six months or a year becoming familiar with the agency or the subject matter.”
“He coupled that with a great lesson that will be hard for all future administrations, regardless of political party, to avoid, and that is to choose people who represent the diversity of our country,” he added. “The notion, ‘well we couldn’t find somebody of color or somebody who is of a different ethnicity or racial background,’ that’s always been a lie. And Joe Biden is proving it to be the lie.”
Despite debates across the Democratic Party on its approach to Israel, Dodd expects that, at least under Biden’s leadership — alongside Secretary of State-designate Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor-designate Jake Sullivan — the party will stick to the status quo.
Dodd added that he’s not plugged in on who Biden is considering nominating as ambassador to Israel, and also declined to comment on reports that he is, or had been, under consideration for ambassador to Ireland.
“I suspect… the priority is to deal with these domestic cabinet positions and related offices,” he said. “I don’t expect, generally speaking, any announcements on ambassadorships, except maybe in these very critical countries like China and Russia, [to] come any time soon. They’ve got a lot of work to do to get ready for the 20th of January.”
Dodd told JI that, in addition to his letter to the Times, he’s working to promote awareness and study of the Holocaust and other human rights issues through the the Thomas Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut, which focuses on such issues.
“We have a wide spectrum here of people we focus on, really to celebrate heroes who are continuing to make a difference in this field,” Dodd explained.
In commemoration of the 75th anniversary of Nuremberg, the center is planning regular programming highlighting the trials’ proceedings, according to Dodd, and will host a rededication in October 2021, marking the 75th culmination of the trials.
The anchor of the Dodd Center’s original collection was Thomas Dodd’s papers from the Nuremberg trials, including the multi-page letters he wrote to Dodd’s mother every day of the 14 months he spent in Nuremberg.
The former senator closed out his interview with JI by reading an excerpt from one of those letters, dated June 1946, in which Thomas Dodd grappled with the significance of the work prosecutors were doing.
“There is a great satisfaction doing one’s job, particularly a job like this… Someday, it’ll be recognized as a great landmark in the struggle of mankind for peace,” Thomas Dodd wrote. “I will never do anything as worthwhile again, nothing will ever be really as important.”
Thomas Dodd went on to reflect on the gravity of the crimes which he was prosecuting.
“Never would I have believed that men could be so evil. So determined on a course of war, of murder, of slavery, of dreadful tyranny. Never before has such a record been written,” the letter reads. “And men will read it for 1,000 years in amazement, and wonder how it ever happened.”
“You asked the question, ‘Why remind people?’ That letter does it for me,” Dodd concluded, choking back tears.
In the final weeks of their terms, U.S. presidents appoint dozens of individuals — including donors, friends and staffers — to positions on a number of federal boards, councils and committees.
It’s a move undertaken by all recent outgoing administrations, and largely seeks to reward party loyalty and service. Kellyanne Conway, who was President Donald Trump’s senior advisor for most of his tenure, was announced last week as a new member of the U.S. Air Force Academy Board of Visitors. Days before leaving office in 2017, former President Barack Obama appointed Valerie Jarrett, then his senior advisor, and Susan Rice, who served as his national security advisor, to trustee positions at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Many of the appointments are personal — often, an appointee will ask to sit on a particular board or council relevant to their interests.
But some of Trump’s recent appointments to the U.S. Holocaust Museum Council have raised eyebrows in the Jewish community. On Wednesday, the White House announced the appointments of Trump’s personal bodyman Nicholas Luna, White House attorney Mitchell Webber and Andrew Giuliani, son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to the council.
Being selected to join the Holocaust Museum Council is a “sacred” appointment, Abe Foxman, the former head of the Anti-Defamation League who served several terms on the board, told Jewish Insider. “Its mission and responsibility is to protect the memory and the lessons of the Holocaust.”
Other recent appointments to the council include Michael Glassner, who headed the president’s 2020 campaign committee, and Texas-based Republican strategist Jeffrey Miller.
The president is expected to make roughly a dozen more appointments to the U.S. Holocaust Museum Council before his term ends on January 20, mostly filling seats that will be left vacant at the end of the year. Council members serve for five-year terms, but often stay on longer if the current administration chooses not to immediately fill the seat. All of the current and former council members consulted by JI suggested that Trump will fill all of the seats before Inauguration Day.
The individuals who spoke to JI after Wednesday’s announcement were puzzled by the appointment of Giuliani. “Maybe he’s dating a Jewish girl whose parents are Holocaust survivors?” one former board member half jokingly suggested. Neither Luna nor Giuliani, who serves as a special assistant to the president, have any known ties to the American Jewish community or the museum.
While fundraising is one of the core responsibilities of council members, they also help to set the museum’s policies. “It is a serious undertaking,” said Foxman.
“You have to bring some sort of something,” Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt told JI. “Look, it is a nonprofit, which needs to raise money. So maybe you know very little about the Holocaust but you think the museum is a terrific institution, and you’re a very good fundraiser. Or you have a family institution. You need those people. You know, universities put people on their boards, who are not experts in anything, but who have the means to make other people be able to do their good work.”
Lipstadt, who served on the council after being appointed by President Bill Clinton and then again after an appointment by Obama, was hopeful that some of Trump’s upcoming appointments would include academics, noting that there’s been a tradition of having at least a few scholars serving at any given time.
The makeup of the board has changed over the years — Lipstadt estimated that Holocaust survivors comprised roughly 40% of the council under the Clinton administration. Many of the appointments that come at the end of an administration go to White House staffers.
“If you take a look — the last year of Clinton, the last year of Obama, the last year of Bush — you’ll be surprised by the amount of Washington professionals who have asked for it, and have gotten it,” Foxman said. Ben Rhodes, a top Obama aide, and Sarah Hurwitz, who served as Michelle Obama’s speechwriter from 2010-2017, were both named to the council at the conclusion of Obama’s second term, as were White House LGBT Liaison Raffi Freedman-Gurspan; Melissa Rogers, former special assistant to the president; and Maureen Schulman, whose daughter Kori worked in the Obama White House.
In addition to presidential appointees, a number of legislators serve on the council. Current members of Congress on the Holocaust Museum Council include Reps. Brad Schneider (D-IL), Ted Deutch (D-FL), David Kustoff (R-TN) and Lee Zeldin (R-NY), as well as Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Some of the legislators, including Deutch, Schneider and Scott, regularly attend council meetings, according to current and former members. Others, including Sanders and Rubio, have been no-shows.
Sanders’s office did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Rubio emailed: “This year has clearly been anything but normal, but Senator Rubio is proud of his legislative record of accomplishments — including the historic PPP, the Never Again Education Act, and the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2020 — all in the midst of a global pandemic.”
Fred Zeidman, who was appointed as the council’s chair in 2002, praised the nonpartisan nature of the board. When the Houston-based GOP donor was appointed by President George W. Bush, he inherited an entirely Democratic board of members who were selected during the Clinton administration.
“I basically said, in my first meeting, I’ll never forget this,” he recalled. “I stood up, I said, ‘Look at my tie. There’s no elephants on my tie. You know, we’re here for the survivors. And so whatever our political leanings are, we need to leave them at the door and work for the survivors. This just can’t be political.’ And everybody bought into it.”
Zeidman had high praise for a number of Democrats with whom he served, including Kitty Dukakis, Norman Brownstein and Lanny Breuer. “They said, ‘Fred’s right, let’s give him a shot.’ And it worked out really well,” he said. “There was certainly incredible divisiveness, just because of the [2000] election. And so that became a real issue. But we buried that very quickly, and we just had one hell of a run.”
A current council member, who requested that his name not be used, said that the political makeup of the board does not affect the day-to-day operations of the museum. “I think any of the changes really would be more in tone, than anything as far as the direction of the work the museum is doing.”
Lipstadt praised the executive leadership of the museum, including its longtime director, Sara Bloomfield, for maintaining its nonpartisan stance. “They’ve got to walk a very fine line. They’re a federal institution. And yet it’s a federal institution rooted in fighting antisemitism.”
“It is abused politically,” said Foxman. “That’s the other problem. Because the appointments are done for politics, rather than scholarship and other values. It’s done for political purposes, which while it’s good, it undermines it,” he added. “The Holocaust is neither Democratic nor Republican.”
For many online daters, the ordeal of seeking a romantic connection on a crowded digital platform can often leave them feeling deflated. The drudgery of swiping, matching and messaging, ad infinitum, offers little room for genuine interactions. The Lox Club, a new membership-based app “for Jews with ridiculously high standards,” according to its tagline, wants to inject some levity into that experience, while creating a sort of heimish space for those who feel overwhelmed and even alienated by online dating.
