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20 Jewish men’s and women’s college basketball players to watch in 2023-24

(JTA) — A standout at perennial powerhouse Duke. An Israeli WNBA prospect with a twin sister in the Israeli Defense Forces. A member of the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
Those are just a few of the compelling stories from the best Jewish basketball players in the NCAA this year. Many are Israeli, with an eye on the situation back home.
“Trying to stay on top of school and basketball and also knowing everything going on at home was hardest the first week, and it still is hard,” said Romi Levy, a senior at the University of South Florida.
Here are 10 men and 10 women to watch, in alphabetical order, as the NCAA season begins on Monday.
Lior Berman shown in action during a game against Morehead State. (Auburn Athletics)g
Lior Berman, Auburn
The 6-foot-4 guard looks to build off a season in which he played a key role off the bench for the Tigers. Berman has also bonded with coach Bruce Pearl — one of the sport’s most outspoken Jewish coaches — who got Berman a full scholarship for the first time this past offseason.
Camilla Emsbo, Duke
A graduate transfer from Yale, the 6-foot-5 Emsbo did not play last year due to injury. In three seasons at Yale, Emsbo was a two-time All-Ivy League selection, scored 1,092 points and finished in the top 10 in program history in rebounds and blocks. If at full strength, Emsbo — who would’ve played in the 2023 Maccabiah Games had she been healthy — will be an impact player in the ultra-competitive Atlantic Coast Conference.
Jaclyn Feit, Franklin & Marshall (Div. III)
The 6-foot-3 Maccabiah Games veteran from North Carolina enters her senior year following a standout season in which she averaged 9.5 points, 7.5 rebounds and 3.9 blocks per game.
Spencer Freedman, New York University (Div. III)
Now in his sixth year of college hoops, the graduate student and former three-star recruit played four years of basketball at Harvard and enters his second season with NYU. The 6-foot guard garnered Third Team All-America honors from D3hoops.com last year after averaging 17.0 points and 5.6 assists per game.
Lior Garzon, Oklahoma State
The 6-foot-1 senior forward from Raanana, Israel, spent two seasons at Villanova before transferring to Oklahoma State last year, where she averaged 10.8 points and 3.5 rebounds per game, shooting 41% from 3-point range. The WNBA hopeful has talked about the differing styles of play in Israel and the United States.
Yarden Garzon shoots a free throw in a game against the Ohio State Buckeyes at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in Bloomington, Ind., Jan. 26, 2023. (Justin Casterline/Getty Images)
Yarden Garzon, Indiana
The younger Garzon sister played a pivotal role for the top-10 Hoosiers, starting in all 32 games and averaging 11.1 points per game. She talked to the Hoosier Network earlier this year about the anxiety of having a twin sister in the Israeli army.
Benny Gealer, Stanford
After starting his freshman year as a walk-on, the 6-foot-1 guard earned a scholarship ahead of this season. The lone high schooler on the 2022 Maccabiah Games gold medalist USA team (who is also a member of the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame) made 12 appearances off the bench for the Cardinal last season.
Adara Groman, University of New Hampshire
A three-year key cog in the Wildcats rotation, the 5-foot-8 guard is coming off a career-best season in which she started 27 games and averaged 8.2 points per game.
Lilah Grubman, Yale
After missing her freshman season with a torn ACL, the sophomore guard is one of JTA’s student athletes to watch this season. She was a two-time conference player of the year at Syosset High School in New York, where she scored over 1,000 points and led her team to four consecutive undefeated conference championships. She’s not the first Jewish basketball star to come out of that same school — WNBA icon Sue Bird played there in the ninth and tenth grades.
Yarin Hasson, University of Southern Indiana
A member of the national champion UConn Huskies team last year as a freshman, the 6-foot-9 forward played just 11 minutes across 11 games. But Hasson, who boasts a 7-foot-1 wingspan, transferred to a less competitive league and is now a potential breakout candidate as a sophomore. The former member of the Israeli under-18 national team played for Maccabi Rishon Lezion’s junior team, winning the 2014 Israel Cup and 2016 National Championship.
Raziel Hayun, Manhattan College
The 6-foot-4 guard who averaged 4 points per game last year as a freshman hails from Eilat, the southern Israeli coastal city.
