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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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Will Anything Change After Bondi — and How Will the Story End?
A man lights a candle as police officers stand guard following the attack on a Jewish holiday celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, December 15, 2025. REUTERS/Flavio Brancaleone
Jews arrived in Australia with the First Fleet in 1788. That is the Australian equivalent of the Mayflower, albeit with convicts.
From their earliest days, Australian Jews integrated into national life visibly, with patriotism and confidence. They built their shuls without apology, established businesses without resentment, and raised families with great pride.
They were disproportionately represented in the military, academia, medicine, and commerce. They embraced their Australian identity fully, while remaining true to their Jewish faith and seeing no contradiction between the two.
Australia was once a country that understood how integration worked. Newcomers were welcome, but they were expected to participate in a shared civic culture. Loyalty, contribution, and respect for Australian society were not considered controversial demands — they were the price of admission. For more than two centuries, Australian Jews lived by that bargain.
This is why the massacre at Bondi Beach during a public Hanukkah celebration seems like more than an act of terror. It feels like a betrayal. Holocaust survivor Alex Kleytman, 92, shielded his wife of 57 years in the crowd before dying. That is the Jewish-Aussie spirit that symbolized this community.
Hanukkah is, by design, a public holiday. It commemorates a minority preserving its identity while remaining part of a broader civilization. Light is placed deliberately in the public square. Faith without withdrawal. Cultural continuity without separatism. That is the message of Hanukkah.
That such a celebration was targeted in one of Australia’s most iconic public spaces is not incidental. It was an attack on a place and a community that exemplified successful integration during a festival that celebrates cohesion and tolerance.
Speaking to Australian Jews over the past two years, a new theme has emerged — not only of fear, but abandonment. The country they love increasingly hesitates to defend them, is embarrassed by its own culture, and is unwilling to confront hateful belief systems it has imported.
This is not an immigration crisis. It is a governance crisis.
Great countries are built by immigrants. The Greeks, Romans, and Americans all understood that growth comes from outsiders who want to become insiders. But instead of importing entrepreneurs, innovators, and builders, we have incubated an endless supply of cultural resentment. A nation cannot transmit to its citizens what it no longer values. Assimilation requires national pride and confidence in one’s own civilizational values.
Deterrence is dismissed for fear of “sending the wrong signal.” Enforcement is denounced as cruelty. Borders are discussed endlessly but defended reluctantly. Politicians still perform the language of control, but with the conviction of actors reciting lines they no longer believe.
Western governments have not failed to implement their will. They have abandoned the idea that they are entitled to have a will in the first place. The result is a system engineered for failure while absolving those responsible for it. Illegal entry is rewarded. Removal is treated as a scandal. Integration becomes optional.
What emerges is grievance without gratitude, and hate without consequence. Flags become suspect. History is reduced to a catalogue of sins. Elites perform ritualized shame as a marker of sophistication. A country that cannot defend its own identity cannot plausibly ask newcomers to adopt it.
Bondi was not a random eruption of violence. It was the predictable outcome of a system that encouraged hate, refused to do anything about years of incitement and terror attacks on Jews, and will likely change nothing after this attack.
The bitter irony is that the community that proved integration was possible is now among the first to feel the consequences of a society that has stopped insisting on it.
Nations do not decline in a single dramatic moment. They erode through a thousand small capitulations; each defended as compassion.
Bondi was not an aberration. It was a warning. The only question is whether the warning arrived too late. The story of Hanukkah ends with our salvation and spiritual redemption; how will this story end?
Philip Gross is a Manhattan-born, London-based business executive and writer. He explores issues of Jewish identity, faith, and contemporary society through the lens of both the American and British experience.
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Why Are Greek Media Erasing the Murder of a Greek Priest from the Barghouti Coverage?
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was part of the Global Sumud Flotilla seeking to deliver aid to Gaza and was detained by Israel, gestures as she is greeted by supporters upon her arrival to the Athens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport, in Athens, Greece, October 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki
Father Germanos, born Georgios Tsibouktzakis in Greece, was a Greek Orthodox monk-priest who moved to Israel in the early 1990s to serve at the St. George Monastery in the Judean Desert. He was widely respected and known for maintaining warm relations with the local community.
On June 12, 2001, while returning to the monastery from Jerusalem, Father Germanos was ambushed and murdered by Palestinian terrorists. The attack was carried out by Fatah-affiliated gunmen, making him one of more than 1,000 Israelis and foreign nationals killed in Palestinian terror attacks during the Second Intifada.
In 2004, arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti was convicted in a Tel Aviv court and sentenced to five life sentences for orchestrating a series of attacks that killed five civilians, including Father Germanos.
200+ celebrities want Marwan Barghouti freed. But the man they’re calling a “Palestinian Mandela” is a convicted murderer. pic.twitter.com/b9Ak4vJUAy
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 10, 2025
Since 2004, calls for Marwan Barghouti’s release have become a cause célèbre among those willing to overlook terrorism and murder, clinging to the idea that he could somehow emerge as a unifying figure in Palestinian politics or even a partner for peace with Israel.
Support for Barghouti has ebbed and flowed over the past two decades, but the past few months have seen a marked resurgence in articles, commentary, and sympathetic profiles of the Palestinian terror leader. His release was floated in the lead-up to the most recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and more recently, 200 artists and celebrities publicly endorsed freeing him.
