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After 47 years and 900 wins, this Jewish basketball coach is a legend at his Catholic college
BROOKLINE, Mass. (JTA) — Andy Yosinoff departs his prayer service at Congregation Kehillath Israel shortly after 8 a.m. every Thursday during the college basketball season, navigating across the Boston city line.
For nearly 50 years, the Reform Jew has commuted to what’s become his life’s calling: coaching the women’s basketball team at a small private Catholic college.
Yosinoff, 76, is the second-longest tenured employee at Emmanuel College (a philosophy professor has been there longer) and one of the school’s pillars.
“Emmanuel’s been my life,” Yosinoff told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency of his 47 years at the school. “I wouldn’t be where I am if I wasn’t at Emmanuel. They allow me to be Andy Yosinoff, who doesn’t always do things in the most conventional ways.”
The all-time winningest Jewish college basketball coach at any level for both men and women with 898 wins, Yosinoff is also the country’s longest-tenured active college basketball coach, according to the NCAA. His Saints have garnered 21 NCAA tournament appearances and 18 Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) championships in his nearly five decades leading the Division III program. In addition to heading the women’s hoops program, Yosinoff served as the director of athletics at Emmanuel for 17 years; he is now an associate athletic director and the department’s business manager and athletic alumni development liaison.
“Even as a practicing Jewish person, Andy really embodies the mission of Emmanuel College,” said Beth Ross, the college’s president. “I can’t think of a better advocate or somebody who is more passionate or committed to developing student scholar-athletes.”
Yosinoff grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the only child of Freda and Louis Yosinoff. His family kept a kosher home and attended the Conservative Temple Emanu-el in Providence, where he later had his bar mitzvah. He still attends services there when he can, usually for the High Holidays.
That Yosinoff ended up a basketball coach is a surprise on its own. While he played varsity high school hoops “not great, pretty good,” he said, tennis was Yosinoff’s better court sport. Playing Division I tennis at the University of Rhode Island as the school’s first scholarship tennis athlete, Yosinoff held the top singles position on the men’s tennis team all four years and is in the school’s athletic hall of fame.
While at URI, he caught the coaching bug, pioneering the school’s intramural basketball team. Yosinoff continued coaching a YMCA team while obtaining his master’s at Miami University (Ohio) and developed the defensive schemes his teams still use today. He moved to Boston soon after, teaching physical education in Boston public schools and coaching basketball within the system.
One day, an advertisement in the Boston Globe caught his eye: a tennis coaching job at Emmanuel, then a women’s school.
Yosinoff applied immediately, but after meeting with the school’s part-time athletic director, he realized he couldn’t take the role because the hours overlapped with his teaching job. Yosinoff quickly pivoted, asking if Emmanuel had a basketball coach.
The answer?
“No.”
“You do now,” he responded.
Yosinoff’s Saints found success not long after his arrival in 1977, 10 years before the introduction of the 3-point line, and they never looked back. Their best season to date came midway through his career in 2001, when Emmanuel reached the NCAA Final Four, becoming the first Boston school to do so at any division, men or women. He’s the NCAA Division III record holder for 20-plus victory seasons, with 27, and one of 10 NCAA women’s basketball coaches across all levels to reach 900 wins. Yosinoff coached the Saints to 72- and 68-game regular-season conference winning streaks from 2000-2006 and 2010-2016. He won the 2012 Jewish Coaches Association’s Red Auerbach National Coach of the Year Award and was a finalist a decade later. Yosinoff has also coached in the Maccabiah Games in Israel. The list of accolades goes on.
To boot, Yosinoff also coached women’s tennis at Emmanuel from 1980-1987. He became Emmanuel’s athletic director in 1986, while continuing to teach in the public schools and coaching women’s basketball and tennis. He retired from teaching in 2007 and has been full-time at Emmanuel since.