The Lox Club differs from other Jewish dating apps like JDate and JSwipe in that its users, who pay a monthly fee, must apply for membership and wait to be accepted after they are vetted by the app’s volunteer committee. Members are also required to include their full names along with a link to their Instagram pages. The app might best be described as an exclusively Jewish alternative to Raya, the members-only dating and social networking app geared toward entertainment industry types.
But the Lox Club, whose interface is designed to give users the impression that they have entered a kind of secret speakeasy, has its own approach. Among other things, it includes a personal matchmaking service available to those who want dating advice as well as a feature that limits the number of swipes to approximately half a dozen every six hours, so users won’t just think with their thumbs. “My thesis is that dating apps don’t have to be cringey,” Austin Kevitch, the Lox Club’s 29-year-old founder, told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. “I wanted to make it more of a fun experience, and the dating part is disguised within it.”
Since launching last month, the app — which costs $8 per month for an annual sign-up — has attracted more than 10,000 members, according to Kevitch, and membership is doubling every week. “We’re very intentional about reading every single application,” said Kevitch, estimating that the Lox Club accepts about 20% of those who apply. “We don’t care about the amount of Instagram followers people have,” he added. “We’re looking for more down-to-earth people.”
Kevitch isn’t particularly observant but believes in the importance of what he describes as Jewish values, citing family, empathy and ambition — and he hopes he has created a venue for those who share such values to meet. “Myself and a lot of my friends, we look for these cultural values in partners,” Kevitch told JI. “Those are surprisingly hard to find on the free public dating apps, where you just swipe through people for hours,” he said. “It’s just endless swiping and you’re searching for this person, whereas we wanted to just create this community where everyone meets those values.”
Despite a background in digital entrepreneurship, Kevitch, who lives in Los Angeles, is an unlikely online dating evangelist. In fact, he had never used a single dating app until last year, when he was going through a breakup and found himself in a funk. The apps, it turned out, didn’t help. “I tried two of them, and I thought that they felt just superficial,” he recalled. “I remember at the time thinking, like, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a more self-aware dating app?”
On a whim, he created a website, called it the Lox Club — its logo is an ancient tablet with lox-like texture — and added a short description. “I probably thought of a name that doesn’t sound like a dating app,” he said by way of explaining the app’s ethos. To his surprise, however, “tons of people started applying for it and sharing it all over Instagram.” When the pandemic hit, Kevitch was in the process of selling his previous startup, Brighten, an anti-bullying app, and he needed a new project. “Lox Club made a lot of sense,” he said. “With COVID, everyone’s stuck at home and lonely and there’s no other way to meet people.”
So he went for it, bringing on two engineer friends to help him build the app. “I was very intentional about designing it so that we have the photos and also a career and ambitions section so people can actually write where they’re at in life and what’s their story and what they’re interested in and, more importantly, what their dreams are,” Kevitch said. “Like, where they want to be in life. I think that says a lot about someone, lets you know a lot about compatibility and also is a great talking point for when you do start chatting with someone.”
Users who have joined the app within the past few weeks seem to appreciate it. Allana Blumberg, 21, who studies marketing at Ryerson University in Toronto, said she applied to join the Lox Club after a Jewish influencer she follows posted about it on Instagram. Blumberg was intrigued not only by the Lox Club’s Jewish focus but also by the possibility that she could use the app to make career connections because it isn’t entirely proximity-based. “It’s more global,” she said. “But I think that’s kind of cool because then you could also use it as a networking opportunity.”
From a romantic standpoint, Blumberg — who has gone on one date through the Lox Club and says she is “dating to marry” — explained that meeting a Jewish man is something of a priority for her. “I think it’s important for my parents too,” she added with a laugh. Blumberg had used Raya and Hinge, a free online dating app, but was disappointed with the results. “I found whenever I would filter it so it was only Jews, it was like the same people over and over again,” she told JI. “So I kind of wanted to just try something new.”
Isley Walker, who lives in Brentwood and works as an enterprise account manager at a stealth startup, feels similarly. Walker applied to join the Lox Club about a month ago and was accepted last week. Though she is not “dead set” on meeting a Jewish man, the Lox Club appealed to her primarily because she was frustrated by encountering the same supply of eligible bachelors on the publicly available dating apps. With the Lox Club, she happened upon a new stock of guys and has been pleasantly surprised, though she has yet to go on a date.