This renewed wave of attention has not been limited to English-language media. Coverage of Barghouti has been widespread, appearing in news outlets across the world.
The Greek media has been no exception to the renewed global interest in Marwan Barghouti. Over the past few months, several Greek outlets have published pieces spotlighting the imprisoned Palestinian leader.
Yet one striking omission appears across these articles: none of them mention Father Germanos. The last time a mainstream Greek news outlet referenced his murder in connection with Barghouti was in November 2023.
A review of recent Greek-language coverage shows that these articles devote minimal attention to the actual reasons for Barghouti’s imprisonment. Instead, they focus largely on the arguments being advanced for his release, while entirely overlooking Father Germanos and the other victims whose deaths led to Barghouti’s conviction.
These Barghouti-centered pieces have appeared in numerous major publications, including Business Daily, Kathimerini, ERT News, ProtoThema, Naftemporiki, Skai, and Ethnos.
Instead of highlighting Barghouti’s responsibility for the murder of one of their own countrymen, these Greek news outlets dedicated only a few brief paragraphs to Barghouti’s record of terrorism and violence. Their coverage focused largely on the campaign to free him.
By omitting Father Germanos from recent reporting on Marwan Barghouti, Greek-language media organizations are doing a disservice to their audiences. They present Barghouti’s potential release as an issue confined to the Middle East, rather than one that also carries profound resonance for Greece. What is lost in this coverage is the simple truth that this story is not distant at all, and it is tied directly to the murder of a Greek citizen whose name deserves not to be forgotten.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Hamas Rejects Disarmament, Threatens Another October 7 — Media Silence
Palestinian Hamas terrorists stand guard at a site as Hamas says it continues to search for the bodies of deceased hostages, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, Dec. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Two years after Hamas’ horrific massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023 — and barely two months after the terror group agreed to the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan — Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal delivered an unfiltered message in Arabic: no disarmament, no relinquishing rule of Gaza, no acceptance of any international authority, and a renewed commitment to Israel’s annihilation.
Yet not a single major Western news outlet reported the speech.
Meshaal’s comments were delivered remotely in Arabic at a conference in Istanbul titled, “The Commitment to Jerusalem.” According to experts, his statements were not rhetorical flourishes. They were a clear repudiation of the peace plan Hamas supposedly accepted.
And the silence surrounding them is staggering.
Hamas in Its Own Words
The speech directly contradicted the commitments Hamas has agreed to or said it would consider under the US-brokered ceasefire deal: disarmament, transfer of Gaza governance to an external body, and cessation of hostilities.
Meshaal instead declared: “The time has come for the nation to decide on the liberation of Jerusalem as a symbol of the liberation of Palestine, the cleansing of the Al-Aqsa Mosque … And Gaza, which started ‘Al-Aqsa flood’ in 2023 and turned into the pride of the nation and the conscience of nations, this mighty Gaza deserves more from us.”
On the ceasefire itself, he dismissed it outright: “Yes, two months ago, a ceasefire was announced, but the war is not over.”
He called for “rejecting all forms of guardianship, mandate, and occupation over Gaza, over the West Bank, and over all of Palestine.”
And on rearming, he was very clear: “The resistance project and its weapons must be protected. It is the right of our people to defend themselves. The resistance and its weapons are the honor and strength of the nation.”
According to researcher Idit Bar, who specializes in the Arab and Islamic world, Meshaal’s words amount to a strategic declaration: “Meshaal, one of Hamas’ prominent leaders, says here very clearly, he puts all the cards on the table: No to disarmament, no to relinquishing Hamas’ rule, yes to the annihilation of Israel, yes to the liberation of Jerusalem. He even uses the term ‘cleansing’ al-Aqsa from impure Jews.”
Bar added: “He also calls for the release of prisoners, which he calls captives, from the Israeli prison, which is literally a call to kidnap hostages, because he saw on October 7 that it’s worthwhile. As far as he is concerned, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, there’s space for only one state, an Islamic state, clean of Jews. That’s why he says the war isn’t over.”
What’s Behind the Media Silence
There are only two explanations for the omission: a lack of Arabic-speaking reporters or bias.
But major news organizations do have Arabic-speaking reporters across the Middle East. They could understand Meshaal’s words. They would have known he was speaking — it was all over Arabic social media feeds, and Al-Jazeera covered it. They should have reported it.
Which only leaves the second option as a viable explanation: those “reporters” chose not to publish what they knew. It was easy to hide that choice from editors who do not speak the language. And when newsworthy events or statements go unreported, they effectively cease to exist for the public record.
The bias is all the more striking because the AFP had a reporter covering the conference, yet chose to highlight only the more moderate remarks of Gaza Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, who claimed the group would accept governance by a UN force.
The agency even sought clarification from Hayya, who — knowing his comments would be quoted in English — added that Hamas would disarm only if the “occupation” ended. Meshaal’s far more explicit rejection of disarmament and peace was omitted entirely.
Media outlets have committed a journalistic sin — a manipulation of reality. Meshaal’s speech was a rare glimpse into Hamas’ true intentions: unfiltered, unambiguous, and damning. It contradicted diplomatic assumptions, exposed the fragility of the ceasefire, and signaled preparations for future violence.
But Western audiences, including policymakers, never heard a word about it.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.