(JTA) — The Israeli bobsled team’s historic journey to the 2026 Winter Olympics ended in anything but storybook fashion on Sunday, as Israel’s own Olympic committee withdrew it from competition after learning that the team had lied about a member’s health.

The withdrawal meant that Israel did not compete in the four-man race on Sunday, the final day of competition in Milan and Cortina.

After finishing the first two heats of the four-man bobsled race as the slowest team, Israel planned to swap out Uri Zisman for team alternate Ward Farwasy, who would have become Israel’s first-ever Druze Olympian had he taken the ice.

But bobsled substitutions are only permitted in the event of an athlete’s injury or illness, so Zisman had agreed to lie and tell officials he was sick. He had reportedly obtained a medical certification for the false story.

In a statement, Israel’s Olympic committee said it had learned of the team’s plan to substitute in Farwasy “in an improper manner that does not meet the standards expected of Olympic athletes and is not in line with Olympic values,” and chose to withdraw the team from the race.

“The Olympic Committee of Israel views any deviation from the Olympic values as unacceptable and cannot accept inappropriate behavior,” the statement said. “It should be emphasized that, up to this point, the participation of the bobsleigh delegation has taken place in the spirit of sport and without any violations by the athletes.”

David Greaves, the president of the Israeli Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, told the Times of Israel that he was “deeply disappointed in the actions of the team.”

AJ Edelman, the team’s captain and main driver of its existence, took responsibility for the scheme.

“I apologize profusely for the disappointment,” Edelman posted on X. “But I will always remain proud that the team looked at their Druze brother, who had earned his place on the team, and unanimously said ‘we want this for you.’ I signed off on it and I take responsibility.”

Later, fending off criticism that he had compromised the very Olympic program he had sought to build up, Edelman appeared to blame Zisman’s mother for calling foul on the switch and said he did not regret it.

“I make no apologies for the decision. At all. The switch is not only common in our sport, we did it believing it was good for the country and to honor our teammate. We thought we were putting country first,” he wrote. “The end effect was not intended but I am proud of the team’s consensus in that moment. It was only an issue because the mother of the athlete replaced was upset it was her child, not another athlete. The decision itself was not in question and I remain okay with it.”

The disqualification ignited criticism of the team from both pro-Israel sports fans and those who had protested Israel’s inclusion in the Olympics in the first place. Edelman and Menachem Chen’s last-place finish in the two-man bobsled event last week was overshadowed by a Swiss broadcaster’s criticism of Israel and Edelman during the race. The broadcaster later removed the clip from its website.

On Saturday, Italy’s public broadcaster apologized for a commentator’s off-camera remark calling to “avoid” the Israeli team. The network’s director issued an apology for what he said was an “unacceptable expression that in no way represents the values of public service broadcasting or of RAI Sport.”

The controversies came after the bobsled team’s apartment was broken into while it trained in the Czech Republic. Israel was competing in Olympic bobsled for the first time, in what Edelman and some fans dubbed “Shul Runnings,” a reference to the Jamaican bobsled team’s similarly improbable run in 1988.

(JTA) — Emery Lehman, a Jewish speedskater and four-time Olympian, captured a silver medal in the men’s team pursuit on Tuesday, his second career medal.

Lehman, 29, and his teammates Casey Dawson and Ethan Cepuran finished 4.51 seconds behind the host country Italy in what was considered an unexpected loss for the United States. Since the 2021-2022 season, Lehman’s team had set three world records and won five straight World Cup season titles, the 2022 Olympic bronze medal and a 2025 world championship.

Lehman has said he plans to retire from speedskating after the 2026 Olympics.

“Eight years ago, none of us had skated a team pursuit together,” Lehman said after the race, according to NBC. “Now, to be finishing off with two Olympic medals, I’m pretty proud of it.”

Lehman, a Chicago native, took up speedskating at 9 years old to improve his ice hockey skills at the urging of his mother, Marcia. Marcia Lehman is a former executive at Chicago’s Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership and at the American Friends of the Hebrew University of Israel. She is also an alum of the Yeshiva of Flatbush, according to her social media.

Emery Lehman went on a Birthright trip to Israel in May 2018.

“Unreal experience seeing those who fought for Israel throughout the years,” Lehman wrote in a post from Mount Herzl cemetery in Jerusalem. “Seeing all sorts of graves from such a diverse group of people fighting to keep the people in Israel safe was very touching.”

(JTA) — No matter what happens when Israel’s bobsled team hits the ice at the 2026 Winter Olympics across four days starting Feb. 16, team captain Adam “AJ” Edelman has already had a year for the history books.

The 34-year-old Brookline, Massachusetts, native is the first Orthodox Jewish athlete to compete at the Winter Olympics, and now the first Israeli to qualify for the Games in two sports. He placed 28th in skeleton at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.

But for Edelman, the 12-year journey that culminated in Israel’s first-ever Olympic bobsled appearance — which he has nicknamed “Shul Runnings,” a spin on the 1993 movie about Jamaica’s bobsled team — is about more than success on the track.

“The Olympics were never a goal,” Edelman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview prior to the Games. “The Olympics were the tool, or the stepping stone, to get to the goal, which was to fundamentally redefine, or change, how our community — both the Israeli and the Jewish one — view investment into and the role of sport.”

Edelman’s journey began in 2013, when Israel attempted to recruit him to play for its national hockey team. Hockey had been Edelman’s first sport, which he played through college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was the first Shabbat-observant player in program history.

Edelman discussed the idea with the long-time alumni director of his Jewish day school, Brookline’s Maimonides School. Mike Rosenberg pointed something out to Edelman that ultimately sparked a calling.

“AJ, no one from this school has ever gotten to the level of sport beyond high school that you’ve gotten to that didn’t go to, let’s say, [Yeshiva University] or Brandeis,” Edelman recalls Rosenberg, who died last year, telling him about the two historically Jewish colleges.

Edelman couldn’t believe that. Out of thousands of Maimonides alumni (including his older brother, Emmy award-winning comedian Alex Edelman), only Edelman — who called himself “not a very gifted athlete” — had reached that level? He had a theory as to why that might be.

“I came to the conclusion that it had to be a self-selection process,” Edelman said. “That people were selecting out of sport as a journey before they got to that level. And why were they doing it? Because there was no priority placed on sport. 
It wasn’t something people in our community aspired to do or invest in.”

Edelman said the lack of investment in sports led to a lack of infrastructure and a dearth of role models for Jewish kids to look up to. He set out to change that — to “be the change.”

“The only way to do that was a certificate, so to speak, of excellence in sport, and that’s the Games,” he said. “The Games are essentially the certificate of, ‘you did something.’ So in that way, the Olympics became very, very much the tool for which I wanted to make the change.”

Edelman began training in skeleton after graduating from MIT in 2014. His initial scouting report was not promising: He was told he was “not athletic, would never make the Olympics, and would never be competitive in sliding sport.”

That did not deter him. Edelman moved to Israel in 2016, where he kept training, teaching himself the sport on YouTube when he couldn’t afford a coach. He ultimately clinched Israel’s first sliding sport Olympic appearance in 2018.

Then the pandemic hit. Edelman was pursuing an MBA at Yale University when classes were suspended. Edelman was visiting Jordana Balsam, a close friend who is an attorney in New York City, when the Olympics came up.

“He was telling me about his history with skeleton, and how he competed in the 2018 Games, and how he was actually really intrigued by bobsled,” Balsam recalled. “And in an offhand comment, I’m like, ‘Well, why don’t you pursue that, since you have this time off from Yale?’ And I guess something clicked in his brain, where he was just like, ‘Yes, I’m gonna do that.’ And the rest is history.”

Edelman began working toward bringing Israel to the Olympics in bobsled. Again, there were hurdles. He had to recruit a team from scratch. Israel’s own athletic authorities were skeptical — its Olympic committee almost didn’t accept an invitation to the 2026 Games. Funding was practically non-existent. Still, the team continued training, ultimately missing out on Olympic qualification for the 2022 Games by 0.1 second.

Then came Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent Gaza war, in which five members of the team were called into combat and multiple team sponsors backed out. Still, Edelman kept his eye trained on the 2026 Games. He used Instagram DMs to recruit a new team — most of whom play other sports and had never been in a bobsled — which also features Israel’s first Druze Olympian, Ward Farwasy.

Israel ultimately qualified in late January at an event in Lake Placid, the same location where Edelman had been told 12 years ago that he’d never make it. The team often trains there, as well as in Park City, Utah, British Columbia and elsewhere. Edelman said he is rarely in the same place for more than a few weeks at a time.

“Once he had something in his head — an idea, a concept, a goal that he has — he dives into it 200%, and it’s something that I admire greatly,” Balsam said. “I’ve never seen anyone so dedicated to their craft, to their sport, to their goal. It really is inspirational.”

But even qualifying for the Games didn’t end the obstacles. Due to Olympic security, Edelman said his team’s training time in Cortina was limited. Then the team’s apartment in the Czech Republic, where they were training prior to leaving for Italy, was robbed on Feb. 7. Edelman said thousands of dollars in personal belongings, including passports, were stolen.

Throughout the process, Edelman said the wave of support, particularly from American Jews, has been “pleasantly surprising” — especially compared to the reaction after he qualified in 2018, which he called more of a “blip.”

That support has manifested through donations and merchandise sales, with Edelman fundraising to support the team’s Olympic costs. There has also been ample news and social media coverage, inside the Jewish and Israeli communities and out. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has given the team a shoutout, too.