“Honestly, in my opinion, it puts the other dating apps to shame,” said Walker. “I actually already deleted them after being on this thing for a week. It’s just, in my opinion, far superior. You know, the guys on it are, for lack of a better word, they’re young, they’re hot, they’re rich. They’re guys that your grandma would be proud of.”
Still, given its fledgling status, it appears that some kinks still need to be worked out. A 39-year-old public relations executive in New York, who asked that JI not use her name, found out about Lox Club through a friend about six weeks ago, applied and got accepted 10 days later.
“I was really excited at first because it’s not easy to meet like-minded Jewish men, and I tend to not date Jewish men for that reason,” she said, adding that “soulful Jewish men” have been hard to come by in her New York dating experience. But in her time as a member of the Lox Club, she has been disappointed to find that the app has repeatedly presented her with men in whom she has already indicated her lack of interest by swiping left. “I keep getting the same candidates every single day,” she said with dismay.
Kevitch, for his part, vows that he is now hard at work fixing bugs and streamlining the interface. “We didn’t expect this many people to be using it so soon,” he said.
That’s a good sign, at least, for investors, some of whom, according to Kevitch, have signed on in the past few weeks, though he declined to disclose details, citing confidentiality agreements. Marissa Peretz, co-founder of Silicon Beach Talent, a recruitment and consulting firm in Santa Monica, worked with Kevitch on his last startup and decided to invest in the Lox Club when Kevitch brought it to her as a concept and asked for her take.
“I loved it since the beginning,” said Peretz, who also advises the startup. “I spotted this right away, both him and the company, as such a great opportunity, especially given the landscape in a COVID world but also just the fatigue that people have in the world of trying to find love.”
Peretz believes that the Lox Club prototype, whose revenue model is dependent on membership fees, can eventually branch out and cater to a diverse cross-section of users. “I joined with Austin on the basis of that assumption,” she said. “They’re kind of going after every pain point possible for people but starting with, obviously, something tailored more to the Jewish community,” Peretz added. “But I think ultimately, this has the opportunity to lend itself to many different communities out there.”
Kevitch expressed a similar view, noting that he envisioned a physical location for the Lox Club, similar to an exclusive, members-only space like Soho House. “Lox Club in real life would be awesome, like a place to bring dates or chill or meet new people,” he said. More immediately, though, Kevitch says that his company has lined up a number of partnerships for 2021, when in-person gatherings may be acceptable again from a public health perspective. “We’ve been talking to delis and speakeasies,” he said.
Kevitch has a profile on the app, but said he has little time for swiping because he has been busy working to improve the service for other users.
“Lox Club,” he told JI, “has pretty much been my girlfriend all of quarantine.”
The Senate passed a bipartisan bill by unanimous consent on Wednesday night which upgrades the status of the State Department special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. The bill now goes to the House for a final vote.
Under the new bill, the special envoy would become an ambassador-level position requiring Senate confirmation.
Per the terms of the legislation, the special envoy — a position currently held by former Los Angeles County deputy district attorney Elan Carr — would be the primary advisor and coordinator for U.S. government efforts to monitor and combat antisemitism abroad.
“I welcome the passage of this important bipartisan bill that will ensure that the U.S. remains a leader in the fight against antisemitism worldwide,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), one of the legislation’s original cosponsors, said in a statement. “I commend my Senate colleagues for passing this legislation, and look forward to the House quickly passing it and sending it to the president to be signed into law.”
The bill’s other original cosponsors were Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Cory Gardner (R-CO).
In her own statement, Rosen said, “To equip the State Department to better address rising antisemitism, it is critical that we elevate the role of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism to Ambassador-at-Large,” and that the bill will ensure “that the United States remains a leader in combating anti-Semitism internationally and has the tools needed to track and respond to this growing scourge.”
Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Patty Murray (D-WA), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Ed Markey (D-MA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) signed on as cosponsors after the bill was introduced.
The House passed a version of the bill, introduced by Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Brad Schneider (D-IL) and Eliot Engel (D-NY), in January of 2019 by a vote of 411 to 1 — Libertarian Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI) was the only representative to vote against the legislation.
Rubio, Gillibrand, Engel and Smith introduced similar legislation during the 115th Congress, but it did not pass the Senate during the previous term.
Outside advocates applauded the Senate for passing the legislation, with Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt calling it “an important step today to ensure that our government can better fight rising antisemitism around the world.”
