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For Jewish fans, Duke’s new basketball coach inspires a different version of March Madness
(JTA) — Dylan Geller has taken great pride in his work as a student manager of Duke University’s men’s basketball team since landing the gig as a freshman in 2019. But things felt different this season, and not just because the Blue Devils had a new head coach, Jon Scheyer, after 42 years under the legendary Mike Krzyzewski.
“Coach Scheyer is such a role model to me, being a young Jewish man myself with aspiring hopes and dreams in basketball,” said Geller, a senior from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “Seeing him do it so successfully, he’s definitely been a big inspiration.”
Starting Thursday night, Scheyer, 35, will lead the Blue Devils through the head-spinning Division I tournament known as March Madness, which raked in an average 10.7 million TV viewers per game last year. Ranked No. 5 in its division, Duke will face off against the Golden Eagles of Oral Roberts University, an evangelical Christian school in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
If the Blue Devils go all the way in this year’s Division I tournament — as the team has done five times in the past, most recently in 2015 — Scheyer would be the first Jewish coach to do so in more than seven decades. (Nat Holman led the City College of New York to an NCAA championship in 1950, when only eight teams competed.) He would also be only the sixth Jewish men’s basketball coach ever to reach the Final Four.
Scheyer is ending his first season as Duke’s head coach with a 26-8 record, becoming the most successful first-year coach in the school’s history.
Duke students are famous for their fandom, earning the moniker “Cameron Crazies” from their antics in the stands of their school’s Cameron Indoor Stadium. But for Duke’s substantial population of Jewish students, faculty and graduates, the intensity is heightened by knowing that the most influential figure on the Durham, North Carolina, campus is a fellow Jew.
“At Duke, these people are celebrities,” said Sophie Barry, a former president of the Jewish Student Union who graduated last May. “It’s a national stage, people are watching them on ESPN all over the place, and they’re just walking around on our campus. It’s such a big deal. And as Jewish people, we can’t help getting all excited when a celebrity is Jewish.”
So devoted to basketball that he made the sport his bar mitzvah theme, Scheyer earned the nickname “Jewish Jordan” when he was growing up in the Chicago suburb of Northbrook, Illinois. (Michael Jordan played for the Chicago Cubs during Scheyer’s childhood there, after winning a national title for Duke’s rivals, the University of North Carolina Tar Heels.) He led his high school team — with an all-Jewish starting lineup — to a state championship in 2005.
Scheyer then played for the Blue Devils from 2007 to 2010, helping the team win two ACC championships and one NCAA title. A history major, he also volunteered in a literacy program and starred in an improv group’s video in which he bikes to the campus Hillel, wears a tallit and spins a dreidel. After a devastating eye injury thwarted Scheyer’s ambitions in the NBA, he obtained Israeli citizenship and played one ultimately disappointing season for Maccabi Tel Aviv.
“I felt proud to be Jewish living in Israel, and you realize there’s not a lot of Jews in the world, and that only strengthened my beliefs,” Scheyer said during a conversation with Jewish students in 2015, shortly after he returned to Duke as a member of the coaching staff.
The Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team after winning the Israeli Basketball Super League championship, Feb. 16, 2012. Jon Scheyer played on the team that season. (Flash 90)
Scheyer was picked for the top coaching spot last year, taking on the daunting job of succeeding Krzyzewski, known as “Coach K,” who built a dynasty in the world of college basketball. Along with guiding the Blue Devils to five national championships, Krzyzewski amassed a total of 1,202 head coaching victories in his 47-year career — 42 of those at Duke — achieving a record in NCAA history.
Scheyer has already made his own mark, bringing the team into March Madness with a nine-game winning streak and celebrating a coveted title in his debut season. On Saturday, he led Duke to a 59-49 victory over Virginia in the ACC tournament championship, becoming the third first-year coach to win the title and the first ever to claim it as both a player and a coach.