Edelman said the positive response has been all the validation he needed.

“There was a constant question of, at the end of the road, you’re doing this for a reason, right?” he said. “
And the only reason to do this is for the goal, the goal of making a change. Of people caring about sport. Of being the change. So if the change doesn’t come and it doesn’t make an impact, then all of it is irrelevant… I think that, from what we’ve seen in the last [several weeks], the answer is an unequivocal yes. It was 100% worth it.”

In Israel, sports fans are proud of the historic nature of the bobsled team’s Olympic appearance, but the story has not broken through to the same extent, according to David Wiseman, who lives in Jerusalem and runs the popular “Follow Team Israel” Facebook page that tracks Israeli sports.

“The media are very football [soccer] and basketball-centric, so they get all the headlines,” Wiseman said. “Someone like Deni Avdija gets significantly more coverage. They know of him being the first Israeli to play in the [NBA] All-Star game far more so than this. They think it’s cool that [Edelman] made it, but they don’t devote any more thought to it. Independent of Israel, bobsled is a niche, niche sport.”

Still, Edelman and some of his supporters have seized on the narrative draw of Israel’s underdog bobsled story — not to mention the apartment break-in and other obstacles — to amplify an almost muscular form of pro-Israel advocacy. Edelman commonly uses the phrase “victors, not victims,” in reference to his team and to Israel’s spirit more broadly.

Jared Firestone, who is representing Israel in skeleton in Italy, said there was “no chance I’d be here without AJ’s guidance.” Edelman helped coach Firestone in skeleton after he made aliyah in 2019, and the pair co-founded the nonprofit Advancing Jewish Athletes to support other Jews in sports.

“I think it means so much to Israelis and to the Jewish community at large to see, with a little investment, how much can be accomplished,” Firestone said. “Unfortunately for me and AJ, we’ve had to dedicate so much of our time that could’ve gone to training and progressing on the ice to fundraising, but hopefully we’ll be inspiring people who could help to create that infrastructure so the next AJ and Jared could just focus on sport and being even better than we are.”

Balsam, who also serves as a director of Advancing Jewish Athletes, said it’s hard to articulate how meaningful Edelman’s achievement of making the Olympics is to him, and to her.

“AJ has been very, very passionate about trying to cultivate the idea that sports can be a career path for Jewish kids,” she said. “He wanted to make it to the Olympics. He wanted to show that this is possible. So for him to combine both of his passions and achieve his dream, I think is something that he can’t put into words, that I can’t put into words, but it’s just immense pride.”

Now comes the actual tournament.

Israel will compete in the two-man races on Feb. 16 and 17 and in four-man on Feb. 21 and 22, with Edelman piloting the sleds. His Shiba Inu Lulu, the team’s mascot, is staying with Balsam in New York, where they’ll be cheering him on.

But no matter where Israel places, Edelman has one more box to check to fully accomplish his mission to change Israeli sports.

“There is one thing that I wish beyond anything, and it’s that I’m not the only one to do it,” he said. “
What I really wanted to accomplish through it was that someone else saw it and decided to do it themselves. That they saw that pathway opened by someone who was less than stellar, who  was not, like, a God-gifted athlete, and went, ‘You know what? I’m pretty good at what I do. I can do that.’

“You have to leave it better than you found it, and it has to be for a purpose, and that purpose is always going to be to inspire someone to do it better than you did.”

(JTA) — When Bad Bunny took the stage at the Super Bowl, the world didn’t just see a global superstar; we witnessed a masterclass in the psychology of belonging. As a member of the Jewish community — a group that has spent generations navigating the delicate dance of integration and identity — I realized that the Puerto Rican icon was demonstrating a lesson that every minority community in America desperately needs to relearn.

For far too long, the “minority experience” has been framed as a negotiation. Whether you are Latino, Black, Asian, or Jewish, the unspoken rule has often been the same: to belong, you must first prove that you are “safe.” You must demonstrate your utility, minimize your differences, and, above all, politely ask for a seat at the table. We have been conditioned to believe that acceptance is a gift granted by the majority in exchange for our docility or our trauma.

But look at how Bad Bunny occupied the Super Bowl stage — during a 13-minute celebration of Puerto Rican culture all in Spanish and featuring the island’s iconic sounds and dances and imagery that alluded to its colonial history, its vivid street culture and even its historic challenges (like its overtaxed electrical grid).

Bad Bunny didn’t ask for permission. He didn’t ask for pity. He didn’t frame his community as a project to be fixed, a political talking point to be debated, or a tragedy to be mourned. Instead, he led with culture. He led with language. He led with an unapologetic, infectious joy that didn’t pause to translate itself for those who didn’t understand. He performed as if he already belonged — not because he had been graciously invited, but because his presence was an objective, immovable fact.

Contrast that for a moment with Robert Kraft’s “Blue Square” ad against anti-Jewish hate that aired during the same Super Bowl. I am not here to join the chorus of critics who have picked apart its aesthetics or its reach. I am interested in the psychology behind it.

On one hand, you had a vibrant, loud celebration of contribution. On the other, a polite, minimalist request for the world to be afraid on our behalf. One was a refusal to cower; the other was a plea for protection. One said, “Look at what we bring to the world,” while the other said, “Look at what the world is doing to us.”

This is precisely where we lose people.

Belonging is not a debt you pay or a favor you beg for. It is a reality you demonstrate. When any community — but particularly the Jewish community right now — builds its public identity around its fragility, it inadvertently reinforces the idea that we are perpetual outsiders looking in. When we lead with our victimhood, we are essentially asking for a shield. But when we lead with our confidence, we demand that the world meet us where we stand.

There is a profound difference between advocacy that asks for tolerance and advocacy that asserts presence. Tolerance is passive; it’s a neighbor deciding not to complain about your music. Presence is active; it’s the music itself. Bad Bunny’s brilliance lies in his refusal to be a “victim” of the American mainstream. By refusing to be “palatable,” he became undeniable.

As Jews, we should pay close attention. Our history in this country — and indeed, the history of almost every immigrant group — is not a series of apologies or a list of grievances. It is a saga of immense, disproportionate contribution. We have built industries, shaped the legal landscape, and defined the American cultural imagination. We are not a “problem” to be solved or a vulnerability to be managed. We are a vital, structural thread in the fabric of this society.

I saw this dynamic firsthand while developing my YouTube show, “And They’re Jewish.” Over the course of interviewing dozens of Jewish celebrities and creators, a striking pattern emerged. Almost every time I reached out to book a guest, they would ask — almost reflexively — if we were going to talk about antisemitism. They were prepared for it; they had their talking points ready. But as the name of the show suggests, my goal was the exact opposite. I wanted to focus on their craft, their vision, and their brilliance. I wanted to remind the world of how much this community has contributed to the culture, rather than how much the culture has taken from us.

When we focus our energy on showing the world how much we are suffering, we are playing a game of diminishing returns. Sympathy is a finite resource, and it rarely translates into genuine respect. Respect is earned through the manifestation of strength and the refusal to let others define the terms of your existence.

In the fight for a truly inclusive world, we don’t win by highlighting our fragility. We don’t win by convincing people that we are weak enough to deserve their protection. We win by affirming our humanity and our power. We win when we show that we are here to stay– not because we were let in, but because we are part of the foundation.

This is the shift in advocacy we need right now: a move from the “Blue Square” of anxiety to the “Bad Bunny” of pride. It is an assertion that our right to occupy space is not contingent on the headlines of the day or the shifting winds of public opinion. Our identity is an inheritance, not a political stance, and it carries a dignity that requires no apology.

The lesson is simple, yet revolutionary for those of us used to fighting for crumbs of acceptance: Stop asking for a seat. Own the room. Our presence is not a debate to be won; it is a reality to be lived. When we lead with our humanity and our strength, we stop being a target for pity and start being a force for inspiration. If you want to see what the future of inclusion looks like, be a little more like Bad Bunny.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

(JTA) — A pitcher for the Minnesota Twins whose father-in-law is an Israeli-American pharmaceutical executive and political activist is one of the new additions to Team Israel ahead of next month’s World Baseball Classic.

With sixth edition of the international tournament exactly one month away, all 20 competing countries have now revealed their 30-man rosters. Team Israel, which qualified by winning a game in the 2023 Classic, announced its lineup on Thursday.

Those competing for Israel include a number of MLB players as well as some younger newcomers — though perhaps the biggest Jewish star in baseball, Chicago Cubs third baseman Alex Bregman, is instead playing for the U.S. team.

Suited up in blue and white will be San Francisco Giants outfielder Harrison Bader, the highest-profile addition to the roster, as well as Tommy Kahnle and Matt Bowman, MLB veterans who previously had no reported ties to the team.

For the WBC, players who are eligible for citizenship of a country are eligible to represent it in the tournament, regardless of their actual citizenship status. In Israel’s case, that typically includes mostly American Jews — and occasionally those married to American Jews — who are eligible for Israeli citizenship under the country’s Law of Return.

Bowman’s wife, Eve Levin, is an attorney whose father Jeremy Levin is a prominent businessman who lived in Israel as a young adult and once ran Teva Pharmaceuticals, the country’s largest company. Jeremy Levin is also a political activist who has lobbied for Democratic candidates and progressive policies in the United States as well as in support of democracy in Israel, running on a slate in last year’s World Zionist Congress elections. (Eve Levin’s maternal grandfather was also a businessman; he transformed his Jewish family’s hosiery business into the company that operates T.J. Maxx.)

