Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire businessman, appears to be preparing for a potential 2020 presidential run.. He filed paperwork in November to get on the Democratic primary ballot in Alabama, a state with an early deadline.

Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire businessman, has been privately weighing a bid for the White House and has not yet made a final decision on whether to run, the New York Times reported, pointing out that should Mr. Bloomberg proceed with a campaign, it could cause a disruption in the Democratic race. With his immense personal wealth, centrist views, and close ties to the political establishment, he could present a threat to the candidacy of former Vice President Joe Biden, the New York Times said. Mr. Bloomberg, 77, initially bowed out of the 2020 race because of Mr. Biden’s apparent strength, but he has since grown skeptical that Mr. Biden is on track to win the Democratic nomination, and he does not see the two leading liberals in the race — Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont — as strong candidates for the general election, according to the New York Times.

Nita Lowey (D-NY, 17th Congressional District) is retiring after 32 years in Congress. Lowey says her Jewish identity as a lawmaker has been defined by membership on the Appropriations Committee, where she became the senior Democrat in 2013, and the committee chair since the beginning of this year.

Upon taking the helm, Lowey had the option of chairing a subcommittee she narrowed to Labor, Health and Human Services, which controls $150 billion, including spending on many of the women’s issues she favors, or Foreign Operations, which deals with just over a third of that amount. She chose the latter. “I took that committee because I felt that it was important to make sure that the partnership between Israel and the United States remains strong,” she said.

Lowey says she is leaving Congress because she wants more time with her husband of 58 years, Stephen, her three children, and her eight grandchildren.

On Election Day, Nov. 5, 2019, Virginians elected Eileen Filler-Corn as both the first Jewish and female speaker of the state’s House of Delegates. A Democrat, Filler-Corn, 55, has represented the Fairfax County suburbs of Washington, D.C., in the state chamber since 2010. She is also the first speaker from northern Virginia in four decades.

Andor Stern, recognized as the only Brazilian-born Holocaust survivor, celebrated his bar mitzvah on Nov. 11, the 81st anniversary of Kristallnacht, in his native Sao Paulo, in its oldest synagogue, Kehilat Israel. Stern is 91. His family was in Hungary when antisemitic acts began against Jews. In April 1944, the Sterns were sent to Auschwitz, where his mother and grandparents were killed in the gas chambers. He returned to Brazil in 1948.

Sophie Wilmes is the first woman and the first Jewish person to become the prime minister of Belgium. Wilmes, the mother of four from the Brussels region, replaced Charles Michel on Oct. 27 in the top post. Michel’s Cabinet collapsed last year, and Wilmes replaced him when he left for a European Union position. Both are members of the center-left MR party. Wilmes’ mother is Ashkenazi Jewish and lost several relatives in the Holocaust. Her father is not Jewish.

The Boston Red Sox have hired Tampa Bay Rays’ senior vice president Chaim Bloom as its new chief baseball officer. Bloom, 36, will be “responsible for all baseball operations” for the team. He previously spent 15 years with the Rays.

Bloom grew up in Philadelphia and went to a Jewish day school before studying Latin classics at Yale University, where he graduated in 2004. He is an observant Jew and as such will not work on certain Jewish holidays and Shabbat, despite his demanding schedule as a baseball executive. In 2001, because of Rosh Hashanah, he missed the Rays’ final game against the New York Yankees, which would determine whether the Rays would make the playoffs. During his time with the Rays, Bloom had a large jar of gefilte fish on his desk, part of an ongoing bet with an employee.