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Jerry Izenberg covered 53 Super Bowls. His memoir covers his Jewish Newark upbringing.
(JTA) — Over the course of an illustrious 72-year career as a newspaper reporter, Jerry Izenberg has just about seen it all.
The longtime columnist for The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, Izenberg covered the first 53 Super Bowls. He’s been to 58 Kentucky Derbies, not to mention numerous Olympics, World Cups and boxing matches. He considered Muhammad Ali a close personal friend.
But the fiery 92-year-old, who still contributes to the paper as a columnist emeritus from his home in Nevada, doesn’t approve of the term “journalist.” He’s a newspaperman.
He dropped the name of Samuel Pepys, the 17th-century British diarist, as a contrast.
“Every day he took his big diary, and he wrote what he did this day, what he was planning to do later — that’s a journalist,” Izenberg told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I’m not in my world. I’m in the world of other people trying to interpret and to repeat what values they have or what lack thereof they have.”
Izenberg’s latest story breaks that rule. His 17th book, which hits shelves on Monday, is a memoir about his Jewish upbringing in Newark. Titled “Baseball, Nazis, and Nedick’s Hot Dogs: Growing Up Jewish in the 1930s in Newark,” the memoir centers on Izenberg’s relationship with his father Harry, a World War I veteran and former minor league baseball player who passed on his love of the sport to his son.
Izenberg’s father emigrated to the United States as a child, leaving Lithuania with his family to escape anti-Jewish pogroms. As his sportswriter son recounts it, Harry discovered baseball even before he could speak English.
The Izenbergs’ love of baseball transcended all. When Jerry got his first baseball glove at ten years old, it was a milestone that in his father’s eyes surpassed even his bar mitzvah. (Maybe unsurprisingly, Izenberg would later skip bar mitzvah tutoring to play baseball after school.)
“He had given me a lifetime gift — a simple game and a simple shared love for it,” Izenberg writes in the memoir. “It remains there, bright and shining in memory eighty-three years later. In the soul of my memory, I see our kind of shared love of baseball again. It never fades.”
Jerry Izenberg and his father Harry shared a bond over baseball. (Book cover courtesy of The Sager Group, LLC; photograph courtesy of Jerry Izenberg)
The pair’s passion for baseball was closely intertwined with their Judaism. Growing up in Newark in the 1930s and 40s, Izenberg was a fan of the New York Giants baseball team (which left for San Francisco after the 1957 season). They featured a lineup filled with Jewish players: Harry Danning, Harry Feldman and Sid Gordon.
But in the pantheon of Jewish baseball during Izenberg’s childhood, there was a clear king, and — much to the chagrin of Izenberg’s father — he played in Detroit. Hank Greenberg, the greatest Jewish hitter in baseball history, was at the peak of his Tigers career from 1935-1940, winning two most valuable player awards on his way to the Hall of Fame.
At the Izenbergs’ dinner table, there were only a few select topics that were allowed to be discussed: baseball and the Nazis.
In 1938, Greenberg was chasing all-time great Babe Ruth’s single-season record of 60 home runs, which Ruth had set in 1927 with the Yankees. Greenberg would ultimately reach 58 homers, falling just short of history, while drawing several walks in the season’s final games.
“My dad was convinced that was antisemitism,” Izenberg said. “And I said to him, later on when I got into the business and I knew people, ‘did it ever occur to you that the guys who pitched against him didn’t want to be the guy who threw his 60th home run ball? They’d be linked to him forever.’ My father said, ‘That’s an interesting theory, but you’re full of crap.’”
Of all the anecdotes Izenberg shares of his memories with his father, one non-sports related scene stands out. And it has to do with that second dinner table topic.
One Saturday in 1939, Izenberg and his father went to the Newsreel Theatre in Newark, where audiences gathered to watch news and sports highlights of the week. That day, the theater showed footage of the infamous Madison Square Garden rally held by the German-American Bund, the American Nazi organization.
Izenberg remembers leaving the theater with his father, who was visibly angry. His father talked about how the Nazis — or, as he called them, mamzers, Yiddish slang for “bastards” — had to be stopped.