Perhaps Yosinoff’s most important accomplishment, though, came as an assist, when he helped then-freshman Lesa Dennis petition the NCAA to allow the devout Muslim to wear sweatpants and a scarf to cover her head during games in order to adhere to religious customs in the mid-1980s. Recently, Jamad Fiin, a 2022 graduate, rose to influencer status and viral fame for her empowering content as a female Muslim college basketball player.
Now, Lesa Dennis-Mahamed is a Roxbury, Massachusetts-based optometrist. She described Yosinoff as “an asset to the human race.”
“He is an advocate,” Dennis-Mahamed said. “Even though there can be some stress between Muslims and Jews, Andy doesn’t see that. He sees people as human. Andy looks beyond race, color, religion or even gender, and he sees the person for who they are.”
Yosinoff’s father Louis, who attended synagogue daily for 25 years, worked as a guidance counselor in Providence’s City Central High School, teaching his son about the importance of diversity and inclusion. Louis had started a scholarship fund at Emmanuel in honor of his wife, who died of muscular dystrophy at 65 in 1986.
Last year, Andy Yosinoff redid the gym’s bleachers in honor of his father, who died in 2017 at age 99 and was known as “Papa Yosinoff” to the team. A yellow seat in the middle seat of the first row honors Louis Yosinoff. The others are blue.
The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, the school’s founding order, emphasize the importance of equity, too, he said.
“It’s about giving inner-city kids opportunities to go to school. It’s essential for me, and was for my father back in the day,” Yosinoff said. “I’m more proud of how diverse our teams have been than all the wins in the world.”
As a dogged recruiter, Yosinoff can be seen in action all over northern New England. Joe Walsh, now the GNAC’s commissioner, got the Yosinoff pitch on a Friday evening in the summer of 1972 while shooting around in Allston’s Ringer Park by himself. Yosinoff approached then-15-year-old Walsh.
“I’m the coach of the Jewish Community Center basketball team,” and I need some players, Yosinoff told Walsh.
“I’m not Jewish,” Walsh said.
“I don’t care,” Yosinoff responded.
“The starting 5 was four Irish kids and one Jewish kid,” Walsh said. “You don’t get 900 wins as a college coach if you can’t recruit.”
Ross, Emmanuel’s president, remembers first meeting Yosinoff 23 years ago on the campus quad, located in the heart of Boston’s Fenway neighborhood, forming an instant friendship because of Yosinoff’s infectious energy.
“There isn’t a person on campus that doesn’t know Andy,” she said.
Ross credited Yosinoff for fostering an inclusive environment in his program while also holding his players to high standards, evidenced by their strong grade point average and Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) Team academic honors.
Kiera Eubanks, a current senior captain, remembers Yosinoff’s two-part recruiting promise as follows: First, if she joined the program, she’d win a championship. Second, he would do everything he could to help her find professional opportunities after college.
“He’s constantly checking up on us, also making sure that we’re succeeding off the court, and I certainly have felt supported during my four years here,” said Eubanks, a sociology major. “I wouldn’t change it for the world. He truly has made my college experience that much greater, and he truly cares about us.”
Meghan Kirwan, a 2012 graduate, joined Yosinoff’s staff as an assistant two years after graduating. She’s now in her ninth season in the part-time role.
“As a player I enjoyed it so much, so when he was looking for another assistant coach there was no one I’d rather coach under,” said Kirwan, who also works in the nearby Somerville Public Schools as a reading specialist. “He takes it very seriously and wants to win, but there’s such a free and fun lightness about him. Year after year I’m still here, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
Already a member of the New England Basketball and Great Northeast Athletic Conference halls of fame, Yosinoff has since November 2016 had his name inscribed on the school’s basketball court — “maybe the only Jewish coach with his name on a Catholic college floor,” he said.
He eyes three more accomplishments: a national championship, a place in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (which includes NBA stars) and 1000 career wins, in that order.
With a list that like, he clearly is showing no signs of slowing down.
“If I feel like I do today, which is the same energy as it was 45 years ago, and feel like I’m doing a good job helping my players get better, I can’t give you an age” to retire, Yosinoff said. “If I didn’t love the place, I’d be like a normal person and retired.”