He appears to be optimistic about his team’s chances. Scheyer’s assistant declined an interview request, saying this week, “We are leaving for Orlando and hopefully will be gone for the next few weeks at the NCAA Tournament. We can circle back after the season.” Scheyer had previously not responded to multiple requests for interviews.
Of the 363 Division I men’s basketball programs, 10 currently have Jewish head coaches, according to the Coaches Database.
“I feel like he’s someone that a lot of kids like me — even outside of Duke — who love sports can really look up to. Because there’s not a lot of Jewish representation, in terms of coaches like that,” said Geller.
The National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame honored Scheyer as Jewish athlete of the year once while he was in high school and again in college. But Scheyer has indicated that he is ambivalent about being a Jewish sports icon.
“I always wanted to be recognized as a great basketball player. I always wanted a kid to look up to me because of who I was as a person and then my basketball skills, not because I was Jewish,” he said at the Jewish life event in 2015. “But I figured … if it was a cool thing that I was Jewish on top of respecting my game and the way I played and who I was, then I was all for that.”
Asked whether he would play a game that fell on Yom Kippur — an unlikely event given when the basketball season falls — Scheyer’s answer came quickly.
“I would never turn down a game,” he said. “I know that’s not a good thing to say but it’s the truth.”
Duke has about 15,000 students, and about 1,700 of them this year are Jewish, according to student newspaper The Chronicle. The school is home to multiple Jewish centers, including the Freeman Center for Jewish Life that is home to the campus Hillel; the Center for Jewish Studies academic department, and a thriving Chabad that last year inaugurated a new, 24,000-square-foot building.
Duke has about 15,000 students, of whom about 1,700 of them this year are Jewish. (Wikimedia Commons)
At the school’s Chabad, some basketball fans call themselves the “Chabad Crazies,” according to Chabad Rabbi Nossen Fellig. “They’re all crazy about their basketball,” he said.
Throughout the weeks — yes, weeks — leading up to Duke’s games against major rivals, hundreds of students sleep in tents outside the Cameron Indoor Stadium on a patch of grass known as Krzyzewskiville, or K-Ville, in hopes of snagging tickets.
Barry was among those who endured dozens of frigid winter nights for a Duke-UNC game last season. (The teams split their outings during the regular season, then met again in the Final Four, when the Tar Heels ended Krzyzewski’s coaching career to go on to the final game.)
“It was six whole weeks,” Barry said. “You have to take two different tests about your Duke basketball knowledge — one on the current team and one on Duke basketball history — to determine whether or not you get a tent and what order you will sit in when you get into the stadium.”
Students with Duke University’s Jewish Student Union wait to get into a men’s basketball team on campus. (Courtesy Sophie Barry)
While saying that Coach K was “the GOAT,” Barry was thrilled when Scheyer took his place. Before he was named the successor, Barry met the new coach during Hanukkah of 2020, when Scheyer appeared at a virtual menorah lighting for students secluded at home in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Coach Scheyer got on and did this whole Q&A — from questions about how he celebrated Hanukkah growing up and celebrating it now with his two kids, to questions about whether he preferred sour cream or applesauce. It was a really cute event to lift the spirits during such a hard time,” Barry recalled. (Scheyer and his wife Marcelle, a nurse, have since added James to big siblings Noa and Jett.)
Joyce Gordon, director of Jewish life at Duke, said she has heard giddiness at the campus Hillel about the coach’s identity.
“Many Jewish students definitely have a sense of pride that Coach Scheyer is ‘one of us,’” said Gordon.
Fellig described Scheyer as a “mensch” and “dear friend to the Jewish community.” One summer before the pandemic, the coach requested Fellig’s help arranging kosher meals for a group of players that he was training in Israel. And at a recent Jewish event on campus, he brought a surprise.
“He surprised the students by giving them tickets to the game the next day, which was a pretty big game,” said Fellig. “He saved everyone the line — they would have had to wait for many hours.”