Bowman and Eve Levin — who was on the legal team that exacted a historic judgment against Fox News last year — met at Princeton University, where he played baseball. He recently signed a minor league contract with the Twins, marking his third stint with the club in a career that has included affiliations with nine different teams. Most of his play has come in the minor leagues, but he has pitched in at least 16 MLB games.

Brad Ausmus, the New York Yankees bench coach who held that same role for Israel last time, will manage Team Israel next month. He managed Israel in the 2013 WBC qualifiers, in which Israel narrowly missed out on the tournament. Longtime big leaguers Kevin Youkilis (bench coach), Mark Loretta (third base coach) and Jason Marquis (bullpen coach) will join Ausmus’ staff.

Some previous Team Israel players have forgone affiliation this year — most notably Texas Rangers designated hitter Joc Pederson.

Simon Rosenbaum, who previously played for Team Israel and now serves as its general manager, said building the team is “always a rollercoaster ride.”

“We’re excited about the team we’ve been able to put together, especially because of how much more interest we’ve gotten from players talking to each other about their past experience playing with us,” said Rosenbaum, who also serves as the director of baseball development for the Tampa Bay Rays. “We look forward to competing in a challenging pool and hope that we’re a team our fans can be proud of.”

Here is the full roster (asterisk denotes returning Team Israel member):

• Pitchers: Charlie Beilenson, Josh Blum, Matt Bowman, Harrison Cohen, Daniel Federman*, Jordan Geber, Tommy Kahnle, Rob Kaminsky*, Dean Kremer*, Max Lazar, Carlos Lequerica, Josh Mallitz, Eli Morgan, Ryan Prager, Ben Simon, Robert Stock*, Zack Weiss*
• Infielders: Cole Carigg, Jake Gelof, Spencer Horwitz*, Assaf Lowengart*, Noah Mendlinger*, Matt Mervis*, Benjamin Rosengard, C.J. Stubbs*, Garrett Stubbs*
• Outfielders: Harrison Bader, Troy Johnston, Zach Levenson, RJ Schreck

Israel is competing in Pool D in Miami. After exhibition games against the Miami Marlins and the New York Mets, here is the team’s schedule for the first round (all times ET):

• March 7 (7 p.m.): Israel vs. Venezuela
• March 8 (7 p.m.): Nicaragua vs. Israel
• March 9 (12 p.m.): Dominican Republic vs. Israel
• March 10 (7 p.m.): Israel vs. Netherlands

As more than 90,000 out-of-town visitors descend on the Bay Area for Super Bowl weekend, Chabad rabbis are geared up and ready for kickoff.

“We brought in shmaltz herring from New York,” said Rabbi Moshe Langer of Chabad of SF, describing preparations for a festive Shabbat meal on Saturday.

The Chabad center will host some 70 people for Friday night dinner at its Nob Hill location, plus the Saturday Kiddush. On game day, Langer said Chabad plans to send its “Mitzvah Cable Car” 50 miles to Santa Clara and Levi’s Stadium “to go around and pray with people and wrap tefillin.” The vehicle is a replica of a San Francisco cable car that runs on an engine.

Sunday’s Super Bowl is being hosted in the Bay Area for the first time since 2016. The tens of thousands of visitors will deliver a boost of economic activity to the region — and a traffic headache for locals.

The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, a branch of Hasidism that is headquartered in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, seeks to connect Jews worldwide with Jewish religious practices, sending emissaries, known as shluchim, to cities and rural areas across the globe.

Chabad of SF will also hand out bowls of matzah ball soup and care packages to homeless people in downtown San Francisco “in honor of the Super Bowl,” Langer said.

Chabad of Santa Clara, more centrally located about a mile from Levi’s Stadium, will serve as a hub for religiously observant Super Bowl attendees. 

“We’re providing spiritual logistics,” said Rabbi Yigal Rosenberg, director of Chabad of Santa Clara along with his wife, Elana Rosenberg.

The Chabad house published a list of community resources for Jewish visitors, including kosher restaurants, grocery stores, daily minyans and mikvahs, or ritual baths, in the area.

For what he’s calling “Touchdown Shabbat,” Rosenberg said the Chabad house plans to host around 100 people for Friday night dinner. 

“As the city fills with Super Bowl energy, Friday night ushers in something deeper,” the webpage for Touchdown Shabbat states. “Shabbat in Santa Clara is a chance to slow down, unplug, and step into an atmosphere of warmth, song, and connection.”

On Sunday, Chabad of Santa Clara will host morning and afternoon prayers followed by a kosher tailgate serving steak, wings and, of course, beer. Transportation to the stadium will be provided After the 3:30 p.m. game, the Chabad center will host an evening prayer service at 9:30 p.m.

“Our main message is, you can be a Jew anywhere,” Rosenberg said.

Football is a “very American sport. It’s something that Americans do,” he said. “You can do it and still do it in a Jewish way.”

Rosenberg observed that most of the out-of-town guests who signed up for Touchdown Shabbat are fans of the New England Patriots, not the Seattle Seahawks, perhaps owing to the Boston area’s large Orthodox population.

Still, he said, Chabad will be wrapping tefillin on Sunday morning to support both teams.

Both Langer and Rosenberg said they plan to brave Sunday’s crowds to do what the Chabad movement is perhaps most known for: facilitating the observance of Jewish mitzvot, such as offering boys and men the opportunity to wrap tefillin.

“We’ll probably wind up doing a service there in the afternoon at Levi’s Stadium. And be there for tefillin,” said Rosenberg, who also serves as a chaplain for the local police department.

Rosenberg said his efforts to center Judaism amid the football frenzy are in part an homage to his father, Rabbi Yosef Rosenberg, who died last year. 

The elder Rosenberg is considered a pioneer in the Chabad movement, who in the late 1980s was central to the legal effort to allow Hanukkah menorahs in public spaces. Today, menorah lightings are ubiquitous in American cities, providing public visibility to Jewish religious practices.

“We’re continuing that legacy,” the younger Rosenberg said.

For Langer, the opportunities presented by the Super Bowl are nearly endless. He said another idea, still in the works, involves his father, Rabbi Yosef Langer, the one-man San Francisco institution known as the “Rally Rabbi.”

“We’re trying to get somebody to put my father on the 50-yard line to blow the shofar,” Moshe Langer said. “We’re still working on that.”

(JTA) — Portland Trail Blazers star Deni Avdija’s meteoric rise has officially reached a new stratosphere, as the 25-year-old forward has become the NBA’s first-ever Israeli All-Star. 

Avdija was named an All-Star reserve for the Western Conference on Sunday, an expected but deserved nod after the northern Israel native finished seventh in All-Star voting with over 2.2 million votes, ahead of NBA legends LeBron James and Kevin Durant. Avdija’s breakout performance this season has earned him repeated praise from James and others across the league.

Avdija’s star turn began last year in his first season with Portland, when he further captured the adoration of Jewish fans across Israel and the U.S. But he took another step forward this season, averaging 25.8 points, 6.8 assists and 7.2 rebounds per game. His points and assists clips are by far the best of his career, and rank 13th and 12th in the NBA, respectively. He’s considered a front-runner for the league’s Most Improved Player award.

For close observers of Israeli basketball, Avdija’s All-Star selection is the culmination of a promising career that began as a teenage star with Maccabi Tel Aviv and made him the first Israeli chosen in the top 10 in an NBA draft.

“Deni Avdija being named an NBA All-Star reserve is an unbelievable achievement in the mind of every Israeli basketball fan,” Moshe Halickman, who covers basketball for the popular Sports Rabbi website, wrote in an essay for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “This is a dream come true for many — a dream that became realistic and even a must-happen during his breakout season — but something that in his first five seasons in the NBA never came across as something that was going to be real.”

Halickman, who has covered Avdija in Washington, D.C., and in Israel, wrote that Avdija is not only considered the greatest Israeli hooper of all time, but perhaps the best athlete to come out of Israel, period.

Oded Shalom, who coached Avdija on Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Under-15 and Under-16 teams, echoed that sentiment in a recent profile of Avdija in The Athletic. 

“Even though he is only 25, I think he is Israel’s most successful athlete in history,’’ Shalom said. “We’ve had some great gymnasts — and I hope everyone forgives me for saying it, because we’ve had some great athletes — but I think Deni has become the greatest.”

Avdija’s ascension has also come against the backdrop of the Gaza war and a reported global rise in antisemitism, which he has said affects him personally.

“I’m an athlete. I don’t really get into politics, because it’s not my job,” Avdija told The Athletic. “I obviously stand for my country, because that’s where I’m from. It’s frustrating to see all the hate. Like, I have a good game or get All-Star votes, and all the comments are people connecting me to politics. Like, why can’t I just be a good basketball player? Why does it matter if I’m from Israel, or wherever in the world, or what my race is? Just respect me as a basketball player.”

Now, Avdija’s talents will be on display at the NBA All-Star Game, on Sunday, Feb. 15, in Los Angeles.

This piece was published in cooperation with the Forward.

Long before FIFA, the World Cup’s organizer, created a peace prize, an international roster of Jewish soccer players, many of whom would become refugees from fascist Europe, raced across American fields. Jewish media on both coasts helped readers follow along — sometimes even in Yiddish.

Sports coverage in the earliest days of the Forverts, America’s longtime Yiddish daily, was sparse and eclectic. Eventually its reporters would write about chess matches, cover boxing competitions, explain the ethos of baseball to new immigrants and, as late as the 1950s, even feature a column about fishing called “Yidn Khapn Fish” — “Jews Catch Fish.”