Romi Levy lost high school friends in the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7. (South Florida Athletics)
Romi Levy, University of South Florida
After three years at Auburn, the 6-foot-5 junior enters her first season at USF. A 2021 SEC All-Freshman Team selection, Levy missed her sophomore year due to an ACL tear. She returned last winter, averaging 6.7 points and 4.2 points per game, flashing the ability to connect from 3-point distance. She lost some of her high school friends during the Re’im music festival terrorist attack by Hamas on Oct. 7. Her cousin, one year younger and like “a little brother,” was called into the army. “Trying to stay on top of school and basketball and also knowing everything going on at home was hardest the first week, and it still is hard,” Levy told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Lola Mullaney, Harvard
A two-time All-Ivy League Second Team player who has played in the Maccabiah Games, Mullaney enters her senior year with career averages of 14 points and 3.4 rebounds per game across 832 appearances — all but one of which she started.
Shirel Nahum, UC Irvine
The Raanana native, who is expected to play a key role off the bench as a freshman this winter, represented Team Israel at the last two FIBA U18 Women’s European Championships. She at first considered playing professionally in Israel instead of playing for a U.S. college team. “Being far from home isn’t easy, especially with the time difference, makes it tough to talk with your [friends and family,]” she told JTA. “In the beginning, everything was new and different, including the language, but then I started getting used to it a little bit and now am getting better all the time.”
Ofri Naveh, West Virginia
The 6-foot-6 wing played with Team Israel at the FIBA U18 European Championship this summer and is a rare scholarship player at a top Division I school. He’s a native of Neot Golan, a moshav in the Golan Heights.
Blake Peters shoots in a game against the Harvard Crimson at Lavietes Pavilion in Allston, Mass., Feb. 25, 2023. (Erica Denhoff/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Blake Peters, Princeton
Dubbed “the most interesting man in the NCAA tournament” by NJ.com last winter, the 6-foot-1 sharpshooter enters his junior year with momentum after helping the Tigers to the Sweet 16. Peters averaged 6 points per game and broke out in the second round of the tournament with a 17-point outburst against Missouri.
Maddie Plank, Davidson
The 5-foot-11 redshirt junior guard transferred to Davidson last year after two years at Princeton — where she played briefly with former Jewish Tigers star Abby Meyers. (The two also played together at the Maccabiah Games.) Plank averaged 5.9 points per game across 30 appearances (21 starts) in her debut season with the Wildcats.
Michael Rabinovitch, Holy Cross
Could this be the 6-foot-10 forward’s breakout year? The senior appeared in just 26 games over his first three seasons but remains an intriguing prospect with his size. He made several Jewish friends while playing in the Maccabiah Games last year. “A lot of my friends that I made at the Maccabiah Games actually stayed over there to play professionally,” he told Spectrum News 1. “So, they were there during the outbreak of war. A lot of them have made their way back here, but some of them are stuck over there.”
Ben Shtolzberg, UC Santa Barbara
Look for the 6-foot-4 guard, who transferred from Creighton, to crack the Gauchos’ regular rotation. Shtolzberg appeared in 17 games last winter, scoring 25 points across 98 minutes of action. He told a scouting website that he wants to be remembered as “an example for my community,” since there are so few Jewish basketball players in the pro ranks.
Danny Wolf drives during a game against the Brown Bears at the Pizzitola Sports Center in Providence, R.I., March 4, 2023. (Erica Denhoff/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Danny Wolf, Yale
Likely the tallest Jewish college basketball player, the 7-foot Wolf also made JTA’s list of student athletes to watch this year for his oversized potential. He helped Team Israel win silver at the 2023 FIBA U20 European Championships this summer, averaging 17.7 points and a tournament-best 12 rebounds per game.
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The post 20 Jewish men’s and women’s college basketball players to watch in 2023-24 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Holds Trilateral Talks With China, Russia Amid Ongoing Nuclear Negotiations With US

Illustrative: Chinese Foreign Minister Wag Yi stands with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazeem Gharibabadi before a meeting regarding the Iranian nuclear issue at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025 in Beijing, China. Photo: Pool via REUTERS
Iran held trilateral consultations with China and Russia on Thursday to discuss ongoing nuclear negotiations with the United States, as a fifth round of talks between Tehran and Washington ended with no deal yet in sight.