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The post After 47 years and 900 wins, this Jewish basketball coach is a legend at his Catholic college appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Amid Rising Antisemitism, American Jews Make Aliyah to Israel Seeking Safety, Community, Impact
Olim gather at JFK Airport in New York, preparing to board Nefesh B’Nefesh’s 65th charter flight to Israel. Photo: The Algemeiner
NEW YORK/TEL AVIV — Confronted with rising antisemitism and unease in the United States, a growing number of American Jews are choosing to make aliyah, embracing the risks of war in the Middle East for the chance to build new lives and foster meaningful communities.
On Wednesday, 225 new olim arrived in Tel Aviv on the first charter aliyah flight since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Aliyah refers to the process of Jews immigrating to Israel, and olim refers to those who make this journey.
Nefesh B’Nefesh (NBN) — a nonprofit that promotes and facilitates aliyah from the US and Canada — brought its 65th charter flight from New York, which The Algemeiner joined.
Founded in 2002, NBN helps olim become fully integrated members of Israeli society, simplifying the aliyah process and providing essential resources and guidance.
In partnership with Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Kayemeth, and the Jewish National Fund, NBN has helped nearly 100,000 olim build thriving new lives in Israel.
Shawn Fink is one of the 225 people who embarked on the life-changing journey earlier this week, leaving Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife, Liz, and their son.
For Fink and his family, making aliyah was driven not only by their love for Israel and desire to build a new community, but also by the escalating threats and uncertainties facing Jewish communities abroad since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
“Mostly, we were frustrated with the direction the United States is taking, and the rise in antisemitism was a major concern for us,” Fink told The Algemeiner.
Like many countries around the world, the US has seen an alarming rise in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel sentiment since the Oct. 7 atrocities.
According to the latest data issued by the FBI, hate crimes perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the federal agency’s counting them.
A striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, who constitute just 2 percent of the US population, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims were targeted the next highest amount as the victims of 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.
Fink explained that the increasing costs of living a Jewish life in the US — from education to kosher food — weighed heavily on his family’s decision to make the move to Israel.
While they first considered making aliyah five years ago, Fink and his family had to put the plans on hold for personal reasons — returning to the idea only in the past few months when the timing finally worked in their favor.
“We started planning it seriously in November and began the entire process with Nefesh B’Nefesh,” Fink told The Algemeiner. “It’s been a nonstop whirlwind ever since.”
For them, the current war did not stop their plans, but it did influence the cities they explored for their new home.
“The war really reinforced for us the importance of supporting Israel and our community,” Fink said. “By making aliyah, we felt we could do even more to help.”
Even though it is difficult to leave behind family and close friends, they look forward to reconnecting with friends in Israel, making new connections, and building a vibrant new community.
“Making aliyah in less than six months has been a whirlwind. I’d encourage anyone considering it to give themselves at least twice as much time, double the budget, and be prepared for plenty of unexpected starts and stops along the way,” Fink told The Algemeiner.
Nefesh B’Nefesh provides assistance to families throughout their entire aliyah journey, offering guidance before relocating and continued support once in Israel.
The Israeli government also complements these efforts with resources and financial incentives to help newcomers settle and ease their transition into their new lives.
“Once the ticket is finally in your hand and you’re waiting to board the plane, you realize that all the challenges and obstacles along the way were worth it,” Fink said.
Veronica Zaragovia was also one of the 225 olim who joined the flight earlier this week.
Similarly to Fink and his family, Zaragovia decided to make aliyah, driven not just by her love for Israel, but also by the increasing challenges of being Jewish abroad and the hope of making a meaningful impact by serving her community.
From Florida, she embarked on the journey alone, excited for all the new opportunities and possibilities that awaited her in her new home.
“I want to take pride in being Jewish and in Israel — that’s why I’m making aliyah,” she told The Algemeiner, reflecting on the move she has been planning for the past two years.
“It’s a huge concern for me that in some places in the US, I can’t — or maybe shouldn’t — wear my Star of David necklace,” she said. “I don’t feel that Jews can be fully safe anywhere in the country. The rise in antisemitism has been truly shocking and deeply concerning.”