Geller, who hopes to clinch a job in an NBA front office after graduation, was high-spirited about his team’s March Madness prospects under Scheyer’s lead.
“The team has great momentum,” he said. “But the most exciting part is in the locker room [after the ACC tournament], they were all talking about [how] we’ve got to forget about this win tomorrow, because we don’t want to fall in the trap of being too excited. So I think they have a great mindset and great leadership.”
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The post For Jewish fans, Duke’s new basketball coach inspires a different version of March Madness appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Rabbi who coached Adam Brody for ‘Nobody Wants This’ calls him ‘ignorant Jew’ over Gaza ‘genocide’ comments
(JTA) — The rabbi who coached Adam Brody for Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This” has bashed him for saying that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
Steve Leder, the former senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, served as a consultant on depictions of Judaism for Season 1 of “Nobody Wants This,” a rom-com in which Brody plays a rabbi who falls for an agnostic non-Jewish podcaster.
Leder denounced Brody on Wednesday over recent comments in which the Jewish actor for the first time publicly expressed his views on Israel’s actions in Gaza. Brody told GQ, “Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine.”
Leder said in an Instagram video that Brody’s statements were “truly shocking,” “flippant” and “disgusting,” asserting his own view that “there is no genocide in Gaza.”
“You, by your own admission, are a relatively ignorant Jew, and your ignorance really showed the other day,” said Leder. “If you’re going to use a word like genocide, you ought to know what it means.”
Leder appeared to be referring to Brody’s previous descriptions of his limited Jewish education. Brody has said he is an atheist who “barely got bar mitzvahed and retained nothing from it,” adding that he prepared for the role of rabbi Noah Roklov in “Nobody Wants This” by attending a Shabbat service and working through books, podcasts and documentaries about Judaism.
Brody played high-profile Jewish characters including Seth Cohen in “The O.C.” and Seth Morris in “Fleishman Is in Trouble” before “Nobody Wants This,” which returns for a third season on Oct. 22.
The show itself has conspicuously avoided the subject of Israel. “Nobody Wants This” creator Erin Foster — who converted to Judaism in Leder’s synagogue — told The Free Press last year that she made a deliberate choice not to deal with the issue.
“We never say Israel or Palestine in the show, and that’s intentional because I think it would be a distraction and that this is just not the show to tell that story,” said Foster.
Brody told GQ that the Gaza war, alongside other national and global crises in recent years, revealed that he and his Hollywood peers were not as “like-minded” as he previously believed.
“Between COVID, a second Trump term, Israel-Gaza, it’s really brought out some different beliefs that I was ignorant to, and then disheartened by,” he said.
Israel’s actions in Gaza have divided the entertainment industry — and Jewish stars. While celebrities such as Jerry Seinfeld, Gal Gadot and Amy Schumer have voiced support for Israel since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, other Jewish actors have said that Israel subsequently committed genocide, including Hannah Einbinder and Wallace Shawn.
The genocide accusation is heavily disputed. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry, along with international and Israeli human rights groups, has concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza fit that description. However, the International Court of Justice has not yet issued a final judgment on allegations of genocide brought by South Africa against Israel. Israel rejects the accusation.
The post Rabbi who coached Adam Brody for ‘Nobody Wants This’ calls him ‘ignorant Jew’ over Gaza ‘genocide’ comments appeared first on The Forward.
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How Netflix’s ‘East of Eden’ handled its ‘Timshel’ problem for Hebrew speakers
The crux of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, now a splashy Netflix miniseries, is a Hebrew word that doesn’t exist.
At one point in Steinbeck’s 600-page tome, as rife with biblical allegory as the Salinas Valley is with natural beauty, the character Lee offers a midrash on Genesis 4, and the moment God rejects Cain’s offering.
Speaking with Samuel Hamilton, the neighbor of the Trask family at the center of the generational drama, Lee said he was bothered by a passage where God says, in the King James Bible, “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.”