Iranian, Chinese, and Russian officials met to “coordinate their positions ahead” of the upcoming International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) hearing on Iran’s nuclear program, set to begin on June 9.
The UN’s nuclear watchdog, which has long sought to maintain access to the Islamic Republic to monitor and inspect the country’s nuclear program, is preparing to release its quarterly report on Tehran’s activities ahead of the upcoming board meeting.
In a post on X, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, Kazem Gharibabadi, confirmed that the three countries held high-level consultations to discuss Tehran’s nuclear program and the country’s ongoing negotiations with Washington, as well as broader regional developments.
“Given the upcoming BRICS summit as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the coming months, in separate meetings with the ambassadors of Russia and China, we reviewed the development and strengthening of cooperation within the framework of these two important groups of countries,” the Iranian diplomat said.
Tehran became a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a Eurasian security and political group, in 2023 and also joined the BRICS group in 2024 — a bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa that positions itself as an alternative to economic institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Following Thursday’s discussions, Russian Permanent Representative to the International Organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, described the talks as highly productive, noting that they helped the three countries closely coordinate their positions.
“Met today with my dear colleagues – Permanent Representatives of China and Iran – to compare notes on the eve of the forthcoming IAEA Board of Governors session. This trilateral format proves to be very useful. It helps coordinate closely our positions,” the Russian diplomat wrote in a post on X.
In an interview with Russian media on Friday, Ulyanov reiterated Moscow’s offer to mediate the indirect talks between Tehran and Washington.
“The Russian Federation has repeatedly stated its readiness to assist Iran and the United States in reaching an agreement on nuclear issues,” the Russian diplomat said. “But for this to happen, both Tehran and Washington need to make such a request. So far, there has been no such request.”
Both Moscow and Beijing, permanent members of the UN Security Council, are also parties to a now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal that had imposed temporary limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanction relief.
On Wednesday, ahead of the trilateral meeting, Tehran reaffirmed its stance that it will not give up its right to enrich uranium under any nuclear agreement.
“Continuing enrichment in Iran is an uncompromising principle,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, said in a statement.
However, Reuters reported that Tehran may pause uranium enrichment if Washington releases frozen Iranian funds and recognizes the country’s right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes under a “political deal” that could pave the way for a broader nuclear agreement.
The two adversaries concluded their fifth round of nuclear talks in Rome last week, with the Omani mediator describing the negotiations as having made limited progress toward resolving the decades-long dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program.
So far, diplomatic efforts have stalled over Iran’s demand to maintain its domestic uranium enrichment program — a condition the White House has firmly rejected.
“We have one very, very clear red line, and that is enrichment. We cannot allow even 1 percent of an enrichment capability,” US Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, said last week.
Since taking office, US President Donald Trump has sought to curtail Tehran’s potential to develop a nuclear weapon that could spark a regional arms race and pose a threat to Israel.
Meanwhile, Iran seeks to have Western sanctions on its oil-dependent economy lifted, while maintaining its nuclear enrichment program — which the country insists is solely for civilian purposes.
As part of the Trump administration’s “”maximum pressure” campaign against Iran — which aims to cut the country’s crude exports to zero and prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon — Washington has been targeting Tehran’s oil industry with mounting sanctions.
During Thursday’s meeting, Iran and Russia also agreed to substantially deepen their military and economic cooperation in response to ongoing US sanctions targeting both nations.
Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged to fund the construction of a new nuclear power plant in Iran as part of a broader energy agreement that also includes a major gas deal between the two countries.
Earlier this year, Moscow and Tehran signed a 20-year strategic partnership to strengthen cooperation in various fields, including security services, military exercises, warship port visits, and joint officer training.
The post Iran Holds Trilateral Talks With China, Russia Amid Ongoing Nuclear Negotiations With US first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Only One Solution’: Pro-Hamas Dartmouth College Group Occupies Building, Injures Staff

Pro-Hamas activists at Dartmouth College strike a pose inside the anteroom of the Parkhurst Hall administrative building. They had just commandeered the area. Photo: New Deal Coalition via Instagram, Inc.
A pro-Hamas group at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire which calls itself the “New Deal Coalition” (NDC) commandeered the anteroom of the Parkhurst Hall administrative building on Wednesday but limited the demonstration to business hours, as its members went home when it was shuttered at 6pm.
