Josh Mandel, a Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, is holding a high-profile virtual fundraising event on Monday alongside several pro-Israel heavyweights including former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, billed as a “special guest” on the invitation for the May 10 event. 

Elan Carr, the Trump administration’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, who is one of 15 hosts, shared the invite in a Wednesday morning tweet. “Amb. Friedman and I, with leaders from across the country, are proud to support front-running US Senate candidate Josh Mandel,” Carr wrote. “48th Treasurer of Ohio, US Marine, Iraq War veteran, and my good friend, Josh is a true patriot and great leader for our country.”

Justice Democrats launched an early warning shot into Middle Tennessee last month when it backed Nashville activist Odessa Kelly in her bid to unseat a House Democrat with deep establishment ties at the state and national levels. As the first primary challenger of the 2022 cycle to have earned an endorsement from Justice Democrats, Kelly is hoping an imprimatur from one of the nation’s leading progressive groups will lend some initial momentum to her fledgling campaign.

“I didn’t want to be one of those people that was just running to get their name out there and have a moral victory,” Kelly, 39, told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. “I want to win this race.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a coalition before the midnight deadline last night and returned the mandate to President Reuven Rivlin. The president is holding consultations this morning with party leaders before making a new recommendation, though he is expected to task Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid with the next shot.

Blame game: In a statement announcing that he was returning the mandate — without requesting an extension — Netanyahu’s Likud Party blamed Yamina leader Naftali Bennett for his failure to build a coalition: “Due to Bennett’s refusal to commit to a right-wing government… Netanyahu has returned the mandate to the president.” Earlier this week, Netanyahu publicly offered Bennett to go first in a rotation deal for prime minister, but Bennett rejected the proposition as political spin. Even with Bennett’s backing, Netanyahu did not have enough support without the Islamist Party Ra’am.

A small, bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers has introduced the latest attempt to give Holocaust survivors new opportunities to recoup unpaid pre-Holocaust insurance policies, wading for the sixth time into a fiery, long-running debate among survivors, members of the Jewish community and insurance lobbyists.

The bill, spearheaded in the Senate by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), joined by Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Rick Scott (R-FL), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Kevin Cramer (R-ND), would permit beneficiaries of Holocaust-era insurance policies to sue the insurers in U.S. courts to recover unpaid policies. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) introduced a companion bill in the House of Representatives.

The revered Manhattan restaurant Eleven Madison Park took the fine-dining world by surprise on Monday when it announced that it would no longer serve meat or seafood upon reopening in June. The restaurant, which frequently ranks among the best in the world, is well-known for its decadent offerings such as lavender honey-glazed duck and butter-poached lobster — dishes that chef and owner Daniel Humm acknowledged would be difficult to replace.

But having navigated the uncertainty of the pandemic, Humm emphasized that it was “time to redefine luxury as an experience that serves a higher purpose,” as he put it in a statement. “A restaurant experience is about more than what’s on the plate,” Humm said. “We are thrilled to share the incredible possibilities of plant-based cuisine while deepening our connection to our homes: both our city and our planet.”

A large bipartisan contingent of House members is calling to double funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP) for a second year to $360 million for the 2022 fiscal year, citing a “lethal threat to faith-based communities.”

A letter obtained by Jewish Insider, which was signed by 145 members of the House — approximately a third of the chamber — shows broad House support for increasing funding to the Department of Homeland Security grant program, which provides funding for nonprofits and faith-based organizations to improve their security programs. The letter was led by Reps. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) and John Katko (R-NY), the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, and lays out in stark language the threats facing the Jewish community and Congress’s need to stay vigilant. 

On Saturday, voters in Texas’s 6th congressional district in the outskirts of the Dallas-Fort Worth area will narrow down the field of nearly two dozen candidates vying to replace Rep. Ron Wright (R-TX), who died of COVID-19 in early February. With such a large field in the special election, a final resolution to the race is not likely on Saturday, and a runoff between the top two finishers is all but assured.

On Monday, former President Trump shook up the race with a last-minute endorsement of Susan Wright, a local GOP operative and the widow of the late congressman, a major blow to former Health and Human Services Chief of Staff Brian Harrison. Trump ramped up his involvement later in the week with a virtual town hall for Wright’s campaign on Thursday. Harrison, who had been seen as a strong Republican competitor, has played up his role in the Trump administration in an effort to attract the former president’s supporters. 

Last year, at the beginning of the pandemic, a small group of friends in New York and Israel were hanging out on Zoom, discussing the daunting prospect of dating in lockdown.

The product of their conversation was CoronaCrush, a private Facebook group for Jewish singles looking to couple up in quarantine. It took off. Within a week or so, CoronaCrush had attracted some 2,600 members from around the globe, a digital repository of hopeful personal ads posted in an uncertain time. A month later, users saw the addition of a virtual speed-dating service and then a matchmaking component, seeded with funding from American donors.