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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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French Court Rejects Antisemitism Charge in Murder of 89-Year-Old Jewish Man
Tens of thousands of French people march in Paris to protest against antisemitism. Photo: Screenshot
A French court on Thursday tossed out antisemitic-motivated charges against a 55-year-old man convicted of murdering his 89-year-old Jewish neighbor in 2022, in what appears to be yet another instance of France’s legal system brushing aside antisemitism.
French authorities in Lyon, in southeastern France, acquitted defendant Rachid Kheniche of aggravated murder charges on antisemitic grounds, rejecting the claim that the killing was committed on account of the victim’s religion.
According to French media, the magistrate of the public prosecutor’s office refused to consider the defendant’s prior antisemitic behavior, including online posts spreading hateful content and promoting conspiracy theories about Jews and Israelis, arguing that it was not directly related to the incident itself. The jurors ultimately agreed and dismissed the presence of an antisemitic motive.
In May 2022, Kheniche threw his neighbor, René Hadjadj, from the 17th floor of his building, an act to which he later admitted.
According to the police investigation, Kheniche and his neighbor were having a discussion when the conflict escalated.
At the time, he told investigators that he had tried to strangle Hadjadj but did not realize what he was doing, as he was experiencing a paranoid episode caused by prior drug use.
After several psychiatric evaluations, the court concluded that the defendant was mentally impaired at the time of the crime, reducing his criminal responsibility and lowering the maximum sentence for murder to 20 years.
Due to the defendant’s age and assessed risk, the magistrate also asked for 10 years of supervision after his release in addition to the maximum prison time.
Kheniche was ultimately sentenced on Thursday to 18 years in prison and six years of “socio-judicial monitoring.”
The three-day trail, which began on Monday, focused specifically on the alleged antisemitic motive being contested to determine the sentence, as Kheniche’s guilt for the murder was already determined. He has denied that antisemitism played any role in his actions.
However, Alain Jakubowicz, counsel for the League Against Racism and Antisemitism (Licra) and the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), both civil parties in the proceedings, argued that the defendant was “obsessed” with the Jewish religion.
Kheniche previously referred on social media to “sayanim,” a conspiracy term used to refer to a sleeper agent for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. He also reportedly took passport photos and a text in Hebrew found in his victim’s jacket and cut them out. But the magistrate argued that the law required the court only to consider the facts “at the same time as the crime committed,” thereby dismissing past antisemitic and conspiratorial comments.
The court’s decision “is a reflection of our society,” Muriel Ouaknine-Melki, counsel for members of the victim’s family, told AFP. “It is simply a reflection of the way France deals with the scourge of antisemitism.”
This is far from the first case in France to spark such alarm, as courts have repeatedly overturned or reduced sentences for individuals accused of antisemitic crimes, fueling public outrage over what many see as excessive leniency.
Last year, the public prosecutor’s office in Nanterre, just west of Paris, appealed a criminal court ruling that cleared a nanny of antisemitism-aggravated charges after she poisoned the food and drinks of the Jewish family she worked for.
Residing illegally in France, the nanny had worked as a live-in caregiver for the family and their three children — aged two, five, and seven — since November 2023.
The 42-year-old Algerian woman was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for “administering a harmful substance that caused incapacitation for more than eight days.”
First reported by Le Parisien, the shocking incident occurred in January 2024, just two months after the caregiver was hired, when the mother discovered cleaning products in the wine she drank and suffered severe eye pain from using makeup remover contaminated with a toxic substance, prompting her to call the police.
After a series of forensic tests, investigators detected polyethylene glycol — a chemical commonly used in industrial and pharmaceutical products — along with other toxic substances in the food consumed by the family and their three children.
Even though the nanny initially denied the charges against her, she later confessed to police that she had poured a soapy lotion into the family’s food as a warning because “they were disrespecting her.”
“They have money and power, so I should never have worked for a Jewish woman — it only brought me trouble,” the nanny told the police. “I knew I could hurt them, but not enough to kill them.”
The French court declined to uphold any antisemitism charges against the defendant, noting that her incriminating statements were made several weeks after the incident and recorded by a police officer without a lawyer present
The nanny, who has been living in France in violation of a deportation order issued in February 2024, was also convicted of using a forged document — a Belgian national identity card — and barred from entering France for five years.
In another shocking case last year, a local court in France dramatically reduced the sentence of one of the two teenagers convicted of the brutal gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl, citing his “need to prepare for future reintegration.”
More than a year after the attack, the Versailles Court of Appeal retried one of the convicted boys — the only one to challenge his sentence — behind closed doors, ultimately reducing his term from nine to seven years and imposing an educational measure.
The original sentences, handed down in June, gave the two boys — who were 13 years old at the time of the incident — seven and nine years in prison, respectively, after they were convicted on charges of group rape, physical violence, and death threats aggravated by antisemitic hatred.
The third boy involved in the attack, the girl’s ex-boyfriend, was accused of threatening her and orchestrating the attack, also motivated by racist prejudice. Because he was under 13 at the time of the attack, he did not face prison and was instead sentenced to five years in an educational facility.
Just this week, a court in Paris denied a Jewish family from Baghdad compensation for their former home, which was seized from them and now serves as the French embassy in Iraq.