Before leaving the building, however, the group contributed to injuries sustained by a member of President Sian Beilock’s staff and an officer of the school’s Department of Safety and Security officer, according to The Dartmouth, the college’s official campus newspaper.
College deans Anne Hudak and Eric Ramsey have since vowed to hold the group, which included non-students, accountable.
“While Dartmouth remains committed to dialogue, we want to be absolutely clear: there cannot and will not be any tolerance for the type of escalation we saw on our campus today,” the officials said in a statement quoted by The Dartmouth.
During the unauthorized demonstration, the agitators shouted “free, free Palestine,” words shouted only recently by another anti-Israel activist who allegedly murdered two Israeli diplomats outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC.
The following day, the group at Dartmouth defended the behavior, arguing that it is a legitimate response to the college’s rejection of a proposal — inspired by the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — to divest from armaments and aerospace manufacturers which sell to Israel and its recent announcement of a new think tank, the Davidson Institute for Global Security, which it claims is linked to the Jewish state.
“We took this escalated action — one deployed several times in Dartmouth’s history to protest against apartheid — because Dartmouth funded, US-backed Israel has been escalating its genocidal assault on Palestine,” the group wrote. “In an effort to ‘dialogue,’ a group of students, staff, and faculty, and alumni spent months drafting extensively researched 55-page divestment proposal … How did the college respond? They rejected divestment on every single criteria and, the day after, announced that they are reinvesting in colonial genocide with the launch of the Davidson Institute for Global Security.”
The statement concluded with an ambiguous threat and an evocation of the memory of the Holocaust.
“So long as you fund actively imperialistic violence, we will continue to hold you accountable,” it said. “There is only one solution! Intifada! Revolution!”
Last week, Dartmouth College’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR) unanimously rejected a proposal urging the school to adopt the BDS movement against Israel.
“By a vote of nine to zero, the [ACIR] at Dartmouth College finds that the divestment proposal submitted by Dartmouth Divest for Palestine and dated Feb. 18, 2025, does not meet criteria, laid out in the Dartmouth Board of Trustees’ Statement on Investment and Social Responsibility and in ACIR’s charge, that must be satisfied for the proposal to undergo further review,” the committee said in a report explaining its decision. “ACIR recommends not to advance the proposal.”
A copy of the document reviewed by The Algemeiner shows that the committee evaluated the BDS proposal, submitted by the Dartmouth Divest for Palestine (DDP) group, based on five criteria regarding the college’s divestment history, capacity to address controversial issues through discourse and learning, and campus unity. It concluded that DDP “partially” met one of them by demonstrating that Dartmouth has divested from a country or industry in the past to establish its moral credibility on pressing cultural and geopolitical issues but noted that its analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lacks nuance, betraying the group’s “lack of engagement with counter arguments.”
ACIR added that DDP also does not account for the sheer divisiveness of BDS — which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination — and its potential to “degrade” rather than facilitate “additional dialogue on campus.”
It continued, “The proposal includes no compelling evidence on the level of support for divestment among students, among faculty, among staff, and among alumni. Moreover, the proposal is silent on the matter of how divestment can be treated as a consensus position in the face of what is almost certainly deep opposition to it among some members of the Dartmouth community.”
NDC is one of many campus groups which staged an end of year action aimed at coercing college officials into adopting anti-Israel policies.
At Yale University, a pro-Hamas group moved to cap off the year with a hunger strike, choosing to starve themselves inside an administrative building in lieu of establishing an illegal encampment.
Yale administrators refused to meet with the students for a discussion of their demands that the university’s endowment be divested of any ties to Israel, as well as companies that do business with it, according to the Yale Daily News. On the fourth day of the demonstration, Yale student affairs dean Melanie Boyd briefly approached the students at the site of their demonstration, Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall, advising them to leave the space because “the administration does not intend to hold any additional meetings.”
The group ended the hunger strike after just ten days, citing “deteriorating health conditions.”
In New York City, pro-Hamas students clashed with police during an unauthorized demonstration at City University of New York, Brooklyn College, continuing a series of days in which law enforcement has been deployed to quell extremist disturbances.
