??  U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat, said she would skip Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, joining her leftist colleagues Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Jamaal Bowman, who represents the Bronx and parts of Westchester County. (NY Jewish Week)

?  A Muslim man who got a permit to burn copies of the Torah and the New Testament in front of the Israeli Embassy in Sweden this weekend said it was a stunt, and that he never planned on going through with it. (JTA)

⚖️  The sentencing phase of the trial of the Tree of Life shooter begins this morning. The jury has convicted Robert Bowers of murdering 11 Jews in the worst antisemitic attack in American history, and last week found him eligible for the death penalty. Now it must decide whether to impose it. (CNN) 

?  The former leader of an Orthodox private security group in Brooklyn pleaded guilty to federal charges that he sexually abused a teenage girl. He faces a minimum prison sentence of 14 years. (JTA)

?  The Seattle Times fired David Volodzko after he wrote a single column. The column itself, about a statue of Lenin, apparently wasn’t the problem; it was a tweet saying Hitler was not as evil as Lenin, which the paper said was “inconsistent with our company values.” (Daily Beast)

?  Some theater people are upset that a non-Jewish actress has been cast as Jewish comedienne Fanny Brice in the national touring production of Funny Girl. If not for Brice “and her chutzpah, many of us Jewish women specifically wouldn’t be able to be performers,” said actress Jennifer Apple. “So it’s integral to this role, specifically.” (JTA)

What else we’re reading ➤  Rachel Sharansky Danziger, the daughter of Natan Sharansky, has an essay in The New York Times about her friend and fellow daughter of Soviet refuseniks, Elizabeth Tsurkov, the Princeton graduate student being held by an Iran-backed Shi’ite militia. “If something seemed wrong to her, she fought to change it,” Sharansky said of Tsurkov, a past contributor to the Forward. “If something was immoral, she called it out, regardless of the cost.”

Shiva calls ➤  Marga Minco, a Dutch novelist who escaped the Nazis and chronicled Jewish life in wartime, died at 103 … Melvin Wulf, who led the ACLU and helped future Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg bring a landmark sex discrimination case to the Supreme Court in 1972, died at 95.

‘A peasant with money’: That’s one of the ways Craig Newmark, the founder of craigslist and one of the top 50 philanthropists in the country, describes himself. Newmark joined our editor-in-chief Jodi Rudoren at the JCC-Chabad in Aspen, Colorado, yesterday for a candid conversation about journalism and antisemitism. He credited his Sunday school teachers in Morristown, N.J., — Holocaust survivors named Rafael and Rachel Levin —  for teaching him, among other things, that “enough is enough” — hence, his decision to give most of his fortune away to nonprofits including the Anti-Defamation League; the Forward and other “trustworthy journalism” ventures; military veterans and pigeon rescue. 

On this day in history (1996): TWA Flight 800 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean en route to Rome, killing all 230 passengers and crew aboard the plane. Among them was Marcel Dadi, a guitarist born in Tunisia who was renowned for releasing records with instructions for how to recreate the tunes. He spent several years living in Israel, bringing his friend Eric Clapton to perform there, and is buried at the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. 

Today in Arlington, Virginia: GOP presidential candidates Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley will address the Christians United for Israel annual summit. Follow @jacobkornbluh for live updates.  

In honor of World Emoji Day, we look back to 2018 when the bagel emoji was introduced. Our reporter called the plain, schmear-less dingbat a travesty, asking: “Haven’t we suffered enough?”