Zaragovia, who worked as a journalist in the US, said her love for storytelling and uncovering the truth played a key role in her decision to make this move.
“After Oct. 7, I felt that the way my colleagues and other journalists were covering Israel was wrong and unfair,” she said.
“As someone whose career is built on facts and truth, I didn’t see that reflected in their reporting. That’s why I decided to make a difference by being there myself,” she continued.
Rather than deterring her decision to make a change, Zaragovia explained that the current war only reinforced it.
“It became clear that I needed to go, be there with my people, and make a difference through my work,” she said. “I couldn’t have done this without Nefesh B’Nefesh. They’ve been incredible, guiding me every step of the way from start to finish.”
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Mike Huckabee, Israeli Government Push Back Against Claims of ‘Famine’ in Gaza
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli government and the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, are pushing back against international criticism after a UN-backed authority declared a famine is taking place in Gaza.
“To the uninformed who claim Israel is starving Gaza, get the facts & read the thread below,” Huckabee said on X on Friday. “Tons of food has gone into Gaza but Hamas savages stole it, ate lots of it to become corpulent, sold it on [the] black market but they didn’t give it to the hostages.”
His comments came hours after the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the global body that monitors hunger crises, reported that famine thresholds had been met in Gaza City and surrounding areas, with more than half a million people already experiencing catastrophic levels of hunger. The IPC warned that the number could rise to 641,000 by the end of September if conditions do not improve.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a post on X, dismissed the IPC’s conclusions as “an outright lie,” insisting Israel “does not have a policy of starvation” but rather “a policy of preventing starvation.” Israeli officials note that thousands of aid trucks have entered Gaza and blame the ruling Hamas terror group for diverting supplies.
Huckabee’s remarks echoed that position, framing the Islamist group as the central cause of hunger. Israeli leaders and their allies accuse Hamas of stealing food, hoarding aid, and reselling goods on the black market at inflated prices instead of distributing them to civilians or releasing Israeli hostages.
The United States and Israel set up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) earlier this year to coordinate aid deliveries outside of UN channels, after accusing Hamas of exploiting international assistance. The group says it delivers more than a million meals a day, but humanitarian organizations counter that the aid falls far short of what is needed.
Distribution sites have often descended into chaos, with starving crowds surging around convoys. Human rights groups have described the alleged famine as a “man-made catastrophe” and accused Israel of weaponizing hunger.
Israel recently increased the flow of humanitarian supplies into Gaza, after imposing a temporary embargo in an effort to keep them out of the hands of Hamas. While facilitating the entry of thousands of aid trucks into Gaza, Israeli officials have condemned the UN and other international aid agencies for their alleged failure to distribute supplies, noting much of the humanitarian assistance has been stalled at border crossings or stolen. According to UN data, the vast majority of humanitarian aid entering Gaza is intercepted before reaching its intended civilian recipients.
Last week, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) released a report saying that Hamas has been inflating the death toll of Palestinians due to malnutrition and that most of those verified to have died had preexisting medical conditions.
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Italian Hospital Staff Discard Israeli-Made Medicine as Concerns Mount Globally of Antisemitism in Health Care
In Italy, Dr. Rita Segantini and nurse Giulia Checcacci throw products of the Israeli company Teva Pharmaceutical in the garbage in protest against Israel. Photo: Screenshot
Two medical workers in Italy filmed themselves discarding Israeli-made medicine in protest against the Jewish state at their workplace, fueling global concerns of antisemitism in health-care facilities as a doctor in the United Kingdom who praised Adolf Hitler was allowed back to work this month.
A doctor and a nurse who work at a community hospital in Pratovecchio Stia, near Arezzo in Tuscany, recently posted on social media a video of themselves dramatically throwing away products from Teva Pharmaceuticals, an Israeli company.