Lee says he compared translations and finally returned to the source: Hebrew, by way of some learned Chinese elders who consulted a rabbi.
In the Hebrew, they found the word “timshel,” which they translate as “thou mayest. Thou mayest rule over sin.” (The word, the last one of Steinbeck’s book, is the title of the final episode of the Netflix series.)
“The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance,” Lee tells Samuel, scholar to scholar. “The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel — ‘Thou mayest’ — that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’ — it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’”
This interpretation, in a book about how sin may be transmitted from one set of Cain and Abel-like brothers to the next, is the core of Steinbeck’s philosophy. So central is it that he carved the word onto a wooden box containing the manuscript.
But as I am hardly the first to note, “timshel” is a corruption of “timshol,” תמשל, and it doesn’t mean “thou mayest.” It means something like “you will rule” — future tense, second person, a more complete thought.
That said, the sages did debate whether the word was truly determinative or implied a sense of choice. (Ramban and Rashi are among the ones to suggest free will factored into the equation.)
While quoting the whole phrase in English, Steinbeck evidently thought the word “timshol” only indicated how one might rule, and did not encompass the piece about the ruling. As our language columnist Aviya Kushner has written, Steinbeck’s explanation “reveals an ignorance of the basic fact that Hebrew is more concise than English.”
Steinbeck was writing for an English-speaking audience. Zoe Kazan released her miniseries on Netflix and to a global audience that includes around 9 to 10 million Hebrew speakers. How did they adapt the passage for the Hebrew subtitles?
In the show, the scene plays out much the same way. Lee (Hon Lee) and Samuel (Ciarán Hinds) are at the kitchen table of the Trask homestead in the valley.
The King James has God tell Cain “thou shalt” rule over sin. It sounds, as Lee says, like “a promise.” The American Standard Bible translates it as “do thou.” “More of an order” from the Almighty, says Samuel.
Lee said Jewish scholars in San Francisco found the original in “timshel,” which, as in the book, is translated as “thou mayest.”
In the Hebrew subtitles, the word is correctly rendered as timshol, תמשול. Netflix translated his reading as “thou mayest” as, literally, “a choice is in your hand,” which, while not actually what the word means in Hebrew, suggests it’s something a bit more layered than “thou mayest.”
(Netflix did not respond to a request for comment about how the Hebrew translations were decided on.)
Perhaps the spirit of it — if not the letter — is what matters. And indeed, the rejection of evil as an inborn element of human nature has more in common with Jewish tradition than the Episcopalian concept of original sin and agency linked to God that Steinbeck grew up with.
Lee reasons that “timshel,” a Steinbeckian invention, may be the most important word there is.
“It offers a choice,” he says. “Our future isn’t determined by God or by our past. Even Cain in his weakness and his filth at the murder of his brother can still choose his course. Because timshel. Thou mayest.”
It’s a worthwhile message that of course resonates. But, of course, thou mayest also consult Hebrew speakers.
Mira Fox contributed research and translation.
The post How Netflix’s ‘East of Eden’ handled its ‘Timshel’ problem for Hebrew speakers appeared first on The Forward.
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Even Adam and Eve weren’t satisfied
האָסטו אַמאָל געטראַכט: „ווען איך וואָלט נאָר געהאַט דאָס אָדער יענץ, אָדער ווען מײַן מצבֿ וואָלט נאָר געווען אַנדערש, וואָלט איך געווען גליקלעך…“?
עס איז זייער אַנטמוטיקנדיק צו גלייבן אַז עס פֿעלט אונדז דאָס וואָס מיר דאַרפֿן כּדי צו דערגרייכן אונדזערע צילן און צו זײַן גליקלעך. און נאָך מער: ווען מען קומט צו אַזאַ מסקנה, פֿילט מען זיך ווי אַ קרבן פֿון די אומשטענדן, אוממעכטיק צו בײַטן די מציאות צום גוטן.