As seen in footage captured by “FreedomNews.TV,” students rocked officers with blow after blow to obstruct their being arrested for trespassing, prompting as many as six others to rush in to help with detaining one person at a time. The melees were unlike any seen on a US college campus this semester.
Reportedly, the aim of the group was to establish a pro-Hamas encampment on the East Quad section of campus, which they called a “Liberated Zone,” and several reports said that it attempted to block the entrance to the Tanger Hillel House after being prevented from doing so. FreedomNews captured several more fights between protesters and officers which were filmed in front of the Hillel building, where Jewish students socialize and seek support from their community.
“Tanger Hillel at Brooklyn College is appalled by the anti-Israel protest and encampment that took place on May 8, 2025 and violated campus policies and feared deeply troubling antisemitic rhetoric, including chants of ‘Say it loud, say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here,’ and banners with inverted red triangles, a symbol widely recognized as a call for violence,” Tanger Hillel told The Algemeiner in a statement following the incident. “Targeting Hillel, the Jewish student center, is not a peaceful protest. It is harassment, intimidation, and an antisemitic act of aggression.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Democratic Socialists of America Distances Itself From Caucus Group That Applauded DC Jewish Museum Shooting

Elias Rodriguez, 30, from Chicago, taken into custody by police for allegedly shooting two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, on May 21, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) national organization has distanced itself from remarks made by one of its caucus groups which celebrated the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC last week.
“Democratic Socialists of America seek to democratically transform our society and reject vigilante violence. We condemn the murder of Israeli embassy workers. Any statement otherwise is not the stance of DSA,” DSA posted on X/Twitter on Wednesday.
The post came one day after the DSA’s Liberation Caucus publicly praised Elias Rodriguez, a 31-year-old far-left and anti-Israel activist who has been charged with gunning down two Israeli embassy officials as they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in the US capital.
The caucus announced that it signed onto a statement by left-wing activist group Unity of Fields which defended Rodriguez’s actions as a “legitimate act of resistance against the Zionist state and its genocidal campaign in Gaza” and called for the alleged murderer’s immediate release.
Rodriguez was charged last Thursday in US federal court with two counts of first-degree murder. He is accused of fatally shooting Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, a young couple about to become engaged to be married, as they left an event for young professionals and diplomatic staff hosted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC). According to video of the attack and an affidavit filed by US federal authorities supporting the criminal charges, Rodriguez yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police and told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
“Excellent statement that we are proud to add our name to. Free Elias Rodriguez and all political prisoners,” the DSA liberation caucus said on social media of Unity of Fields’ note.
The liberation caucus’s comments sparked immediate backlash, with critics accusing the group of both supporting antisemitic violence and further marginalizing the Palestinian cause.
“DSA types literally think murderers, if they kill *the right people*, deserve no consequences. Socialism is a pro-killing ideology on so many levels, and they seem almost proud of it,” Reason reporter Liz Wolfe wrote.
Following the main DSA organization’s statement condemning the DC murders, the liberation caucus posted, “Liberation is not all of DSA. DSA is comprised of many different ideological tendencies, we are just one. Right wing news outlets and individuals have chosen to take the statement we signed to portray the entire organization as holding our views – this is wrong.”
DSA, one of the country’s premier leftist political advocacy organizations, has mobilized in recent years to elect anti-Israel members to the US Congress. Influential lawmakers such as US Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Greg Casar (D-TX), and Cori Bush (D-MO) are all current members of the socialist organization. Others such as Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Summer Lee (D-PA) are former members.
The organization also counts rising star and aspiring New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani among its ranks. Mamdani has made his anti-Israel activism a centerpiece of his mayoral campaign, accusing the Jewish state of committing “genocide” in Gaza and arguing that it does not offer “equal rights” to all of its citizens.
DSA has ramped up its anti-Israel rhetoric during the Gaza war. On Oct. 7, 2023, the organization issued a statement saying that Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel that day was “a direct result of Israel’s apartheid regime.” The organization also encouraged its followers to attend an Oct. 8 “All Out for Palestine” event in Manhattan.
In January 2024, DSA issued a statement calling for an “end to diplomatic and military support of Israel.” Then in April, the organization’s international committee, DSA IC, issued a missive defending Iran’s right to “self-defense” against Israel. Iranian leaders regularly call for the Jewish state’s destruction, and Tehran has long provided Hamas with weapons and funding.
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