In November 1897, though, a mere seven months after the founding of the Forverts, front-page real estate was devoted to a dramatically violent story of a 17-year-old’s mishap with a soccer ball. The youth was shot by a police officer who attempted to stop him from advancing the ball down the Upper West Side and then charged the poor young chap with disorderly conduct.

In 1911, on the West Coast, a more playful soccer scenario was reported by The Emanu-El, the original name of J. As part of a series of vaudeville performances, a British act known as “Ninton and Wooten” would perform an exhibition soccer match on bicycles at San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre, using their tires rather than their feet to kick it around.

A decade later, by 1920, the Forverts expressed its delight at how Polish Jewish youth were creating soccer clubs and reported on Krakow’s soccer match between Polish Jewish and Polish Gentile youth. 

“Krakow’s Maccabee Club is in first place” the article stated. “It’s been in existence for several years already, and has several hundred members.” While the Maccabee Club was largely identified with Zionism, another club, Morgenshtern, belonged to the Jewish socialists. 

A 1920 Emanu-El item shone the light of science on the nascent discussion of Jews and soccer, presenting data gathered by a recent Menorah Society study that showed Jewish soccer skills were among the talents helping Jewish boys find “respect” on campus. 

By the mid-1920s, with the rise of fascism in Europe, Jewish sports societies like Maccabi and Hakoah enabled talented Jewish players to find a home for their skills, and sent them on tour in America playing exhibition games. With the worsening situation in Europe, many who first came to tour and play in America later found themselves seeking asylum here as refugees from Hitler.

Enter Erno Schwarz’s mad soccer skills. 

It was front-page news and of note on both coasts when Hungarian Jewish soccer star Schwarz’s Hakoah (“The Strength” in Hebrew) team played the Brooklyn Wanderers in 1926. 

Again, Emanu-El presented data to back up the East Coast soccer nachas. Hakoah, Emanu-El told readers, had over 260,000 members. The Viennese club was about to become a prominent face of American sports, said the Bay Area’s Jewish paper of note. 

Schwarz’s performance against the Brooklyn team that day in 1926 took place at Ebbets Field in Crown Heights, then home of the Dodgers. The Forverts made sure readers were on time for the match of the year, warning them: “The game starts promptly at 4 p.m. Should you happen to be even 5 minutes late, you’ll lose those 5 minutes of watching their splendid game.”

Schwarz, Hakoah’s acclaimed forward, manager and the first Jew to coach the U.S. men’s soccer team, was there, offering his talents. Their competition, the Brooklyn Wanderers, made a home for refugee players and local Jewish players who were unwelcome on other teams.

A bit of internal communal tsuris, or trouble, followed Hakoah though, when the Emanu-El reported that the team was scheduled to play on Shabbat: “The Board of Jewish Ministers has learned with great regret that the Jewish soccer team ‘Hakoah’ now visiting the United States, is scheduled to play and charge admission fees on the Jewish Sabbath in violation of the tenets of Judaism and deplores this failure of the ‘Hakoah’ team and management to respect the sensibilities of religious Jews.” 

Hakoah left, according to Emanu-El, after playing 10 games against some of the best American teams, winning six, losing two and tying two, in front of 200,000 attendees. When they returned in the early 1930s, Schwarz was aided in securing refugee status and played exhibition games to fundraise for his fellow European Jewish refugees who no longer had homes to return to. 

This year in June, the World Cup will be hosted by three countries: Canada, Mexico and the United States. 

Echoes of fascism, refugees and soccer heroes rise up from Brooklyn’s old Ebbets Fields. Dos redl dreyt zikh — the wheel keeps turning — and so does dos fusbol. 

Do you have a funny, poignant, embarrassing or just plain crazy memory from your time at a Jewish summer camp in Northern California?

Did you meet your best friend? Or maybe your spouse? Break your arm? Pull off the greatest prank of all time? Win the color war in an upset? Discover a talent? Have your first kiss? Experience Judaism in ways you couldn’t have anywhere else?

J. wants your stories! Please keep them to 300 words. Include your name, city of residence, which camp you attended and which years you were there. Send them to natalie@jweekly.com. And if you have any photos of your days as a camper or counselor, send them along too.

The deadline is Monday, Jan. 12. We’ll include as many stories as we can in an upcoming issue.

(JTA) — Alon Leichman was en route home to Israel to celebrate his wedding with family when he made a group chat with the new coaching staff for the Colorado Rockies to begin planning for his new role as the team’s head pitching coach, a first for any Israeli.

Leichman, who grew up on Kibbutz Gezer and was first introduced to baseball on a field his father built, had just wrapped up a season as assistant pitching coach for the Miami Marlins when he received the news on Saturday.

“Thank you Miami! You’ve changed my life. Can’t wait for what’s next with the Rockies and Colorado ,” wrote Leichman in a post on Instagram announcing the move this week.

Before joining the Marlins, Leichman served as the assistant pitching coach for the Cincinnati Reds the previous two years. Earlier in his career, he also played and coached for Team Israel, including a stint as bullpen coach at the 2017 World Baseball Classic.

In March, Leichman is expected to be the head pitching coach for Team Israel at the 2026 World Baseball Classic.

Leichman’s latest accolade appears to make him the first Israeli to hold a head pitching coach position in the MLB. (In February 2024, Assaf Lowengart made pro-baseball history as the first first Israeli-born position player to secure a contract in the United States.)

Leichman will be joined on the Rockies by Gabe Ribas, who will serve as the assistant pitching coach, and Matt Buschmann, who will be the bullpen coach.

“I was on the flight home to Israel when Buschmann was officially on board, so we quickly created a little group chat,” Leichman said in a Rockies press release. “We’re going to enjoy these few days, answer phone calls, call players, say our ‘thank yous’ and get to work.”

Santa Clara University golfer Max Margolis wants to become a legend. 

His dream? To earn a green jacket, the iconic prize awarded to the champion of the Masters Tournament, which Tiger Woods has won five times.

“That’s what we play golf for,” Margolis told J. 

Margolis is an exceptionally talented 18-year-old college freshman who was ranked 55th in the country in the high school graduating class of 2025.

Two days after his 17th birthday, he broke the course record at the Stone Eagle Golf Club in Palm Desert by shooting 8-under 63. That round was even more special because on the 17th hole, he made an albatross, a score of 3-under-par, incredibly rare even for professionals.     

And get this … the previous course record holder was Jason Day, a major champion on the PGA Tour. 

“That round solidifies that I know I have the skill to do great things in golf, and it boosted my confidence,” the teen said. 

Margolis was born in London and moved to the Los Angeles area at age 4. He has three sisters. His father is Jewish and his mother is in the process of converting to Judaism. At age 6, he got a set of plastic golf clubs from his father.

“My dad took me to the range, and the rest is history,” Margolis said. “I fell in love with golf immediately.” 

Margolis graduated in the spring from Palm Desert High School, which is about a dozen miles southeast of Palm Spring. He has already used his skills on the green to raise money for charity. 

During his senior year, he took a self-described “solidarity trip” to Israel with his father and played 101 golf holes in a single day at the Caesarea Golf Club, Israel’s only 18-hole, international-standard course. 

Each hole that Margolis played in September 2024 represented a hostage who remained in captivity at the time in Gaza. The endeavor helped raise $100,000 for OneFamily Fund, an Israeli organization that supports victims of terrorism. Afterward, he put on a golf clinic to teach technique and offer pointers to some of the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack and others harmed by terrorism.

“It was a tiring, long day, starting at 5:30 in the morning with no warmup,” he said. But the effort was all worth it, Margolis added, and he found it especially fulfilling to offer people an “afternoon of fun and laughter” during the golf clinic.

His goal is to eventually raise $1 million for the fund. Hearing stories from victims of Oct. 7 has changed his life, he said.

“Since Oct. 7, my Jewish pride really went up. I felt very Jewish after that day, and I felt very compelled to help my people out in such a tough time. I had actually never been to Israel before,” he said. “It was the best trip of my life.”

Margolis is now settled in at Santa Clara University, which is located in the South Bay. After playing in four events during his first season, Margolis said, he wasn’t satisfied with his performance but understood that newcomers are there to learn more about their game and how to improve. One of his takeaways is the importance of playing in a more disciplined way, as courses are set up to be more challenging at the college level.

Margolis chose Santa Clara because he felt great about its golf team. He knew teammates ahead of enrolling and believes in the coaches’ ability to help him grow. 

“I’m really happy I made the decision to come here,” he said. 

Off the golf course, Margolis plans to study business and calls it a “great challenge” to manage his academics, social life and golf. He’s already made it to a couple of Hillel events, though.    

Margolis took to golf quickly from a young age. By middle school, his goal was to play at the NCAA Division I level in college, where he now finds himself.   

Margolis’ charity event in Israel was the second time that he played at least 100 holes of golf in a day to raise money for a cause. A year prior, he did the same at the Mission Hills Country Club in his hometown of Rancho Mirage to benefit the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. His motivation that time was his cousin Constantino, who passed away from leukemia when Margolis was 7. 

As a gesture of appreciation, St. Jude invited Margolis and his father to play in the PGA Tour’s FedEx St. Jude Championship Pro-Am. (In a pro-am, amateur players get to team up with professionals.) Margolis got paired with five-time PGA Tour champion Nick Taylor and two-time major champion Justin Thomas, currently ranked as the world’s eighth best player. 

