Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz said on Wednesday that he doesn’t think renouncing his Turkish citizenship is important but that he would do so if he wins the general election because he doesn’t “want it to be a distraction,” he said. 

“I don’t think it’s important to do it. It’s certainly a nuisance issue for me,” Oz said of dropping his Turkish citizenship in an interview with Jewish Insider. Oz’s leading opponent in the Republican primary, hedge fund manager Dave McCormick, has sought to suggest that Oz’s dual citizenship poses a challenge to his ability to securely handle classified material as a senator.

When Israel’s newly installed ambassador to Morocco, David Govrin, recently addressed a gathering of young Israelis and Moroccans in Marrakesh, he summed up his first 14 months on the job by recalling a conversation with a local official: “He asked me if I’d encountered any problems so far; I told him I had one big problem,” Govrin joked. “The food is simply too good here.”

While there is no doubt that delectable and intoxicating Moroccan fare, which is also wildly popular in Israel thanks to the nearly half a million Jews of Moroccan heritage who reside in the Jewish state, might not be good for the waistline, Govrin told Jewish Insider in an interview last week that his answer was the truth – he has received a warm and genuine welcome since arriving in the Arab country in January 2021.

As Expo 2020 Dubai comes to a close at the end of March, the United Arab Emirates will host a soccer match between teams from the Abraham Accords’ signatory countries, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides announced on Wednesday. 

Players from Israel, Morocco, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates will face off in Dubai in the inaugural “Abraham Accords Games,” an effort being spearheaded by Nides and the UAE’s ambassador to Israel, Mohamed Al Khaja. The event will also feature a “dinner celebration” with chefs from each country. 

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who did not discover definitively until later in life that her family was Jewish, died on Wednesday, her family announced in a statement. Albright, the first woman to hold the State Department’s top job, was 84. Her daughter Anne said the cause was cancer.

Albright, who was born in Prague to a Czech diplomat, followed in her father’s footsteps, becoming first the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations before serving as secretary of state in President Bill Clinton’s administration.

It’s a race against time for groups representing Orthodox Jews as they work to lobby Congress against making Daylight Saving Time permanent.

The Orthodox Jewish community sprang into action last week following the Senate’s unexpected passage by unanimous consent of a bill eliminating the twice-annual time change, an accomplishment that reportedly even surprised some senators who opposed the legislation.

Following a classified briefing to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the state of nuclear talks with Iran on Tuesday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) indicated that major issues still remain unresolved between the U.S. and Iran before a deal is reached.

“The deal is not done. There are significant decisions that have to be made in both Washington, D.C., and Tehran” before a deal can be finalized, Murphy told reporters, adding, “There are still not-insignificant outstanding issues.”

Rep. Shontel Brown (D-OH) expressed hope that a nuclear deal with Iran would be “longer and stronger” than the original agreement in a statement to Jewish Insider, echoing the concerns of other House members who have recently voiced reservations over the Biden administration’s renewed efforts to reach a deal.

“While I don’t know enough about the details of the emerging deal, I have long hoped that negotiations with Iran would result in a longer and stronger agreement,” Brown told JI on Monday. “I will review any announced deal closely to determine whether it will make the U.S. safer, improve stability in the region, and strengthen the security of our longtime ally Israel.”

A range of prominent pro-Israel advocates will host a virtual fundraiser next month for Josh Mandel, a leading candidate in Ohio’s hotly contested Republican Senate primary, according to an invitation distributed by his campaign.

The Zoom event, scheduled for April 12, will include such hosts as Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus; Houston-based businessman and GOP donor Fred Zeidman; AIPAC lay leaders Howard Friedman and Michael Tuchin. David Friedman, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, is billed as a “special guest.”