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Daily Briefing Tuesday, September 27, 2011 FEATURED STORY Estee Portnoy wants BBYO to be like Mike Estee Portnoy has spent years helping Michael Jordan build his iconic image. Now she's trying to do the same for the Jewish youth movement that brought her and her husband together when they were teenagers.Read more » EDITORS' PICKS The ball in the Palestinians' court After a week of heated speeches at the United Nations, the Quartet put the ball back in the Palestinians' court with a call for renewing negotiations without preconditions, JTA's Ron Kampeas reports. AJC poll shows U.S. Jews 'grumpy' President Obama's Jewish approval level dipped below 50 percent for the first time, the American Jewish Committee's latest public opinion survey found. JTA's Ron Kampeas looks at the findings. Jewish vote in play for 2012 A Republican's victory in a New York congressional district long held by Democrats and a just-released survey by the American Jewish Committee appear to indicate that overwhelming Jewish allegiance to Democrats could change in 2012, writes Lawrence Grossman, AJC's director of publications, in a JTA Op-Ed. From Ramadan to Elul: A Chasid's journey For Lee Weissman, a Breslov Chasid in Irvine, Calif., who has developed close ties with local Muslims, this year's Elul caps a spiritual journey he began with the onset of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Andrew Friedman has the story for JTA. Capital J: Koch and Obama, Scalia and 'chutzpah,' Mearsheimer and Atzmon On JTA's Capital J blog, Ron Kampeas looks at Ed Koch's tangents en route to endorsing President Obama's reelection, the American Bar Association Journal's search for the first Supreme Court justice to use the word "chutzpah" in an opinion, and an "Israel Lobby" co-author's endorsement of a book by a former Israeli who promotes hatred of what he calls "Jewish ideology." The U.N.: A place for great power politics (Newsweek) Against the backdrop of the Palestinian statehood push, historian Niall Ferguson argues that the United Nations wasn't founded as a venue for historical redress. BREAKING NEWS Ed Koch says he's now on the "Obama reelection express." An Israeli government committee established to respond to this summer's protests recommended expanding social welfare spending by $8 billion over five years. A Dutch medical association has called on politicians and human rights groups to discourage male circumcision. The Kabul bureau chief of the Arabic-language Al Jazeera network was convicted in Israel of conspiring with Hamas. Jerusalem's district planning committee has approved a construction plan to build 1,100 housing units in Gilo, a Jewish neighborhood of 40,000 in eastern Jerusalem. The Obama administration reportedly is set to name Jarrod Bernstein, an official with the Department of Homeland Security, as its new Jewish community liaison. U.S. Rep. Howard Berman, a leading congressional Democrat, wrote the Egyptian prime minister urging him to export lulavs in time for Sukkot. A pipeline that carries gas from Egypt to Israel was attacked for the sixth time in less than a year. The Knesset will vote on a bill calling for full Israeli annexation of the West Bank, the deputy Knesset speaker said. Pope Benedict XVI's trip to his native Germany afforded the opportunity to reflect on the lessons drawn from the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, the chief Vatican spokesman said. A suburban New York JCC unveiled a sculpture honoring the 11 Israelis who were killed in a terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics.