Florida Gators head coach Todd Golden and Auburn Tigers head coach Bruce Pearl talk before the game as Auburn Tigers take on Florida Gators at Neville Arena in Auburn, Ala., on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect

The men’s 2025 NCAA Tournament Final Four bracket includes four No. 1 seed teams, three of which have Jewish coaches who will lead the way in the two national semifinals taking place on Saturday.

Auburn University Tigers head coach Bruce Pearl has contributed Auburn’s success in the NCAA in part to God and his Jewish faith. He described Israel as the “ancestral homeland for the Jewish people” and called for the release of American-Israeli Edan Alexander from Hamas captivity at a post-game conference last month. He also took the Auburn team on a trip to Israel, where they made stops at the Western Wall and Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center.

The Tigers will compete on Saturday in the NCAA Tournament Final Four against the Florida Gators whose Jewish coach, Todd Golden, is an Israeli citizen who previously played two years professionally for Maccabi Haifa in Israel.

In 2009, Golden was co-captain of the USA Open Team, coached by Pearl, that won gold at the Maccabiah Games, which is an international multi-sport event for Jewish and Israeli athletes. Golden has been the coach of the Tigers for two seasons, but prior to that he was the assistant coach at Columbia, the head coach at San Francisco, and even worked under Pearl. Golden was director of basketball operations for the Auburn staff for the 2014-15 season and was promoted to assistant coach for the 2015-16 campaign.

Duke and Houston also play each other on Saturday in the Final Four. The head coach of the Duke Blue Devils, Jon Scheyer, also formerly played in Israel and holds Israeli citizenship. He played professionally for Maccabi Tel Aviv from 2011-12. In October 2023, not long after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Scheyer commented on the conflict and said in part: “My heart breaks for the people in Israel — that have hostages, American lives that are taken, mourning loved ones.” Scheyer is leading Duke to the Final Four in only his third year as head coach.

The Houston Cougars – the fourth men’s team competing in the Final Four – do not have a Jewish coach, but they have a player who was born in Israel and played for Israel’s national youth squad. Guard Emanuel Sharp, who is the son of Derrick Sharp, was part of Israel’s under-16 national basketball team and also played for Maccabi Tel Aviv for over a decade.

This year’s Final Four have a combined record of 135-16. Since seeding began in 1979, this is only the second time in history that all four No. 1 seeds advanced to the Final Four. It previously happened in 2008. Larry Brown was the last Jewish coach to win the NCAA Tournament when he led Kansas to the victory in 1988.

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Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Photo: Anatoli Axelrod via Wikimedia Commons

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art was among the world’s 100 most visited museums in 2024, according to a list announced by The Art Newspaper on Tuesday.

The Tel Aviv-based museum ranked 78th on the prestigious list with more than 1 million visitors (1,057,362) last year, which is a 17 percent increase from 2023. This is the seventh year in a row that it has been included on the list. The museum was only open for 260 days in 2024 because of security concerns surrounding the Israel-Hamas war, leading to a 23 percent decrease when compared to projected numbers, according to The Art Newspaper.

“This international recognition is particularly significant in a year marked by war and a cultural boycott against Israel in the global art scene,” the museum said.

The museum noted its most popular exhibit in the past year has been “To Catch a Fleeting Moment: 150 Years of Impressionism,” which features approximately 80 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from the 1860s through the 1930s. It also marks the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition held in Paris in 1874. The exhibit, which opened in October 2024 and runs until Aug. 2, has so far garnered hundreds of thousands of visitors, according to the museum.

In front of the museum is Hostages Square, where there are regularly press conferences, rallies, and other events in solidarity with the hostages who were brutally kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during their deadly massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“I’m especially proud in this difficult time that the Tel Aviv Museum is gaining international recognition and placed among the top museums in the world,” said Tania Coen-Uzzielli, director of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. “The museum, next to the Hostages Square that has already become an integral part of us for over a year, due to the war, has become a cultural anchor of Israeli society, a healing space for many communities and a place of comfort and hope for the general public.”

