A yarmulke-wearing basketball prospect who gained online fans with highlight-reel dunks announced his next major leap Wednesday: He’ll try to be the first Orthodox player to play four years of Division-I college basketball.

Chaim Galbut, a 6-foot-7 wing who played high school basketball for Miami Country Day School, a nondenominational Jewish K-12 school, before graduating in 2025, announced in an Instagram post that he will attend Duquesne University in the fall.

A post from the basketball outlet DraftExpress reported that Duquesne, a Catholic university in Pittsburgh, had discovered Galbut on social media.

Galbut said last year that his refusal to compete on Shabbat had meant turning down offers from other colleges.

“I’m like, I don’t play on Shabbos, they’re like, ‘Well, we don’t want you,’” Galbut told the Yeshiva League Pass Tip Off podcast in September. “It’s happened so many times, I can’t tell you. I’m like, ‘All right, that’s cool. Like, don’t worry, you’ll see me soon.’”

Galbut did not immediately respond to an inquiry.

Largely unknown outside of the Orthodox world during high school, Galbut’s moment in the spotlight did not come until after he graduated, when video of him throwing down dunks on the summer travel circuit, posted by a popular basketball channel, received more than 100,000 likes on TikTok.

He spent the next school year studying at a yeshiva in Israel.

Duquesne finished last season with 18 wins and 15 losses. The university last appeared in the NCAA Tournament in 2024, when they lost in the round of 32.

At least one other Orthodox hooper has played in Division I: Tamir Goodman, who started his career at Towson University in 2000 but left the program after two years.

And other Orthodox players have played for Christian schools in Division III — Ze’ev Remer played four years at California Lutheran University, graduating this year.

The post An Orthodox Jewish hooper famous for viral dunks aims to break Division-I boundaries appeared first on The Forward.

A group called Shut it Down NYU hosted an off-campus event near New York University on Tuesday that featured a lecture by Mohamed Abdou, a former Columbia University professor at the Middle East Studies Institute. During his two-hour-long lecture, Abdou told students they had much to learn from Hamas and other armed groups, including lessons from the planning of the Oct. 7 attacks and even martyrdom.

Abdou, whose employment at Columbia drew criticism during 2024 congressional hearings about campus antisemitism, leading to a contentious split between him and the university, has taught at numerous other universities, including Cornell University and the University of Toronto. He appeared via Zoom at the Tuesday event as the sole speaker. Roughly 10 people attended the gathering in person at a park near campus, with about 30 more joining online. A meal was provided for in-person attendees.

The event was part of a campus tour series titled “Death to the Akademy.” In March, Abdou lectured a student group at the Union Theological Seminary, a Columbia affiliate, where he encouraged students to engage in jihad.

Shut it Down NYU describes itself as being made up of NYU “students, faculty, staff, and organizers who are a community in but not of NYU.” The group is not formally affiliated with the university.

During his lecture, Abdou offered advice on campus organizing and said the Mujahideen, Muslim guerrilla fighters who engage in jihad, had referred to pro-Palestinian student groups as a “branch of the resistance.” Abdou described the Mujahideen as “the greatest people on the face of the earth,” telling participants that this designation is “a great honor,” but added that students could be doing more to live up to that role.

At several points, Abdou appeared to urge students toward violence. He criticized the 2024 student-run encampments for marginalizing radical voices who sought to use violence. “We need to understand that violence is a tactic and not a strategy,” he said. “The question of violence, there wasn’t even consensus about that! Students within the encampment fetishizing non‑violence,” he said, adding, “We don’t understand that there are revolutionary forms of violence, that there’s a need for sacrifice.”

The event included a question-and-answer session in which one attendee asked in the Zoom chat about balancing “the longevity of our movement with the violent urgency that our conditions require.”

Abdou said that if student activists see themselves as part of the axis of resistance, they should see themselves as coming from a group of people who believe in martyrdom. “If we are to meet Muhammad, then our blood serves as a testimony,” he said. “We do not fear death.”

An NYU official said that the university contacted Shut it Down NYU organizers to make clear that they did not have permission to hold the event on NYU grounds or to use university resources, Wiley Norvell, NYU’s senior vice president for university relations and public affairs, told the Forward.