אָבער איז עס טאַקע אַזוי?
אין טיפֿן איז דאָס אַ פֿאַלשער חשבון. פֿרייד איז ניט אָפּהענגיק פֿון דעם וואָס מיר האָבן אָדער האָבן ניט, נאָר פֿון דעם ווי מיר קוקן אויף וואָס מיר האָבן און אויף וואָס עס פֿעלט אונדז.
אין דער וואָכעדיקער סדרה, בראשית, לייענען מיר וועגן בריאת־העולם און איר שפּיץ — די באַשאַפֿונג פֿון אָדם און חוה.
וואָס קען זײַן אַ בעסערער בײַשפּיל, אַז גליק איז ניט אָפּהענגיק פֿון אויסערלעכע אומשטענדן, ווי אָדם און חוה אין גן־עדן?
האָט זיי עפּעס געפֿעלט? ניין.
און דאָך האָבן זיי אַליין באַוויזן צו פֿאַרפּלאָנטערן דעם מצבֿ.
עס איז געווען בלויז איין בוים, פֿון וועמענס פֿרוכטן ג־ט האָט זיי פֿאַרווערט צו עסן, און זיי האָבן זיך ניט געקענט אײַנהאַלטן פֿון עסן דווקא פֿון יענעם בוים!
און נאָך מער: לויט דעם תּנא רבי מאיר איז דער בוים געווען אַ ווײַנשטאָק. זיי האָבן זיך געדאַרפֿט אָפּהאַלטן פֿון זײַנע פֿרוכטן בלויז עטלעכע שעה, ביז שבת וואָלט זיך אָנגעהויבן; דאַן וואָלטן זיי געקענט מאַכן קידוש אויפֿן ווײַן און אַזוי אײַנפֿירן אַן אייביקן שבת.
פֿאַר וואָס האָבן זיי ניט געקענט זיך אײַנהאַלטן?
עס איז אַ טייל פֿון אונדזער נאַטור צו וועלן דווקא דאָס וואָס מיר קענען ניט האָבן, און ניט אָפּצושאַצן ווי געהעריג דאָס וואָס מיר האָבן יאָ.
עס קלינגט כּמעט אומגלייבלעך — כאָטש דאָס געשעט צו אָפֿט — אָבער ווען ג־ט קומט צו אָדם און פֿאָדערט בײַ אים אַן ענטפֿער פֿאַר וואָס ער האָט געגעסן פֿון בוים, באַשולדיקט ער „די פֿרוי וואָס דו האָסט מיר געגעבן צו זײַן מיט מיר“, ווײַל זי האָט אים געגעבן צו עסן פֿון בוים.
וואָס פֿאַר אַן אומדאַנקבאַרקייט!
ג־ט האָט אים געגעבן אַ פֿרוי, ווײַל ער האָט געזען ווי שטאַרק אָדם לײַדט פֿון זײַן איינזאַמקייט. און אַנשטאָט אָפּצושאַצן דעם אוצר וואָס ער האָט באַקומען, קריטיקירט ער זי און באַשולדיקט זי.
אין אַ בריוו צו איינעם וואָס פֿלעגט זיך אָפֿט באַקלאָגן וועגן זײַן לעבן, שרײַבט דער ליובאַוויטשער רבי — זכותו יגן עלינו:
„אין דער וועלט אין וועלכער מיר לעבן, געפֿינט זיך אין אַלע זאַכן אַ געמיש פֿון גוטס און שלעכטס. דער מענטש דאַרף אויסקלײַבן אויף וועלכן פֿון די צוויי צדדים ער וויל לייגן דעם טראָפּ, אויף וועלכן ער וויל טראַכטן, און וועלכן ער וויל נאָכגיין…
„ווי באַלערנדיק איז דאָס וואָס אונדזערע חכמים זאָגן וועגן דעם וואָס אָדם איז געווען אַן אומדאַנקבאַרער: נאָך איידער ער איז פֿאַרטריבן געוואָרן פֿון גן־עדן — ווען ער האָט זיך נאָך געפֿונען אין אַ ממשותדיקן גן־עדן — האָט ער זיך שוין באַקלאָגט וועגן זײַן מצבֿ.