It was an unforgettable day for Margolis during which he earned praise for his ball-striking ability.  

Taylor and Thomas “were really good to me,” Margolis said. “We talked the entire round pretty much. They’re used to playing with older guys in pro-ams, so it was fun for them to be able to play with a [younger] golfer. They said they were impressed with my game.”

Margolis has had other inspiring interactions with PGA Tour winners, including Matt McCarty, an alum of Santa Clara University.

A few months ago, Margolis and his teammates traveled to Napa to watch McCarty play his first round in the Procore Championship at Silverado Resort. After McCarty shot 8 under par that day, he spoke about the importance of remaining grounded.

“[McCarty said] you’re 5 under through nine holes … you can’t be thinking about that,” Margolis recounted. “That’s how you let go of a round.” 

At the age of 7, Margolis wrote a letter to his favorite golfer and undisputed golf legend Rory McIlroy, telling him that one day they’d be competitors. Margolis liked McIlroy in part because they were both born in the United Kingdom and support the Manchester United soccer team. Along with sending a signed photograph, McIlroy wrote back.

“His response was short and sweet,” Margolis said. “He said he looked forward to battling it out with me.”

Margolis is apparently on his way to keeping his end of the bargain.

(JTA) — The phrase “Next year in Jerusalem” is customarily spoken at the end of the Passover seder. But this past weekend its sentiment was conveyed at the end of a different kind of gathering: a low-scoring NFL game between the Miami Dolphins and Washington Commanders.

“Shoot, it’d be pretty cool to go play in Jerusalem,” Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said postgame.

The game — which the Dolphins won 16-13 in overtime — was the NFL’s first in Spain, as part of a growing international series that’s seen contests played in England, Germany, Brazil, Ireland and Mexico.

Tagovailoa, a Christian, was asked where else he’d like to play after experiencing Madrid and previously Frankfurt, Germany. And his answer caught the eye of a high-ranking diplomat: Mike Huckabee, the United States Ambassador to Israel.

“Tua is right,” Huckabee wrote on X. “Bringing an NFL game to Israel is a great idea. Next year in Jerusalem…I like the sound of that.”

The suggestion comes amid an increasingly contested role for Israel as a host in global sporting events. EuroLeague basketball is supposed to return next month, and officials from the league are in Israel now to assess conditions before finalizing the plan. 

Soccer, too, has been a fraught space for Israeli participation. The Union of European Football Associations had been set to vote on suspending Israel but paused the process after the ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza that began last month. Some want the organization to return to the deliberations, with Ireland’s soccer federation submitting a motion earlier this month to ban Israel from all UEFA competition for “organising clubs in occupied Palestinian territories without the consent of the Palestinian FA” and “the alleged failure of the IFA [Israel Football Association] to enforce an effective anti-racism policy.”

Tagovailoa’s comments on playing in Israel did not mark the first time speaking about the country during a postgame media availability. Following a home game on Oct. 15, 2023, Tagovailoa paused the press conference to talk about Hamas’ attack on Israel, which had taken place just over a week earlier.

“I didn’t really realize how bad things were in Israel,” Tagovailoa said. “And just wanted to bring to the attention for those who don’t necessarily understand things that are going on, that it really is bad.”

He added, “I don’t know what we’ve come to, but just my thoughts, my prayers are out with those people in Israel,” continuing on to note that there is “also the Ukraine and Russia war still going on as well.”

There has been no indication from the NFL about a potential game in Israel, though Robert Kraft — the American billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, who is Jewish and founded the Blue Square Alliance against Hate, formerly called the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism — sponsored the construction of the Kraft Family Sports Campus in Jerusalem, which includes an American football field. The adjacent park, Gan Sacher, is routinely home to informal football and flag football games.

Meanwhile, the capacity of Jerusalem’s largest stadium, Teddy Stadium, is just 31,000. Attendance at the NFL’s international games have ranged from upwards of 86,000 to, at their lowest, 47,000.

(JTA) — Bruce Pearl, the winningest head coach in Auburn basketball history and an outspoken supporter of Israeli and Jewish causes, abruptly announced his retirement on Monday. His son, Steven, is set to take the helm of the Tigers.

The surprise resignation ahead of the opening of the NCAA season comes as Pearl is reportedly considering entering politics. The Republican and supporter of President Donald Trump has acknowledged a possible run for Senate in Alabama to fill the seat that Tommy Tuberville is vacating next year. Tuberville, too, was a prominent coach in the state before running for office.

“It’s certainly something that I had considered,” Pearl said in early September, according to ESPN. “It’s something I thought a great deal about, but obviously I’m here today and I’m in practice and I’ve got practice tomorrow.”

Now, his schedule will soon be wide open, a dramatic change for Pearl, 65, who has led Auburn since 2014 and previously was a head coach at three other schools. He also coached the Maccabi USA team to a gold medal at the 2009 Maccabiah Games in Israel.

During his 11-year tenure at Auburn, the team has made six NCAA tournament appearances and two Final Four runs. Pearl is coming off a 32-win season in which the Tigers nabbed a No. 1 seed in March Madness and made it to the Final Four — where he was one of three Jewish coaches — before losing to Florida, coached by Pearl’s former protégé (and Maccabi player), Todd Golden. Pearl was also named the co-winner of the Associated Press’ Coach of the Year award for last season.

Beyond his basketball prowess, Pearl has become known for his staunch pro-Israel advocacy. He has brought his teams to Israel, been active in the local Jewish community at Auburn, and earlier this year opened a March Madness press conference speaking about the Israeli hostages in Gaza. Pearl also co-founded the Jewish Coaches Association, which hosts an annual breakfast for Jewish NCAA basketball coaches at the tournament’s Final Four weekend.

At that press conference in March, Pearl tied Auburn’s success to his identity as an American Jew.

“It starts with my faith and it starts with answering the question, ‘Why has God blessed Auburn and this basketball team the way he has all season long?’” he said. “And honestly it’s to, I think, put us in a platform — in this case right now, myself, as a Jewish American who loves his country more than anything else in the world.”

Steven Pearl, 38, who played for his father at Tennessee, has been on the Auburn staff in various positions since 2014. This will be his first head coaching job.

Lorelai Shub loves the game of volleyball. The 14-year-old Foster City native has been playing since sixth grade. Because she stands at 5-foot-4-inches, some might assume she isn’t tall enough to excel in the sport.

Tell that to the bronze medal she took home from this summer’s JCC Maccabi Games in Tucson, Arizona.

Now in its 43rd year, the annual JCC Maccabi Games bring together thousands of teens in what organizers call the “world’s largest Jewish youth sporting event.” In Tucson, more than 1,200 kids from across the United States, Canada and other countries came to compete from July 27 to Aug. 1, as well as enjoy a massive dose of Jewish fellowship.

“I felt so welcome because I knew it was my community that I would connect with,” Lorelai said. “I never felt judged. I saw a lot of people wearing Magen David necklaces, as I was.”

Bay Area JCCs, including the JCC of San Francisco, the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto and the Addison-Penzak JCC in Los Gatos, sent teams to Tucson.

Palo Alto’s Joshua Levin won gold in tennis. In team sports, OFJCC’s teens won bronze in boys basketball, bronze in girls volleyball and bronze in flag football.

Jewish Silicon Valley’s teens did their home region proud too. 

“Our eight athletes competed with heart,” said Danielle Patterson, senior director of marketing at Jewish Silicon Valley, which includes the Addison-Penzak JCC. They brought home bronze in boys and girls soccer, silver in flag football and two Midot Medals for individuals embodying Jewish values and the Maccabi spirit.

The 37 teens representing the JCC of San Francisco picked up 11 gold medals and 12 silver medals in swimming, as well as seven bronze medals in boys basketball, girls soccer and girls volleyball.

One of those medalists, 14-year-old Cooper Lee of San Francisco, is an old hand at the Maccabi Games. Cooper, who has been swimming competitively since fifth grade, swam in the Florida games two years ago and Detroit games last year. He has also served on the Maccabi International Leadership Board.

In Tucson, he won silver in the 4×1 relay and bronze in the 50-meter backstroke. In both events, he achieved new personal-best times. 

“It was a great experience,” Cooper said of the 2025 games. “I met a lot of swimmers. The swim community was great. The facilities were really nice.”

Like Cooper, 15-year-old Gabe Plitt of San Mateo also competed in his third straight JCC Maccabi Games. A soccer fanatic since the age of 4, Gabe played goalkeeper for the Palo Alto team. Although they didn’t medal, he thoroughly enjoyed the Tucson experience.

“I loved meeting so many new people,” he said. “I met more than a few hundred kids my age from all around the world. We won one game, but that one game was big. We were losing 1-0 in half and then put up five goals in the second half.”

Zachary Meyer, 15, played first base for the JCCSF baseball team in Tucson. He’s been playing ball since toddlerhood and currently pitches for Berkeley High School’s baseball team. Playing at Maccabi on a mixed team that included kids from Boston, St. Louis and Kentucky, he and his teammates made it all the way to the silver medal playoff game. They took home the bronze medal.

“I thought it was absolutely amazing,” he said of the games. “In today’s world, you don’t normally see so many Jews with people cheering for them. That was special. And it was really fun representing where I’m from.”

Not every teen attending the games was an athlete. One of the competition categories is “star reporter.” Ethan Mutchnik, 15, of San Jose joined the APJCC teens as their official star reporter, recording, editing and crafting Instagram posts about the exploits on the fields. 