Uzzielli thanked the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality and Mayor Ron Huldai for supporting the museum. She also gave a “heartfelt thanks to the dedicated museum staff who worked and worked tirelessly to maintain relevance and redefine the museum’s role in times of crisis, and at the same time present non-stop exhibitions of fine art from Israel and the world.”

“I thank the large crowd that chose to come to the Tel Aviv Museum in these times,” she added. “Thanks to you, we continue at all times to be committed to preserving culture for the general public and for the future of the place where we live.”

The Israel Museum in Jerusalem was ranked at number 92 on the list curated by The Art Newspaper with 855,157 visitors in 2024. “The decrease in tourists visiting Israel forced the museum to go out and visit communities with its guides and staff. Group visits to the museum helped balance the group attendance figures,” said the museum, according to The Art Newspaper.

The Musée du Louvre has been the “perennial number one” most visited museum in the world and in 2024, more than 8 million (8,737,050) people visited the iconic spot in Paris. It lost 1 percent of visitors in 2024.

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Anti-Israel protesters march in Germany, March 26, 2025. Photo: Sebastian Willnow/dpa via Reuters Connect

German authorities have issued deportation orders for three EU citizens and one US citizen living in Berlin over their participation in raucous anti-Israel protests, stating that they “pose a threat to public order,” according to local media.

The German State Office for Immigration has issued “residence termination notices” against two Irish citizens, a Polish citizen, and an American citizen for their participation in pro-Hamas demonstrations, including a sit-in at Berlin’s central train station, a road blockade, and the occupation of a building at the Free University of Berlin (FU), the German newspaper BILD reported.

The four deportees, identified as Hamas sympathizers, have until April 21 to leave Germany or risk being forcibly removed.

According to the deportation notice, they “pose a threat to public order” and “indirectly supported” terrorist groups like Hamas.

An appeal against the decision has been filed with the Supreme Court, according to a spokesperson for the German Senate Department for the Interior.

Last year, 40 individuals led an anti-Israel protest at FU, attempting to break into university buildings. Although the attempt to occupy the building was brief, as police quickly arrived and dispersed the group, the protesters were able to destroy furniture, computers, and other university property, while also spraying pro-Hamas slogans on the staircases and facade of the president’s office.

“According to the FU, the employees who were in the building were physically and psychologically threatened by those who had entered,” Berlin State Secretary for Higher Education and Research, Henry Marx, said in a statement at the time.

“The occupiers attempted to forcibly remove the employees from their offices,” Marx said. “The attackers were also masked and armed with axes, saws, crowbars, and clubs.”

One of the deportees, 29-year-old Irish citizen Shane O’Brien, an organizer of anti-Israel protests in Berlin, has several outstanding charges against him.

He was previously charged with insulting a police officer after allegedly calling him a “fascist,” but he was acquitted. The deportation order against him also highlights his expression of antisemitic views.

Roberta Murray, a 31-year-old Irish citizen, was another of the four deportees. She has been accused of using “banned slogans,” including “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which German authorities prohibited last year for promoting the ethnic cleansing of Jews.

According to BILD, the criminal investigations into the four foreigners are still underway. Murray and O’Brien have both denied the allegations made against them.

While legal representatives and experts have expressed concerns that the deportation orders violate civil liberties for EU citizens in Germany, as neither individual has been convicted of a criminal offense, German law does not require a conviction for deportation.

Germany has experienced a sharp spike in antisemitism amid the war in Gaza. In just the first six months of 2024 alone, the number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin, for example, surpassed the total for all of the prior year and reached the highest annual count on record, according to Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS).

The figures compiled by RIAS were the highest count for a single year since the federally funded body began monitoring antisemitic incidents in 2015, showing the German capital averaged nearly eight anti-Jewish outrages a day from January to June last year.

According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), police registered 5,154 antisemitic incidents in Germany in 2023, a 95 percent increase compared to the previous year.

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