American Jewish Committee Director of International Jewish Affairs Rabbi Andrew Baker concurred, saying the bill “will enable the U.S. to enhance our leadership addressing the scourge of antisemitism across the globe.”
Orthodox Union Executive Director for Public Policy Nathan Diament said in a separate statement, “With the passage of this legislation, the Senate is providing powerful new tools to the State Department to lead impactful international efforts to combat what has been aptly called ‘the world’s oldest form of hatred’ and roll back the tide of anti-Jewish hate.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) invoked his own ancestors’ history of fleeing Nazi Germany in a speech decrying the Trump administration’s immigration policies on the Senate floor on Tuesday.
Wyden’s parents were German Jews who fled the Nazi regime as children, but other relatives, including his great uncle, were killed in Nazi concentration camps. Throughout his speech, the Oregon Democrat accused the Trump administration of having “rebuilt the infamous paper wall” of anti-immigrant regulations enacted in the 1930s, “which kept too many Jews out of the United States, trapping them within the murderous regime of Nazi Germany.”
“Both my parents felt so blessed that they could get out of Germany. They made it over the paper wall. They had a chance to become Americans,” Wyden continued. “Most Jewish families in the United States have stories just like these. Some were able to get out; others were left behind, and some were lost.”
Wyden went on to invoke the story of the M.S.St. Louis, a ship that carried hundreds of refugees, mostly Jews, fleeing Nazi Europe in 1939, which was turned away by the United States and Canada. Hundreds of the boat’s passengers were ultimately killed in Nazi death camps.
“In 2020, caring people looked back and recognized that paper wall and our failure to save more people from execution at the hands of the Nazis. It was a staggering humanitarian disaster, a real stain on American history,” Wyden said. “Donald Trump and his advisers, on the other hand, must look back and see the paper wall as a big success, a playbook for their administration.”
Wyden also lambasted the administration for seeking to limit green card access for immigrants using public assistance programs, a policy he said had previously been used to “discriminate against Jewish refugees.”
Nikki Haley and Danny Danon, who recently served together as United Nations ambassadors representing the U.S. and Israel, respectively, are headlining a global virtual summit on Wednesday focusing on innovation and development in a post-coronavirus era.
Other speakers include David Kabua, president of the Marshall Islands; Guatemalan Foreign Minister Pedro Brolo Vila; and E.P. Chet Greene, Antigua and Barbuda’s minister of foreign affairs, immigration and trade.
Danon, who represented Israel at the U.N. from 2015 until earlier this year, told JI that his experiences in Turtle Bay inspired the initiative, which is aimed at connecting countries around the world with Israeli startups and entrepreneurs. In his work in New York and on diplomatic tours of Israel he led for his U.N. colleagues, Danon said he encountered great interest in Israel’s agriculture, technology and economic development.
“I understood the potential for us to create a dialogue and to build bridges on the platform of technology,” he explained.
Danon will kick off the summit with a one-on-one conversation with Haley, with whom he developed a close relationship while serving together at the U.N.
The former Israeli ambassador said he is hopeful that Haley, who represented the United States at the U.N. from January 2017 to December 2018, will continue to speak out about Iran during the incoming Biden administration.
Danon, who concluded his term in New York in July, expressed interest in returning to the Knesset on the Likud list if early elections are called next week, though he said he is working to convince party leaders to avoid such a situation.
In the interview with JI, Danon criticized his former colleague, Gideon Sa’ar, who announced last week that he was leaving Likud to form a new right-wing political party to challenge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Danon, who mounted his own an unsuccessful challenge to replace Netanyahu as head of the party in 2014, noted that he accepted his own loss despite having disagreements with the prime minister. “I, too, criticize things that happen in the party, but I believe that we should try and change it from within and not split to create new entities,” Danon said.
Danon suggested that Netanyahu’s refusal to appoint Sa’ar to a cabinet post despite his senior position within the party motivated the former minister to strike out on his own.
The “responsible thing to do now,” Danon advised, is for Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz to engage and resolve the dispute between them — to pass a budget and stick to the previously agreed upon rotation deal to prevent new elections. “I think that once you have an agreement, you should stand behind it. That’s the message you want to send to Israeli citizens and to the next generation,” he stressed.
“I don’t think the right thing to do now as we are still fighting COVID-19 is to divide the country and force another election,” Danon asserted.