Italy
Throwing Israeli drugs in the binAt the Casa della Salute in Pratovecchio Stia, two public employees – Dr. Rita Segantini and nurse Giulia Checcacci – film themselves throwing away drugs manufactured by TEVA.pic.twitter.com/nQhc3TIQT3
— Hamas Atrocities (@HamasAtrocities) August 20, 2025
Dr. Daniel Radzik, a senior member of the Italian Jewish Medical Association, told Ynetnews that his organization is “very concerned about the event.”
“It’s evident that this act was not accidental, but carried out with the intention of encouraging the boycott of medicines produced in Israel,” he added.
Dr. Rita Segantini and nurse Giulia Checcacci apologized for the video following backlash, saying, “We apologize to anyone offended by the video. It was a symbolic gesture for peace. We did not actually throw away any medicine.”
In Italy, Dr. Rita Segantini and nurse Giulia Checcacci throw products of the Israeli company Teva Pharmaceutical in the garbage in protest of Israel. Photo: Screenshot
However, the Italian Jewish Medical Association was skeptical of the apology.
“They tried to explain in a very naive way. Because they say that their act was only symbolic, made for peace and that the medicine was only integrator and they don’t want really to throw them to the rubbish,” Radzik said.
The doctor and nurse claimed the items were not medications purchased by the hospital, but rather items such as wet wipes that are given out for free, and that they removed them from the trash after filming. Additionally, they claimed the video was filmed after working hours.
Meanwhile, a doctor in the UK was allowed to return to work this month after praising Hitler during an antisemitic rant and making racist comments about a colleague.
“All this antisemitism … if Hitler was around today, I would support him as he got rid of horrible f—kers like him,” Dr. Mili Shah said in reference to a colleague in 2021, according to British media.
In response, Shah was reportedly suspended for four months. However, a review by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in July concluded Shah, who is no longer employed by NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group, is fit to return to work.
These recent incidents come as concerns mount globally over antisemitism in health-care spaces, with Jews feeling unsafe due to medical professionals expressing antisemitism or even outright death threats against Israelis.
In the UK, for example, the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH Trust) issued an apology this past week following a patient’s complaints about the placement of anti-Israel posters at a facility. These posters — which read “Zionism is Poison,” called for a “Free Palestine,” and accused Israel of wantonly starving and killing Palestinians — led a patient to reach out to the group UK Lawyers for Israel, expressing fear of receiving subpar treatment if the hospital staff discovered she was Jewish. The chief executive of UCLH Trust released a statement apologizing for the posters.
Meanwhile, in a separate incident, midwife Fatimah Mohamied, who resigned from her position after UKLFI highlighted her anti-Israel social media posts, has now filed a claim against Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, alleging a violation of her rights. Mohamied’s posts included her defending and celebrating the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion and massacre across southern Israel.
Other Western countries have seen health-care providers’ antipathy toward Israel manifest as violent threats.
In the Netherlands, police opened an investigation into Batisma Chayat Sa’id, a nurse who allegedly stated she would administer lethal injections to Israeli patients.
Although Sa’id denied making the comments, claiming someone was “pretending to be me,” an account under her name also posted threatening messages aimed at Jewish people last year, including “Your time will come — don’t spare anyone,” and another in which she described the burial of Israelis in Gaza as “a dream come true.”
The nurse’s alleged threat mirrors a similar incident in Australia, in which video showed two nurses — Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh — posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements. The widely circulated footage showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.
“Now they actually brag online about killing Israeli patients,” Shira Nussdorf, a US-born Jewish woman who moved from Israel to Australia six years ago, told The Algemeiner earlier this year when the video first emerged. “I don’t know how safe I would feel giving birth at that hospital.”
Following the incident, New South Wales authorities in Australia suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide. They were also charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, they face up to 22 years in prison.
The issue of antisemitism in medical facilities also extends to North America.
A December 2024 study by the Data & Analytics Department of StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights group, found that 40 percent of 645 Jewish American health-care professionals surveyed reported experiencing antisemitism in the workplace. A similar study of Canadian Jewish health workers conducted last year reached 80 percent.