“I’m an 8-year-old kid, and I say, ‘But dad, they’re in Germany,’” Izenberg recalled. “And he looks at me, he says, ‘They’re not in Germany, they’re here.’ And he was right.” Indeed, following Hitler’s rise to power, Nazi-sympathizers could be seen marching down Newark’s streets.
The move theater incident is illustrated on the book’s cover — and was followed by a frequent father-son ritual: getting hot dogs at the popular chain Nedick’s.
To Izenberg, the virulent antisemitism of his youth — including the Bund, the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan and the rise of Father Charles Coughlin, the antisemitic “radio priest” — is a corollary for the current state of antisemitism, which is again on the rise in the United States, punctuated, he said, by the 2017 antisemitic white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, which he blames on former President Donald Trump.
Izenberg said he doesn’t believe any law can force people to love or even like one another, but that “you could legislate people and pressure people into keeping their damn mouth shut.”
He went on: “And for 30 years, we had that. We got relief from antisemitism… And then one day in Charlottesville, that son of a bitch gave them the license to say whatever they want. And that was a trigger that lit the flame of antisemitism, which then began to grow all at once. It was always in their minds. But it was not fashionable. They made it fashionable.”
Despite the anti-Jewish sentiment that was ever-present in his youth, Izenberg said he has not faced antisemitism in his journalism career. As a columnist who has covered just about every sport, Izenberg has received his fair share of criticism — most notably having his car windows smashed by two men who did not approve of Izenberg’s defense of Muhammad Ali, when at the height of his career the boxer stirred controversy with his support for the Nation of Islam and his refusal to enlist in the military.
Jerry Izenberg, right, and boxer Muhammad Ali were close personal friends. (The Private Collection of Jerry Izenberg)
Izenberg has written about social issues frequently throughout his career — especially race relations — a tendency that he said is inspired by the value of “tikkun olam,” or repairing the world. It’s an idea he learned from Rabbi Joachim Prinz, the famous activist leader who spoke just before Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington.
After leaving Nazi Germany, Prinz settled in Newark, on the same block as the Izenbergs. He would become a close family friend, and even offered to help Izenberg prepare for his bar mitzvah, despite the fact that his family belonged to a different synagogue.
Izenberg said he is guided by tikkun olam, “because I know [Prinz would] want me to keep it in the back of my mind, and my father would, too.”
“I’ve always tried not to fix the world — I don’t overrate myself that much — but I could fix the little part of it, the space that I take up,” he added. “And my job was a pathway to that.”
Izenberg’s decades-long career in sports journalism has earned him numerous accolades, including induction into 17 different halls of fame, among them the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame.
Along the way, he’s worked with and alongside a number of notable journalists, including ESPN reporter Jeremy Schaap, who previously hosted “Classic Sports Reporters,” for which he invited veteran sportswriters like Izenberg on the show to discuss various topics from sports history.
“For someone like me who really treasures that art form, Jerry was one of its master practitioners, and he’s still doing it, which is amazing,” Schaap told JTA.
Schaap hailed the breadth of Izenberg’s career, which he said epitomized the kind of big-city sports columnist that has become increasingly rare in the digital age.
“He’s a maniac, there’s no other way to put it,” Schaap said with a laugh. “All those Super Bowls, all those fights… the energy, the enthusiasm, the passion, all those things, in addition to the skills, makes him unique and has made him unique for decades.”
Schaap added that he and Izenberg shared a sort of unspoken bond over their Jewishness, and that Izenberg has taught Schaap a few Yiddishisms over the years. Izenberg’s tendency to slip Yiddish into his prose is evident in the memoir, from a comical retelling of his bris in the prologue to the frequent frustrated “genug” (“enough”) he heard from his mother as a child.
Ultimately, Izenberg said his parents represent the tachlis — the bottom line — of the memoir, and what he hopes readers take away from it. Izenberg said writing the memoir was cathartic for him, and that it even serves as a sort of love letter to his father.
“We were not, you know, ‘I love you dad,’” Izenberg said. “We were very respectful, but we didn’t express it. I tried to express it in this book. I hope I did.”