For his efforts, he was awarded a Midot Medal. “Midot” is Hebrew for “values.” Those values, which underlie the Maccabi Games, are “tikkun olam (repairing the world), kavod (respect), rina (joy), ga’ava (pride), lev tov (big hearted) and amiut yehudit (Jewish peoplehood),” according to its website.

“I always liked to report and talk,” Ethan said. “I fell in love with play by play. I do game recaps on Instagram, a short brief on what happened. I interview coaches and players.”

Of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic heritage, Ethan speaks English, Spanish and Hebrew. He is also a member of the Jewish Culture Club at San Jose’s Leigh High School.

One of his chief memories of the Tucson games was the scorching weather, generally in triple digits by midday. 

“First thing,” Ethan said, “is it was very, very hot. My phone overheated five times. But the competition is like any other. You want to win, but everyone comes together for the community, even if you just lost.”

The Tucson games weren’t only about winning and losing. The opening ceremony, styled after the Olympics Parade of Nations, meant that every JCC delegation was cheered on as they individually entered the stadium. The off-the-field itinerary included a dance party featuring an Israeli DJ who had performed at the Nova Music Festival, which was attacked by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023.

Diana Schnabel-Arevalo, chief operating officer of Jewish Silicon Valley, attended the games, serving as a chaperone. She’s been active with the JCC Maccabi Games for 15 years and attests to the positive impact the program has on Jewish youth.

“It can be a very emotional experience going to opening ceremonies and watching each delegation from across the United States, Israel, Canada, and for the teams to see that ‘I am not alone.’ There are Jewish communities across the world, and we are all connected. The big message of being part of something greater really gives a sense of belonging to these kids when they participate, and they take that home with them.”

(JTA) — The New York Yankees drafted a player last month who admitted to having drawn a swastika on a Jewish student’s door as a freshman in college, according to The Athletic.

Core Jackson, 21, was drafted by the Yankees following approval from several high-ranking Jewish leaders on the team, including team president Randy Levine, despite informing the major league team about the antisemitic incident ahead of the 2024 season, according to the sports news site.

Jackson was a 17-year-old freshman at the University of Nebraska when he drew the swastika on a Jewish student’s door, telling The Athletic that he was “blackout drunk” and could not remember the act or why he did it.

“I felt like the worst person in the world,” Jackson told the Athletic. “I don’t want there to be any excuses for my actions.”

The University of Nebraska fined Jackson, had him undergo basic sensitivity training online and assigned him community service after the incident. Jackson told The Athletic there were “no other repercussions.” He said he had wanted to apologize to the student but claimed he was told not to contact them by campus police.

“I think it’s important that it is part of my story,” Jackson told The Athletic. “I have this platform now that God has given me, and I can share my story about his forgiveness.”

Jackson’s agent, Blake Corosky, has also represented Jacob Steinmetz, who became the first Orthodox Jewish player to be drafted in the MLB in 2021. After learning of the incident from Jackson in 2024, as Jackson prepared to go pro, Corosky contacted Steinmetz’s father, Elliot, the head men’s basketball coach at Yeshiva University, as a courtesy.

Steinmetz recommended that Corosky try to teach Jackson about antisemitism — then called the player himself.

“Right away,” Stenmetz told The Athletic, “you could tell (Jackson) was the nicest, sweetest kid in the world, (but) dumb as rocks when it came to these kinds of issues.”

Corosky agreed to continue advising Jackson as long as he informed all Major League Baseball teams about the antisemitic incident and agreed to work with Steinmetz to understand the consequences of his actions.

Steinmetz connected Jackson with Ann Squicciarini, a graduate student at Yeshiva University who studies interfaith Holocaust education. She designed a five-week course for Jackson that he completed.

Swastika graffiti on dormitory doors is relatively frequently reported, with incidents taking place in recent years at Stanford University and Tufts University, among others. While the incident at Nebraska did not appear to make the news, it came less than a year after a man was arrested for allegedly painting swastikas on the door of a local synagogue.

Jackson is not the first athlete to face allegations of antisemitism. In 2022, NBA star Kyrie Irving drew outcry after he posted a link to an antisemitic film. A year earlier, fellow player Meyers Leonard was suspended from the Miami Heat for using an antisemitic slur in a video game. Both stars took steps to show that they demonstrated penance.

Ahead of the draft, Yankees amateur scouting director Damon Oppenheimer told The Athletic that he called Utah head coach Gary Henderson, who said that Jackson had “turned a corner.”

The Yankees did not speak with anyone at the University of Nebraska about the incident, but Oppenheimer told The Athletic the decision to draft Jackson followed the most thorough “due diligence” he had seen in his career there.

Jackson was also charged with driving under the influence on the University of Utah’s campus in September 2024, where he played for his last two seasons of college. Following the incident, Jackson performed community service, received substance abuse training and paid fines, Corosky said.

“I feel that moving forward, we’ve got a good citizen and a good person and a good baseball player,” Oppenheimer told the outlet.

Jackson was drafted to the Yankees with a bonus of $147,500 for a spot that typically holds a value of $411,100.

Jackson told The Athletic he would ask “forgiveness” from anyone who may be upset about his past, adding that he would “let them know I’m not the same person I was when that happened.”

“I’ve grown up. I’ve learned. I’ve reconciled,”  Jackson said. “I’ve done the things I needed to do to learn about it.”

(JTA) — For the first time in decades, a long forgotten major league baseball player has been posthumously identified as Jewish.

Monte Pfeiffer, who played a single game for the Philadelphia Athletics some 112 years ago, had vanished into baseball obscurity — until a sharp-eyed Yankees fan uncovered a surprising truth written in Hebrew. The discovery, rooted in dusty box scores, old newspaper articles and genealogical detective work, adds Pfeiffer to the rarest of rosters: Jewish major leaguers.

“It’s really like fishing: You throw out your line, and nothing, nothing, nothing,” said Zak Kranc, a 27-year-old lawyer from Connecticut. “Then when you get a hit, you start reeling.”

Such finds are rare. Only about 200 of the more than 23,000 men to play major league baseball since 1871 have been conclusively identified as Jews. It’s a surprisingly tiny fraternity, given the outsized number of honors they have earned over the years, including Rookie of the Year, Most Valuable Player, Cy Young Award and Gold Glove.

Journalist and author David Spaner did most of the detective work in the 1990s. He spent a year sifting through records at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, phoning players and their relatives, and assembling family trees, all in an effort to find unknown Jews. The Vancouver native went on to reveal dozens of newly discovered Jews in “Total Baseball,” a scholarly series edited in part by a baseball historian born to Holocaust survivors.

“There was a form the Hall of Fame sent to family members of the deceased,” Spaner said in an interview.  “One of the questions concerned nationality, and a number of players put ‘Jewish’ on it.” He also scrutinized players of unknown heritage who had Jewish-sounding names, and that too yielded discoveries. But Pfeiffer, a German name often associated with Jews, somehow escaped detection.

Thanks to Kranc (pronounced “Krantz”), Pfeiffer is unknown no more.

Montefiore “Monte” Pfeiffer, also known as Moshe Ben Shmuel Yosef, was born in New York City in 1890 to Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe: Fanny Pfeiffer and husband Samuel, a seller of women’s hats. He began playing baseball for money in 1911, at age 19, for the Haverhill (Massachusetts) Hustlers.

Statistically speaking, Pfeiffer was a middling hitter and error-prone fielder. But he thrilled fans with his speed and jaw-dropping plays. Reporters, too, were dazzled by his exploits, comparing the 5-foot-4-inch infielder to legends like future Hall of Fame inductee Honus Wagner. The Wilkes-Barre (Pennsylvania) Record called Pfeiffer a “sawed off giant” who carried “a lot of hitting power in his broad shoulders,” according to writer Darren Gibson.

The 1913 season saw breakthroughs for Pfeiffer, as well as a breakdown. Playing for Joe McCarthy, the Wilkes-Barre Coal Barons manager who later led the New York Yankees to seven World Series titles, Pfeiffer attracted major-league scouts — but not before vowing to quit baseball and return to his Bronx pool hall over an alleged antisemitic incident.

According to contemporary news reports, a teammate allegedly told a young woman Pfeiffer fancied that the player was “a Jew and a tightwad who never spent a nickel” — an insult that enraged the shortstop and nearly drove him to quit baseball. Despite McCarthy initially claiming to be “through with ball players that fall in love,” he convinced Pfeiffer to return.

Lucky for Pfeiffer. He wasn’t back on the diamond for long before Connie Mack, legendary manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, chose to rest his “$100,000 infield” for the 1913 World Series and yank three young men, including Pfeiffer, out of regional obscurity to temporarily replace them. The Philadelphia Inquirer cheekily dubbed the trio the “Kindergarten Brood.”

Pfeiffer made his debut in enemy territory: Griffith Stadium, home of the Washington Senators. An estimated 15,000 fans, far above the team’s 4,000 average, would crowd the stands on Sept. 29, 1913 to celebrate George McBride Day, in honor of the Senators’ team captain and shortstop. U.S. Vice President Thomas Marshall would make an on-field presentation.

Observers predicted the three rookies would hit nothing but air against fearsome pitcher Walter Johnson, who arrived that day with a 35-7 record and an ERA hovering just above 1.00. Even Detroit Tigers legend Ty Cobb — a cutthroat Hall of Fame centerfielder who ended the major-league career of another Jewish ballplayer, Jesse “Tiny” Baker, by brutally spiking him with his cleats — was terrified the first time he faced Johnson. “Something went past me that made me flinch,” he said, according to Ken Burns’ documentary “Baseball.” “The thing just hissed with danger.”

