According to a report in The New York Times (and every major newspaper in the world), the long reign of Benjamin Netanyahu, the dominant Israeli politician of the past generation, officially ended on June 13, when the country’s Parliament gave its vote of confidence to a “precarious coalition government stitched together by widely disparate anti-Netanyahu forces,” the Times said.

Naftali Bennett, a 49-year-old former aide to Mr. Netanyahu replaced him as prime minister after winning by just a single vote. Yair Lapid, a centrist leader and the new foreign minister, is set to take Mr. Bennett’s place after two years.

They lead a “fragile eight-party alliance,” the Times said,  ranging from far left to hard right, from secular to religious that many consider both the “embodiment of the rich diversity of Israeli society but also the essence of its political disarray.”

From Moment Magazine, “In Israel, the era of Benjamin Netanyahu, the nation’s longest-serving prime minister, ended with an unruly Knesset session. Israel’s transition from 12 years of Netanyahu dominating the political scene to a never-before-tested coalition cobbled together from differing, and at times diametrically opposed, ideological backgrounds, was accompanied by a soundtrack of constant interruption, heckling and boos.

“Naftali Bennett, Israel’s new prime minister, barely had a chance to deliver the most important speech of his life. In between the shouts from Likud and right-wing parties’ benches accusing him of being a liar and a traitor, Bennett tried to convey a message of polite pragmatism, coupled with a call for national unity — the very thing that was so lacking at that moment in the Israeli parliament.

“The unpleasant tone did not obscure the dramatic effect of the moment: For the first time in more than a decade, a person whose name is not Benjamin Netanyahu has taken the oath of office.”

President Joe Biden has named Tom Nides, a deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration, to be his ambassador to Israel.

Nides, a banker, whose responsibilities focused on management and resources, served in the State Department from 2011 to 2013, and developed a reputation of good relations with Israeli diplomats. Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, in his book Ally, which chronicles his ambassadorship, described Nides as “irreverent, hard-working, highly intelligent and warm.” Oren said Nides quickly earned his “affection and trust.”

Following the announcement that longtime Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski will retire at the end of next season, Jon Scheyer, the team’s associate head coach and a former Maccabi Tel Aviv shooting guard, was named the next head coach of the Blue Devils. Scheyer has coached for the Blue Devils since 2014, and served as head coach earlier this year in the absence of Krzyzewski, leading Duke to a suspenseful 83-82 victory over Boston College.

Scheyer grew up in a heavily Jewish suburb of Chicago and celebrated a basketball-themed bar mitzvah. As a teenager playing for Glenbrook North High School’s basketball team, Scheyer earned the nickname “Jewish Jordan.” He has been honored  twice by the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. From 2006-2010, Scheyer played for Duke University, twice serving as captain and leading the team to its 2010 national championship.

After a nationwide search, the Board of Governors of Gratz College has selected Dr. Zev Eleff as the college’s new president. He will succeed Dr. Paul Finkelman, who served as president for four years.

Dr. Eleff is currently chief academic officer of Hebrew Theological College and vice provost of Touro College Illinois. He is a professor of Jewish history at Touro College’s Graduate School of Jewish Studies and a member of the academic council of the American Jewish Historical Society. He is the author or editor of nine books and more than 50 scholarly articles in the field of American Jewish history.

Gratz College is a private Jewish college in Melrose Park, PA.

Library of Congress specialist Ann Brener, left, shows incoming White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Eric Lander and his family a 500-year-old copy of the Pirkei Avot shortly before he used it during his swearing-in ceremony on June 2. The 13-page volume, a subset of the Mishnah that focuses on ethics, contains an expression important to Lander, “It’s not required that you compete the work, but neither may you refrain from it.”  Lander and Brener said that using a 500-year-old Pirkei Avot to take the oath of office may serve as a reminder of an early collaboration between religion, technology and science: using a printing press to reproduce sacred texts.                                                                                                 Photo courtesy of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Shul member Graham Diamond has signed a contract with Veking Books of the Czech Republic to print a Czech language hardcover edition of Maybe You Will Survive, Aron Goldfarb’s Holocaust memoir as told to Graham Diamond. Publication date is late 2021. Diamond’s British publisher, Lume Books UK, is currently in negotiations to represent him for new editions across the European Union.

Graham Diamond led a “Lunch and Learn” session for our shul during Holocaust Remembrance Month, and discussed the harrowing story of Aron and his two brothers, who hid from the Nazis for three years in the forests of Poland.