The release of Izenberg’s memoir is in no way a sign that the nonagenarian is slowing down. Even though he claims he works less than he used to, Izenberg said he plans to write six columns about next weekend’s Kentucky Derby.
He already has plans for his next few books, too — including a biography of New Jersey’s own Larry Doby, who was the second Black player in the MLB and first in the American League.
“I’ve had a great life, and I’m having a great life, but I ain’t done yet,” Izenberg said.
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‘Don’t give up on us now’: Israel peace summit convenes thousands to aim for elusive progress
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — On Thursday’s bright, sun-drenched morning during a rare pause in the multi-front war Israel has been locked into for nearly three years, in between the protests, funerals and steady drumbeat of violence and trauma, something decidedly more hopeful was taking place.
In one of the city’s largest conference centers, thousands gathered for the third annual People’s Peace Summit under the banner “It must be. It can be. It will be.” The event was organized by the It’s Time coalition, a partnership of more than 80 grassroots peacebuilding and shared society organizations.
Young activists in T-shirts representing their various causes stood alongside older attendees, some in kippot, others in hijabs. Diplomats in business attire moved through the crowd, as did the handful of Israeli politicians still publicly associated with the peace camp – familiar faces in a political landscape where their ranks have thinned considerably. Outside the main arena, Hebrew mingled with Arabic and English as participants strolled through art installations and an organizational fair showcasing the work of It’s Time’s partners.
While previous events took place at the height of war — while hostages remained in captivity and Gaza endured devastating destruction — this year’s summit unfolded during a fragile lull in fighting, the tenuous ceasefires with Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps allowing, however briefly, for conversations to move beyond issues of immediate survival. Speakers tackled settler violence in the West Bank, looming elections, the immense challenge of rebuilding Gaza and the broader question of how to move Israel and Palestine beyond its default state of perpetual conflict. Inside the packed sessions, the tone was equal parts practical, sober and hopeful.
After a quick coffee break, the thousands of participants came together for an evening of stirring speeches and raucous musical performances. When Israeli pop icon Dana International took the stage with a familiar anthem of peace, the crowd rose to its feet, wrapping their arms around one another and belting out the words.
Despite the joyous atmosphere, the event — and the coalition behind it — is not immune from criticism. Some critiques appear to have been internalized: this year’s programming leaned more heavily into policy, strategy and the hard realities of war than previous gatherings. Other issues remain unresolved. Palestinian participation, while present, was still markedly limited, which organizers attribute largely to government-imposed restrictions on movement rather than a lack of interest. Still, the question of whether a civil society movement like this can translate hope and optimism into concrete political change remains to be seen.
That tension between aspiration and reality extends well beyond Israel. In the United States, support for Israel, particularly among younger American Jews, is waning. A 2024 Pew survey found that fewer than half of American Jews under 30 say they feel “very attached” to Israel, while a JFNA poll released in February 2026, found that just 37% of all American Jews identify as Zionists. Both numbers represent a sharp decline from older generations.
For Shira Ben Sasson, Israel director of the New Israel Fund, it is precisely the peace camp which could hold the answer to this growing disillusionment. If the state itself no longer reflects the values that once anchored many American Jews’ connection to Israel, she suggests, perhaps their more natural partner is the small but determined coalition of Israelis working to change it.
“I appreciate how difficult it is to be a Jew who cares about Israel right now,” she told the Forward as the conference, which New Israel Fund helped support and coordinate, got underway. “People are struggling with what they are seeing — the way Israel is conducting itself. Its policies. They are watching the value set that once connected them so strongly to the Jewish state disappear.”
Her response is one of both reassurance and redirection.
“Thank you for continuing to care,” she said. “But remember — the Israeli government is not your partner. We are. Pro-democracy civil society is your partner. Those of us who are fighting for equality here, for the rights of non-Israeli Jews and the rights of non-Jewish Israelis are your partners. This is where those shared values still live.”
If that message feels unfamiliar to those in the diaspora, Ben Sasson suggests the reason ultimately comes down to lack of exposure.