Although the Senators wound up blanking Philadelphia 1-0, Pfeiffer never buckled, even after Johnson grazed his sleeve with a pitch. The Washington Times Herald said the 23-year-old “played a smashing good game at short” despite flubbing a grounder. The Washington Post said the “stocky little shortfielder…made several sensational stops” and was “robbed” of a sure hit off Johnson in the 6th inning.

Gibson, who has profiled more than 60 one-game players for the Society of American Baseball Research, sees Pfeiffer as a hard-luck case. “I found it wildly unfortunate that in his one major-league game, Pfeiffer had to square off against Johnson,” he said in an email.

The story of how Kranc discovered Pfeiffer is remarkable in its own right.

The antitrust attorney’s first exposure to Jewish ballplayers came at his bar mitzvah, when he received a framed collection of baseball cards. “It was just a cool thing,” he said. “And I kind of put it to the side.”

Years later, when COVID hit, Kranc thought about the collection. “Everyone was hunkered down and just looking for something to do, looking for an escape from all of the isolation and difficulties,” he said. “And I was like, hey, you know, I like being Jewish. I love baseball, right? I’m going to take this up a level.” He began to hunt for more Jewish baseball cards and autographs — and to search for an undiscovered player.

Several months ago, Kranc was casually scrolling through the website Baseball Reference when he spied a feature called “Cup of Coffee Players”— a nod to those whose big-league careers lasted just one game. Paging through the bios of hundreds of men, he stumbled upon a player listed as “Monte Pfeffer” who had been buried in Acacia Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Queens. A few clicks of the mouse took him to Find a Grave, where he located a tombstone he surmised was Pfeiffer’s.

“I saw the Hebrew writing, and I said to myself, ‘Okay, I think we have something here,’” Kranc recalled. He continues to be awed by his unlikely discovery. “I would venture to say the odds of this particular event happening are lower than a perfect game, a triple play, or almost anything else we might find on the field.”

Like Spaner and others before him, Kranc took a disciplined approach to confirming Pfeiffer’s Jewishness. He gathered photos, inspected family trees, read obituaries, and hunted down cemetery records. He also found a descendant, the Honorable Louis “Lou” Meisinger.

Meisinger, a retired California judge and entertainment lawyer, never met his great-uncle Monte Pfeiffer, but they shared an important connection: Meisinger’s late mother, Eleanor, was raised with Pfeiffer’s daughter, Frances. Meisinger also briefly owned Pfeiffer’s mitt, though he didn’t understand its significance at the time. “My mother gave me the glove, which she said was given to her by her Uncle Izzy, presumably Monte’s brother,” he said in an interview. “I used the glove in Little League and, unfortunately, discarded it when I graduated to better equipment. It was not in good shape.”

Like many other Jewish sports fans, Meisinger enjoys reading about Jewish athletes. But “there was no family lore about [Pfeiffer], other than that he once played in the major leagues. Nobody provided any details.”

Alas, Pfeiffer’s major league tenure was as scant as the details. When the Athletics returned to Griffith Stadium a day after losing to Johnson’s Nationals, Pfeiffer’s two cohorts were in the lineup, but he had been cut loose. The Wilkes-Barre Record reported that the rookie was “struck on the head by a batted ball and rendered unconscious.”

Pfeiffer’s career swiftly nosedived. In true journeyman fashion, he began the 1914 season with the Kansas City (Missouri) Blues of the American Association, traveled north to join the Marinette-Menominee (Wisconsin) Twins of the Wisconsin-Illinois League, and signed with the Topeka (Kansas) Jayhawks of the Western League. The following year, in 1915, Pfeiffer wrapped up his baseball sojourn in Manitoba, Canada with the St. Boniface Bonnies of the Northern League. His best batting average over the two seasons was a dismal .176.

Pfeiffer also suffered misfortune at home. Things briefly had looked up in late 1914 when he married 18-year-old Rose Schechter, a Jewish native of New York City who soon became pregnant. But two weeks after giving birth to their daughter, Schechter died. Pfeiffer, presumably bereft and unprepared to raise the infant, asked his older sister Mamie to do so. He went on to work as a signal or subway repairman — public records are unclear — and briefly enlist in the military during World War I. As far as we know, the widower never remarried. He was just 49 years old when he died of heart disease in 1941.

Today, Monte Pfeiffer’s great-great-grandnephew Aric Berg pitches for Fordham University — a reminder that, more than a century after his lone appearance, Pfeiffer’s story is still being written.

(JTA) — The first athlete to notch a Manischewitz endorsement is transferring from a university with just a handful of Jewish students to a school with one of the highest proportions of Jewish students in the United States.

Jake Retzlaff will play for Tulane University, according to reports in sports media. Neither Retzlaff nor Tulane has confirmed the move, but Retzlaff retweeted an article about it.

Retzlaff announced earlier this month that he would leave Brigham Young University, the Mormon flagship where he was a star quarterback but also drew a suspension for violating the school’s famously strict honor code. The suspension followed allegations of sexual assault in a civil lawsuit that was later dismissed and Retzlaff’s admission that he had engaged in premarital sex, which BYU prohibits.

Tulane vetted the allegations against Retzlaff thoroughly before inviting him to join its team, according to ESPN. He’ll be one of multiple quarterbacks vying to fill the starting role vacated when a Tulane player was arrested and left the school last year.

The move is meant to keep Retzlaff on the field despite his stumbles at BYU. But it also represents a dramatic shift in the Jewish character of his schools for Retzlaff, who grew up attending a Reform synagogue in Pomona, California.

He was one of just three Jewish students at BYU, where he embraced the nickname “BY-Jew.” At Tulane, in contrast, there are so many Jewish students — about 37%, the most at any non-Jewish university — that the school is known colloquially (and sometimes with annoyance) as “Jewlane.”

Last year, the Tulane Green Wave went 9-5 in its first season under a new coach, finishing second in its American Athletic Conference. It lost to the Florida Gators in the Gasparilla Bowl 33-8.

(JTA) — In the span of a few minutes on Wednesday, the Brooklyn Nets single-handedly doubled the Jewish population in the NBA from two to four.

The Nets selected Israeli Ben Saraf and American Israeli Danny Wolf back to back with the 26th and 27th overall picks in Wednesday’s NBA draft. 

Wolf, a 7-footer from the University of Michigan, was projected to go earlier in the round, while some prognosticators had Saraf, a 19-year-old currently playing in the German professional league, to slip to the second round. Instead, Saraf and Wolf were selected in quick succession toward the end of the first round and will be teammates in Brooklyn.

Wolf, 21, transferred to Michigan last year after two solid seasons at Yale, and led the Wolverines to a No. 5 seed in March Madness, where they lost in the Sweet 16 to Jewish coach Bruce Pearl and No. 1-ranked Auburn. The Glencoe, Illinois, native averaged 13.2 points and 9.7 rebounds per game this past season, while shooting 49.7% overall and 33.6% on three-pointers.

Saraf, who is 6-foot-6, is the son of two former Israeli pro basketball players, and he wears No. 77 because it represents the Hebrew word “mazal,” which means luck. He averaged 12.8 points and 4.6 assists per game this year as he helped lead his team to the German league finals.

This marks the first time since 2006 that two Jewish players were selected in the same NBA draft. That year, Lior Eliyahu and Yotam Halperin were both taken in the second round, though neither appeared in the league.

Saraf and Wolf join a small contingent of Jewish players in the NBA, including Israeli Deni Avdija — who is coming off his own breakout season with the Portland Trail Blazers — and Sacramento Kings star Domantas Sabonis, who is converting to Judaism. Amari Bailey, who was drafted 41st overall in 2023, played in the NBA’s G League last season.

Wolf, who obtained his Israeli citizenship to represent Israel at the FIBA U20 European Championship in Greece, has worn his Jewish pride on his sleeve throughout his life. He attended Jewish day school until fifth grade, keeps kosher and had his bar mitzvah at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

“I would hear it growing up, that noise about me being Jewish and (so) you don’t expect much from me as a basketball player,” Wolf told the Jewish author Mitch Albom for a column in the Detroit Free Press. “When I was younger, I kind of looked at (being Jewish) as an opportunity to prove myself.”

Now he and Saraf will represent the city with the most Jews in the world.

Updated at 7:50 p.m.

A Jewish football executive has hit the field in the Bay Area — an indoor field, to be exact.

Meet David Eisenberg, team president of the Bay Area Panthers, an Indoor Football League franchise established six years ago that competes in San Jose.  

The Indoor Football League, which played its first season in 2009, is similar to the ubiquitous NFL in a basic sense. There are still tackles, touchdowns and field goals, but some rules, the style and the venue size are much different. 

The playing field is half the length of the NFL’s (50 yards instead of 100). Fewer players from each team are allowed on the field during a play (eight instead of 11). And, of course, the games take place indoors. The Panthers play at the SAP Center, home to the San Jose Sharks hockey team.

The smaller playing field and a rule that allows wide receivers to get a running start before the snap make games more exciting, Eisenberg said, especially for younger fans.

“I have an 8-year-old and a 5-year-old, and they’ve attended games with me and absolutely adore it,” he said. “There’s constant action in front of them.”