“This event was not sanctioned by NYU, nor did we allow it to take place on campus,” Norvell said. “It was not affiliated with any university group and was attended by fewer than 10 people in a city park. NYU strongly condemns the brazen use of threatening language used in promoting the event and the encouragement of violence expressed by speakers. We are investigating several potential University policy violations associated with it.”

The flyer for the event was widely circulated on social media, featuring drawings of what appear to be armed Hamas militants. At the bottom of the flyer, a message reads, “want us to come to your campus? DM for details.”

During the Q&A, a participant who identified herself as a student asked Abdou about the lessons student organizers can take from foreign resistance movements.

Abdou responded that students can learn from the Oct. 7 attacks, stating, “There’s much that one can learn, again from the cunningness of our Mujahideen, particularly Sinwar.” He additionally described at length the way Hamas methodically “studied the Zionist entity and how to break through the barrier siege.”

In remarks about the United States, Abdou said, “If you think somehow you’re going to free Palestine and keep America, forget it…You need to actively work to destroy.”

“Be proud of your hate for America,” he said. “You love Islam, and you should be loving Islam more than this barbarous colony. It’s a plague upon the earth. And yeah, in that sense, you need to be a threat. We all need to be a threat.”

Shut it Down NYU did not immediately respond to comment.

The post Former Columbia professor tells NYU students to learn from Hamas at off-campus event appeared first on The Forward.

Police outside a Jewish school following an explosion that caused minor damages, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, March 14, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw

The Netherlands is significantly boosting security funding for Jewish communities amid a relentless surge of antisemitic incidents, as synagogues, schools, and cultural institutions across the country face escalating threats and authorities move to reinforce protection in response to growing alarm.

During a parliamentary session on Tuesday, Dutch Justice and Security Minister David van Weel announced an additional €700,000 in the 2026 security budget to safeguard Jewish buildings and institutions nationwide, raising total annual funding to €2 million in response to a sustained wave of antisemitic incidents.

Van Weel explained these funds will support security at synagogues, Jewish schools, cultural institutions, and public events, noting that the existing €1.3 million allocation had already been exhausted in 2025, leaving dozens of applications unfunded, with further demand expected this year.

“The additional funding is intended to strengthen protection for the Jewish community and reinforce its sense of security,” the Dutch official said.

Het veiligheidsfonds voor Joodse scholen, instellingen en evenementen verhoog ik met €700.000 naar €2 miljoen per jaar.

Hiermee kunnen Joodse instellingen nog beter worden beschermd en hoop ik het veiligheidsgevoel van de Joodse gemeenschap in Nederland te versterken. pic.twitter.com/FhGnoE8eQl

— David van Weel (@ministerjenv) April 22, 2026

Van Weel’s announcement came in the wake of a series of antisemitic attacks last month, including small explosions at a synagogue in Rotterdam, a second blast two days later at a Jewish school in Amsterdam, and a third near a Zuidas office building housing the Bank of New York Mellon. 

During Tuesday’s session, lawmakers also reviewed proposals from an antisemitism taskforce aimed at strengthening protections for Jewish students and staff in higher education, alongside broader measures to counter rising hate incidents on campuses.

Mirjam Bikker, leader of the ChristenUnie, a Dutch Protestant political party, called for the government to fully cover security costs at Jewish institutions, describing the current system — under which synagogues and schools are expected to fund their own protection — as “a fundamental reversal of responsibility.”

Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, the Netherlands has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

According to newly released figures, Dutch authorities reported antisemitism remained at alarmingly high levels across the country last year, with 867 registered cases in 2025 — virtually unchanged from the 880 incidents recorded the previous year.

Even though Jews make up less than 0.3 percent of the Dutch population, anti-Jewish hate crimes account for 26 percent of all discrimination cases.

Eddo Verdoner, the Dutch national coordinator for combating antisemitism (NCAB), said the data reflects a worrying normalization of antisemitic incidents.

“We have been recording hundreds of antisemitic incidents each year for years now. What I fear is that we are slowly getting used to figures that are unacceptable, that hatred is becoming the new normal,” Verdoner said in a statement.