“We, the Israeli peace camp, need to be in many more places than we are right now,” she said. “We must get the word out that while we might not be the majority here, we are not only growing in number, we are expanding our diversity as well.”
She pointed to the rising number of Orthodox Jews, like herself, who have joined the movement as one example.
Ben Sasson also emphasized that, as with any strong partnership, the relationship must move in both directions. Israeli peace activists, she said, must make themselves more visible to American Jews. But American Jews also need to be willing to open their eyes.
“The mainstream Jewish community has to challenge itself,” she said. “They have to be able to voice their concern for Israeli democracy, for the violence in the occupied territories. And they have to be willing to engage in an honest discussion about peace.”
She is less worried about reaching individuals whose support for Israel may be wavering — many of whom, she believes, will connect with the movement’s vision — than she is about the institutions that have long shaped American Jewish engagement with Israel. Those institutions, she said, have been slow to open themselves to this kind of messaging.
“I think there’s fear,” Ben Sasson explained. “The word ‘peace’ has come to sound political. And once something is labeled political, these legacy institutions don’t want to touch it.”
But that avoidance, she warned, comes at a cost.
“They cannot afford to just stick with the same old stale perception of Israel,” she argued. “If you aren’t willing to talk about the real-life issues that Israelis are facing, you simply won’t be relevant anymore — particularly for the young people in your community.”
“Do not be afraid of controversy,” she added. “Do not be afraid to invite an Arab and a Jew to your event, where there may be disagreement. That’s okay. Struggling and wrestling is a core part of our identity.”
While Ben Sasson contends there is a critical mass of people who are hungry for an alternative way to relate to Israel, the question of feasibility remains; the same question that follows the peace movement inside Israel: Does its growing visibility reflect real political momentum, or is it simply too late to reverse course?
To those who are ready to walk away altogether, Ben Sasson points out that Israel stands to lose not only their support, but also the values and organizing traditions American Jews have long brought to the relationship.
“You’ve helped us achieve so many things in Israel for decades,” she said. “You helped us get a state. And now we need a different kind of support. The Jewish values that you offer — the concept of tikkun olam, which is not at the heart of Israeli Judaism but is at the heart of American Judaism — this is the support you can offer us right now.”
Her final plea was simple.
“Do not give up on Israel,” Ben Sasson said. “There have been so many times when things felt insurmountable and you did not give up on us. Don’t give up on us now.”
The post ‘Don’t give up on us now’: Israel peace summit convenes thousands to aim for elusive progress appeared first on The Forward.
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A GOP lawmaker tried to put a Holocaust denier on New Hampshire’s Holocaust education board
(JTA) — A Republican state lawmaker in New Hampshire partnered with a notorious German Holocaust denier in an effort to insert Holocaust denial into the state’s public education guidelines.
Rep. Matt Sabourin dit Choinière successfully pushed the New Hampshire Commission on Holocaust and Genocide Education to hear testimony from Germar Rudolf, a German chemist who has previously been deported from the United States and served prison time in his home country for propagating Holocaust denial.
Two other Holocaust deniers also testified before the state House as a result of Sabourin dit Choinière’s efforts, including a man who grew up Jewish who has led protests outside a Michigan synagogue weekly for more than two decades.
Sabourin dit Choinière’s antics were first reported Wednesday by NPR. But the push actually took place in public view, during a livestreamed meeting of the state House’s Executive Departments and Administration Committee in January.
During the meeting, Sabourin dit Choinière testified that he had visited Dachau and seen a gas chamber, then learned that no one was ever gassed at Dachau. (The Dachau historic site says the chamber’s lack of use “remains unexplained.” More than 40,000 people died at Dachau.)
“This was the first doubt in my mind that over time led towards a revisionist thinking about the Holocaust,” Sabourin dit Choinière said before explaining that he was relieved to have discovered the “Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust,” a group that produced a 54-volume set of books that he offered to the committee.
“Holocaust historical revision revisionism as a science does not deny that Jews were persecuted or deprived of their civil rights or deported or herded into ghettos. It does not deny that many were killed, but it does seek to learn why, how and when they died. And it seeks to separate the truth from the fiction,” he said.