„פֿון דער אַנדערער זײַט זענען געווען ייִדן, מענער און פֿרויען, וואָס האָבן געדאַנקט און געבענטשט דעם באַשעפֿער, און געזאָגט די ברכות השחר יעדן אינדערפֿרי, בשעת זיי האָבן געלעבט אונטער די שרעקלעכסטע באַדינגונגען אין די דײַטשישע קאָנצענטראַציע־לאַגערן.
„אין דער ווירקלעכקייט וועט דער מצבֿ פֿון יעדן מענטש זיך געפֿינען ערגעץ צווישן די צוויי עקסטרעמען.
„מײַן כּוונה איז ניט אײַך צו מוסרן, נאָר אונטערצושטרײַכן אַ מציאות: וואָס פֿאַר אַ לעבן מיר לעבן — אַ לעבן פֿול מיט צופֿרידנקייט און באַדײַט, אָדער פֿאַרקערט — איז אין אַ גרויסער מאָס אָפּהענגיק פֿון אונדזער ווילנסקראַפֿט, וואָס באַשטימט צי מיר וועלן לייגן דעם טראָפּ אויף דעם פּאָזיטיוון אָדער אויף דעם נעגאַטיוון.“
מיר זײַנען מסוגל זיך צו באַקלאָגן אויף די באַדינגונגען אין גן־עדן און צו פֿילן הכּרת־הטובֿ, דאַנקשאַפֿט, אַפֿילו אין די אוממענטשלעכסטע באַדינגונגען פֿון אַ קאָנצענטראַציע־לאַגער.
איינער פֿון די פּערזענלעכע געהילפֿן בײַם רבין, הרבֿ בערל ע״ה יוניק, האָט דערציילט, אַז דער רבי האָט אים אַמאָל פּריוואַט געזאָגט:
„איך האָב געאַרבעט אויף זיך צו זען שטענדיק די זאַכן אין אַ פּאָזיטיוון ליכט; ווען ניט, וואָלט איך ניט געקענט איבערלעבן.“
ווען מען ווייסט וויפֿל פּערזענלעכע ליידן פֿון פֿאַרשידענע מינים דער רבי האָט אַליין דורכגעמאַכט, אין צוגאָב צו דעם ווייטיק פֿון די המונים מענטשן וואָס האָבן מיט אים געטיילט זייערע פּערזענלעכע צרות, קען מען פֿאַרשטיין, אַז אַזאַ בליק אויפֿן לעבן איז גאָר ניט קיין קליינע דערגרייכונג.
דערפֿאַר איז די „ווערקצײַג“ פֿון דער וואָך צו טראַכטן וועגן די פֿאָלגנדיקע פֿראַגעס:
זענען די אומשטענדן פֿון דײַן לעבן גוט אָדער שלעכט אומאָפּהענגיק פֿון דעם ווי דו קוקסט אויף זיי — אָדער ווערן זיי פֿאַר דיר גוט אָדער שלעכט דווקא צוליב דעם ווי דו קוקסט אויף זיי?
ס׳איז דאָ אַ וואָרט וואָס מען האָט געהערט אין נאָמען פֿון דעם דריטן חב״ד רבי, דעם צמח צדק זצ״ל: „אַזוי ווי מען שטעלט זיך אַוועק שבת בראשית, אַזוי גייט אַוועק אויף דעם גאַנצן יאָר“. דריק איך אויס די האָפֿענונג אַז מיר זאָלן אין דעם אַלע מצליח זײַן און האָבן אַ גוט געבענטשט יאָר.
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