Eisenberg is from the East Coast and attended high school in Washington, D.C., where he became a bar mitzvah. He moved to the Bay Area in 2014 and today lives in Oakland, where his older son attends Hebrew school at Temple Sinai. Judaism continues to play an important role in his life, Eisenberg said. 

“I remember very vividly attending Hebrew school on Wednesday afternoons and on Sunday mornings,” he said. “It has instilled in me a life value of how important it is to build strong communities.”

Eisenberg joined the Panthers last fall after serving as a marketing vice president for the San Francisco 49ers. 

He had his sights set on a sports career since he was young. Inspired by the sports comedy-drama film “Jerry Maguire,” Eisenberg had ambitions to become a sports agent. But many who pursue that position attend law school, and Eisenberg was ready to be done with higher education after earning a bachelor’s degree in sports management from the University of Delaware.

Eisenberg’s role with the Panthers is to ensure the successful operation of the team’s business side. Think marketing, communications, sales and operations.  

Early in his career, Eisenberg bought into a key piece of advice that helped him reach his current position: “build your network of advocates.” A connection suggested him to Roy Choi, the Panthers co-owner. 

“Roy and I started chatting about where he hoped the team would go and how my skillset might lend itself well to the role,” Eisenberg said. “We kept talking and talking and eventually he offered me the position.” (Choi co-owns the team with NFL legend Marshawn Lynch.)

Eisenberg is no stranger to this line of work. For nearly two decades, he has been tasked with reeling in customers for various mega companies. He has already leveraged his skills to help the Panthers reach a broader audience on the airwaves. During the offseason, he established a partnership with NBC Sports Bay Area to televise home games and with KNBR to radio broadcast all games.

“Those two partnerships are a really important piece to us building awareness,” he said.   

As team president, Eisenberg sees the development of a Panthers fan base as the key to success and one of his greatest challenges. The Bay Area sports market is saturated with thriving teams like the Giants, Warriors and 49ers that have formed deeply loyal allegiances with generations of fans. 

Because the Panthers aren’t an established franchise by comparison, they seek to attract fans in other ways, such as offering a less-expensive live experience than the big-name Bay Area teams.

“Four tickets, four drinks and four hot dogs for 100 bucks,” Eisenberg said, referring to the “Panther family 4 pack” promotion.

The events are more accessible in other ways too. After each game, fans are welcomed onto the field to meet players for photos and autographs. 

Coming from a historic organization like the 49ers, Eisenberg said that it’s exciting to be a part of a burgeoning new franchise.

“Whereas the 49ers are incredible at the business that they are running, the Panthers are at a place where a lot of that work is being formed and developed,” Eisenberg said. “That struck me as a fantastic opportunity to bring the skills I learned throughout my career to this developing and emerging sports team.”

Eisenberg sees an expanding future of the sport. 

“We’ll be in existence and thriving,” he said. “I think indoor football fills an important space. It brings together football, one of the most loved sports, and couples it with accessibility.”

Update: Roy Choi’s description has been corrected.

(JTA) — Oren Manor likes to boast that he was a Deni Avdija fan before it was cool. 

Manor, an Israeli sportswriter, has been following Avdija since he was a 16-year-old playing in Maccabi Tel Aviv’s youth program. He wasn’t surprised to see the small forward, now 24, have a breakout year this season with the Portland Trail Blazers. 

But now, Manor is far from alone on the Avdija bandwagon. As Avdija — the lone Israeli in the NBA — has one great game after another, Manor has gotten a laugh out of the lengths Israeli newspapers will go to highlight his success. 

“Every media group in Israel, sports or no sports, will have a daily headline about something Deni did,” he said. “‘Oh, you won’t believe the prestigious list Deni is on, click here.’ And then you go down, you find out he finished sixth in the voting for top player in the west in the month of February.”

Avdija’s season, however, is no joke — and neither is the Deni-mania sweeping Israel. For a nation at war, grappling with a hostage crisis and riven by protests, the success of a hometown boy, 7,000 miles away in Oregon, is something everyone can unite behind. 

“He is the story, and he’s a much bigger story now as his numbers are much, much bigger,” said Manor, who has lived in Portland for 15 years. “But he carries a very big weight on his shoulders, and his personal success with Israelis always translates to national pride. And when you’re at war, you want pride.”

To put Avdija’s numbers in context: Before joining the Trail Blazers, he had averaged a solid if unspectacular 9.8 points per game over his four seasons with the Washington Wizards. 

In his past 16 games, however, those stats have ballooned to 24.9 points and 10.6 rebounds per game. This season, he has had eight 30+ point performances and his first two career triple-doubles. Overall, he’s averaging a career high of 16.9 points per game this year. 

His success hasn’t saved Portland, which is due to miss the playoffs for the fourth straight year. But it has buoyed his Israeli and Israeli-American fans fans.

“As an Israeli basketball player, he’s the best I’ve seen, and many people think he’s going to be the greatest Israeli player of all time,” said Moshe Halickman, who covers basketball for the popular Sports Rabbi website. “He’s the top Israeli NBA player we ever had. Omri Casspi really did something big by being the first Israeli in the NBA, but Deni is turning into a star in the league.”

There are sportswriters like Manor, Halickman and the YouTuber Pini Barel, whose social media sometimes resembles an Avdija highlight reel. And then there are fans like Yaakov Tzedek, 32, of the coastal town of Or Akiva, who compensates for the 10-hour time difference between Israel and Portland by watching Avdija over an early breakfast. 

“I do watch all the Trail Blazers games, usually live or very close to live broadcasts,” said Tzedek — a commitment that entails turning on the game at 5 a.m. Tzedek, who runs a media company among other business ventures, also manages a Facebook page for Israeli fans of Avdija. 

“I actively follow the [Blazers], mainly because of Deni,” he said. “Honestly, it’s just really fun and exciting to watch. I wouldn’t say it’s life-changing, but it definitely brings a lot of pride to Israel and gives us some joyful, quiet moments — especially in a year like this, when things have been so difficult here.”

Halickman said the signs of Avdija’s celebrity status in Israel are everywhere — from his 2021 sponsorship deal with the Israeli version of corn flakes to a newfound job description: the bar mitzvah gift of choice for jet-setting Israeli boys. 

“In Israel, there was a trend, like around 10 years ago, that Israelis who had a bar mitzvah … went on trips to watch Lionel Messi for Barcelona’s soccer team. And the new trend is kind of turning into Israelis flying to watch Deni play,” Halickman said. “It’s amazing also to see how Deni treats the Israeli crowd. He’s taking pictures, autographs, speaking to them.”

That was the case even before Oct. 7, 2023. During previous conflicts back home, Avdija drew Stars of David on his shoes to express his support for Israel. He also shared Hanukkah with his teammates, spoke at the Wizards’ Jewish Heritage Night and attempted to grow the NBA’s popularity in Israel. 

Since the Hamas attack that began the war in Gaza and sparked a global surge in antisemitism, Avdija has become even more vocal about his national pride, telling one Israeli outlet that he “tried to do what I could to bring some pride to Israel through basketball and my efforts off the court.” A few weeks after Oct. 7, Avdija hung around the court postgame, with an Israeli flag draped around him, as fans sang Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem. Avdija has also been spotted with the flag displayed in his locker.

Avdija’s following has grown steadily since his days as a teenage star for Maccabi Tel Aviv. He’s a three-time Israeli League champion and helped lead Israel to back-to-back FIBA U20 European Championship titles in 2018-2019, winning the tournament’s MVP award in 2019. He remains the captain of the country’s senior national team today.

Halickman remembers watching from the stands in 2018, as a 17-year-old Avdija scored 11 points off the bench for Maccabi Tel Aviv in a season-opening win over Maccabi Ashdod. Last year, Halickman traveled to D.C. to cover two Wizards games.

Some of the talk about Avdija takes on a touch of the hyperbolic. Manor compared Avdija’s build and athleticism to that of NBA legend LeBron James. Both players are 6-foot-9, and both, Manor explained, embody what’s known in basketball as a “tweener” — a player is both fast and strong enough to play multiple positions

“Very early, when he was about 15 or 16 years old, people realized he’s gonna be a basketball player, a professional basketball player,” Manor said. “All of the other functions of character — the leadership, the confidence, the chutzpah to go and argue with the refs on every other call he doesn’t get — he always has in him. Now it’s just really popped because of the circumstances.”

Avdija’s breakout comes during an era of Jewish basketball excellence. On Monday, the University of Florida’s Todd Golden became the first Jewish coach to win March Madness since 1988. University of Michigan star Danny Wolf, himself an Israeli-American, is expected to declare for this summer’s NBA draft, where he could be a first-round pick. So could Israeli Ben Saraf, who is playing professionally in Germany.

They would join a growing Jewish NBA roster that includes Avdija, Sacramento Kings big man Domantas Sabonis — who is converting to Judaism and having his own stellar season — and G League prospect Amari Bailey.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun to watch,” Tzedek said. “Hopefully, they’ll be on different teams so we can enjoy watching them compete and support each other.”

As for Avdija, the work isn’t done. Halickman said the real goal is to reach the NBA playoffs, something Casspi never did in 10 seasons in the league. The Wizards made the postseason in Avdija’s rookie year, but he was injured.

“That’s the next goal for Deni,” Halickman said. “He’s doing amazing things personally right now, but what we want to see is really something successful that he’ll do with a team, and I think he’s in the right direction. He’s only 24 years old. Long career ahead, promising team, so there’s a lot to look forward to.”