“This is vitally important knowledge for the Holocaust and Genocide Education Commission’s curriculum development,” he continued. “If we are going to have Holocaust and Genocide Education taught in New Hampshire public schools, which I think it should be, it needs to be accurate and reliable.”
The Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust is run by Rudolf, whose publications have claimed that Zyklon B was never used in the Auschwitz gas chambers, defended notorious Holocaust denier David Irving and cast doubt on photographic evidence of concentration camps.
Few people attended the public meeting, which mostly focused on the state retirement system. Among those in attendance were three men who testified: Rudolf and two members of his group.
“I have under my belt 35 years of research, organizing research, conducting and publishing research, of forensic and archival nature on the Holocaust question,” Rudolf said during his testimony.
The other two men both came in from Michigan: Henry Herskovitz, an Ann Arbor man who for decades has led weekly protests outside a synagogue’s Shabbat services that have incorporated Holocaust denial; and David Skrbina, a former professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn who has published numerous Holocaust-denial books under a pseudonym.
“As a historical event of great importance, we must examine all sides of this topic with an open mind,” Skrbina told the committee. “Exaggerations, lies, gross errors, and physical impossibilities must be identified and rooted out if we are to learn from this event and to do justice to its many victims.”
During the meeting, the testimony elicited little pushback. One state lawmaker indicated sympathy to the Holocaust deniers’ testimony.
“I’ve been there. I’ve seen all of that. I’ve felt it when I walked around. And I think it’s a travesty that we’re trying to hide the truth about what’s happened in the past, and I want to thank you all for bringing this to the committee today, and I think all students everywhere should know what happened,” GOP state Rep. Susan DeRoy told the panel following Rudolf and Herskovitz’s testimony. “So my question would be, why do they want to cover this up?” (The chair shot down the line of questioning, saying, “It’s not an appropriate question.” DeRoy did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)
Sabourin dit Choinière also introduced an amendment that would have added a member of Rudolf’s extremist group to the commission, which oversees Holocaust education that is required in New Hampshire schools and is preparing to update curriculum materials.
The amendment failed. But the fact that it was made and entertained at all was deeply concerning to New Hampshire state representative Loren Selig, a Jewish Democrat and Holocaust commission member.
“Shocked would be an understatement,” Selig told NPR about the moment her colleague introduced it. “I could barely speak.”
Another member of the commission, Rabbi Jon Spira-Savett, told JTA that the incident was “horrifying.”
“Any time anything like this gets a public airing, that’s not good,” Spira-Savett, who leads Temple Beth Abraham in Nashua, said of the legislator’s flirtation with Holocaust denial. “The idea that somehow Holocaust education ought to include hearing the perspective of deniers — we are so, so far beyond that, and it’s terrifying we might actually have to make the case for that here in our state or anywhere.”
The commission was formed with a 2020 state law to set guidelines for the state on teaching the Holocaust, and includes lawmakers from both parties. Sabourin dit Choinière does not serve on it. Though commissioners are dedicated to the task, Spira-Savett said, “it isn’t a state where there’s a tremendous amount of resources to enforce the teaching.”
Unrelated to his Holocaust denial, Rudolf also has a criminal record, having been convicted in Pennsylvania, where he lives, of indecent exposure after being arrested for public nudity at a playground.
Sabourin dit Choinière’s antics come as the Republican Party grapples with internal tensions over antisemitism, as party leaders have grown divided by figures such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes who have minimized the Holocaust or amplified deniers. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz lamented the rise of antisemitism in the party to the Republican Jewish Coalition conference earlier this year, while Vice President JD Vance has said he does not want to draw lines that would exclude such voices from the party.
A Republican candidate for state office rejected Sabourin dit Choinière’s endorsement of him following NPR’s reporting. The conservative group Americans For Prosperity, which has endorsed Sabourin dit Choinière in the past, condemned antisemitism in a statement to NPR.
Prior to NPR’s report, Sabourin dit Choinière’s Holocaust commission moves attracted little public attention. A New Hampshire progressive group in January called on House Speaker Sherman Packard to strip Sabourin dit Choinière of his committee assignments, which according to the House website he has retained.