The plaintiffs, descendants of two Jewish Iraqi brothers, filed a lawsuit last year seeking $22 million in back rent and an additional $11 million in damages from the French government.
According to their account, the French government leased the house as its embassy starting in 1964 and paid their family through 1974, but has made no payments for more than 50 years.
In the 1950s, the Iraqi government seized Jewish property and stripped Jews of their citizenship, yet the family retained legal ownership of their Baghdad home even after being forced to leave in 1951.
Last year, Philip Khazzam, grandson of Ezra Lawee, told The Globe and Mail that, under pressure from Saddam Hussein’s government, the French government stopped paying rent to the Lawee family and appears to have diverted the funds to the Iraqi treasury.
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Vance Defends Trump’s Iran Approach, Says Tehran ‘Can’t Have a Nuclear Weapon’
US Vice President JD Vance delivers remarks at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles, California, US, June 20, 2025. Phone: REUTERS/Daniel Cole
US Vice President JD Vance defended President Donald Trump’s approach to reining in Iranian aggression during an interview with podcaster Megyn Kelly, arguing that Tehran’s acquiring a nuclear weapon would prove disastrous for American interests.
“Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. That is the stated policy goal of the president of the United States,” Vance said.
Vance pushed back against critics who have suggested that the president shouldn’t engage in “diplomacy” or “negotiate” with Iran, explaining that Trump will “keep his options open” while trying to advance American security interests “through non-military means.” However, Vance stressed that the president would be willing to engage militarily if left with no other options to dismantle Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
“I am very cognizant that the Middle East leads to quagmires,” he said. “Trust me, so does the president of the United States.”
Trump has discussed targeted strikes on Iranian security forces and leadership, partly as a way to pressure the regime over its violent suppression of demonstrators while also seeking to expand talks to address nuclear and missile issues. The protests, which began on Dec. 28 amid deep economic distress and mounting public frustration with Tehran’s theocratic leadership, quickly spread across the country. Security forces have met demonstrators with lethal force, mass arrests, and a near-total internet blackout that has hampered independent reporting and documentation of abuses. Some reports indicate that up to 30,000 protesters may have been killed by Iranian forces in just two days. Regime officials put the death toll at 2,000-3,000.
Vance also highlighted the importance of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, explaining that Tehran is the “world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.”
“What happens when the same people who are shooting up a mall or driving airplanes into buildings have a nuclear weapon? That is unacceptable,” Vance said.
The vice president added that in the event that Iran obtains nuclear arms, other states such as Saudi Arabia will rapidly seek to secure their regimes though acquiring nuclear weapons themselves, triggering a new era of “nuclear proliferation on a global scale.”
“The biggest threat to security in the world is a lot of people having nuclear weapons,” he said.
Vance suggested that decreasing the overall number of nuclear arms in the world would help secure long-term peace for the global community.
Vance also pushed back on the chorus of critics within the Republican Party who claim the president has expended too much energy and time on foreign affairs, arguing Trump has “gotten a lot done” for the American people and most of his accomplishments are within the realm of domestic policy.
The vice president has come under scrutiny in recent months over his chummy relationship with controversial podcaster Tucker Carlson, a pundit who has repeatedly argued that the US should not attempt to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program.
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Patriots Owner Robert Kraft Unveils New Super Bowl Ad Aimed at Combating Jew-Hatred
Robert Kraft. Photo: New England Patriots/Wikimedia Commons
An initiative that focuses on combating antisemitism and was founded by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has unveiled a new advertisement set to air during Super Bowl LX on Sunday that calls on people to stand up against Jew-hatred.
The ad released by Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, formerly known as the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, is set in a school hallway and shows students whispering and laughing as a young Jewish classmate passes by. When the Jewish student reaches his locker, he discovers a hateful sticky note placed on his backpack by classmates that says “Dirty Jew.” Another student then walks over, covers the note with a Blue Square, and tells the Jewish kid, “Do not listen to that.” The video ends with the fellow student standing next to his Jewish classmate with another Blue Square placed on his chest, as an act of solidarity.
A message on the screen then states that two in three Jewish teenagers in the US have experienced antisemitism, which was first revealed by the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish youth movement BBYO in 2024. Gen Z is also three times more likely to witness antisemitism.
“For the third straight year, the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate is proud to show up on sports’ biggest stage and speak directly to more than 120 million Americans with an urgent message: Stand up for each other and stand up to hate wherever you see it,” Kraft said in a released statement.
He told CNBC he is very worried about the hatred and division taking place across the US. “You’re not born with hate, it’s learned and you have to find ways to push back on it,” Kraft said. “It’s about education and making sure every day Americans understand that this is happening.”
On Sunday, the Patriots will take on the Seattle Seahawks in Santa Clara, California, and hope to win their seventh Super Bowl title.
Kraft founded the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism in 2019 in response to the rise of antisemitism and all forms of hate across the US. The Blue Square was first introduced in 2023 as a symbol for expressing solidarity with the Jewish community and Kraft launched the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate in 2025.
A survey from the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate released in December 2025 revealed that Americans are displaying more antisemitism than in the past, but are also “less aware antisemitism exists, less likely to think it’s important enough to fight, and less likely to stand up to prejudice against Jews when they encounter it.”