“Promoting Holocaust denial and antisemitic conspiracy theories is incompatible with public service,” a co-founder of the Kent Street Coalition wrote in an open letter published in a nonprofit news site. “Rep. Sabourin dit Choinière should be removed from his committee assignments as a matter of principle and accountability.”
Holocaust education commissions have been the sites of controversy in other states. The South Carolina equivalent last year faced internal division over its chair’s decision to muzzle a local rabbi’s speech tying the Holocaust to modern U.S. policies. Texas’s own commission recently advised on a controversial proposed statewide required reading list, and Texas’s governor also recently appointed a Christian pro-Israel activist to the commission.
Sabourin dit Choinière isn’t the only member of New Hampshire’s state house to have made antisemitic comments related to the Holocaust this year. Another Republican, state Rep. Travis Corcoran, faced disciplinary hearings this week after tweeting a “final solution” joke aimed at a Jewish Democratic colleague.
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NH lawmaker reprimanded for ‘final solution’ joke aimed at Jewish colleague
(JTA) — A Republican state legislator in New Hampshire faced a disciplinary hearing this week for having tweeted a “final solution” reference at a Jewish Democratic colleague.
Last month, GOP state Rep. Travis Corcoran wrote on social media, “We need a final solution for theater kids in politics,” in response to state Rep. Jessica Grill’s bid to form a bipartisan “karaoke caucus.”
Corcoran is now facing a possible sanction or expulsion for his comment, which invoked the Nazi “final solution” to murder all Jews. His comments came as the Republican Party has faced internal divisions over the rise of antisemitism within its ranks, with white-nationalist figures and conspiracy theorists including Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens gaining a toehold in some corners of the party.
This week Corcoran defended his comments to the legislature, saying he was joking and did not know his colleague was Jewish. He called disciplinary procedures against him a “kangaroo court.”
“A joke is now being treated as though it were an act of malice, and sarcasm is being recast as hate speech. This is absurd,” Corcoran told colleagues during his testimony. On social media, he later wrote, “Apologies are a humiliation ritual that the left forces on people to demonstrate their power over you. Say whatever you want about me, but I’m never going to cower so that cucks will like me.” He used a common slang term for “cuckold,” a husband who has been cheated on.
A self-described libertarian, prolific social media user and self-published science-fiction author, Corcoran has developed a reputation in his state for coarse, frequently offensive commentary. He has urged his followers to “all say or type” the N-word “in a public place,” has said “crime is predominantly caused by African Americans” and, prior to his 2022 election, reportedly defended the 2011 attempted assassination of then-U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords as “morally legitimate” on his blog.
Grill, the Jewish state lawmaker to whom Corcoran had directed his comment, called for Corcoran to be expelled from the state House, saying he had rejected requests to mediate the matter privately. Corcoran left the hearing before Grill spoke.
“As a Jewish lawmaker, the use of this phrase ‘final solution’ is especially disturbing,” she said during the hearing. “It’s not a poorly worded joke; it is targeted language with a specific historical meaning. And more importantly, it was delivered at a time when both antisemitism and political violence are, unfortunately, on the rise on all sides of the ideological spectrum.”
Grill continued, “An antisemitic threat does not serve the public interest or advance free speech and debate.”
Among the other voices calling for disciplinary action against Corcoran were current and former Jewish state lawmakers in New Hampshire, including Jeffrey Salloway, a former Democratic lawmaker in the state house and longtime lay leader in the Conservative movement of Judaism. Many non-Jewish commenters also gave testimony supporting Grill.
One Republican, state Rep. Matt Drew, defended Corcoran on free-speech grounds but did not say whether he believed the comment was antisemitic.
Corcoran was not the only New Hampshire Republican state lawmaker to face controversy this year over Holocaust-related comments. A colleague, state Rep. Matt Sabourin dit Choinière, invited Holocaust deniers to testify to the state’s Holocaust education committee in January while attempting to push an amendment to incorporate Holocaust denial into the state’s public education guidelines.
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