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‘Put in Ryan!’: Orthodox NBA hopeful Ryan Turell’s fanbase turns up in Detroit
DETROIT, Michigan (JTA) — Predicting the outcome of a basketball game is tricky business, but one observer prior to the start of the Motor City Cruise’s latest home game made an easy call: “There’s going to be a lot of yarmulkes here.”
As the stands at the 3,000-seat Wayne State University Fieldhouse filled up prior to the team’s Nov. 17 match-up with the Wisconsin Herd, that much soon proved accurate.
Dozens of Orthodox observers, mostly young boys, took up seats in the arena to cheer for this NBA G League team. They boogied for the dance cam, played dress-up games emceed by the team announcer during the time outs and posed with Turbo, the Cruise’s blue-haired mascot. All told, the Cruise’s Orthodox contingent made up around a fifth of the game’s total spectators — and they were certainly the loudest fans in the stands.
For them, the main draw wasn’t the team itself, which is 1-6 on the season, but its new recruit: former Yeshiva University phenom Ryan Turell, 23, who joined the team only three weeks prior and was about to take the court for his second professional home game ever.
“Put in Ryan!” the kids chanted as if they were cheering on a close friend. A grinning Turell, a Detroit Pistons-branded yarmulke perched atop of his signature golden locks, reveled in their dedication, though at various points he tried to redirect the group’s cheers to something more team-oriented: pushing them to repeat “Let’s Go Cruise” or the traditional incantation “De-fense” instead of focusing on him.
But it was clear who these kids, most of them situated in a section flanking the Cruise’s bench directly behind Turell, were there to see. When Turell first entered the game at the bottom of the first quarter, the crowd erupted in cheers. They quickly pivoted their chants to “Pass it to Ryan!” When he sank a three, they erupted.
“They listened to us, put in Ryan, and look what happened!” gushed Daniel Rodner, an 11-year-old student at the prominent local Jewish day school Yeshiva Beth Yehudah, who was at the game with classmates Chaim Indig, Chaim Tzvi Seligson and Yoni Perlman. “We’re up five points. Moral of the story: Listen to Ryan. And the crowd.”
(L-r) Yoni Perlman, Chaim Tzvi Seligson, Chaim Indig and Daniel Rodner showed up early to see Orthodox Jewish athlete Ryan Turell play for the Motor City Cruise in Detroit, Nov. 17, 2022. The four boys are classmates at Yeshiva Beth Yehudah Jewish day school in the Detroit area. (Andrew Lapin/JTA)
In contrast with the antisemitism controversy unfolding elsewhere in the NBA, as Brooklyn Nets point guard Kyrie Irving served a suspension and delivered multiple apologies after sharing antisemitic content online, an entirely different scene was playing out in Detroit: an image of Jewish joy at the thrill of having a rooting interest in the game.
“Jews love basketball. They really do,” Turell told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency after the game. “The Jewish community is incredible, them coming out and cheering me on. It really means the world to me. And it’s special, because it’s bigger than basketball.”
The Pistons franchise has recognized this opportunity, offering kosher hot dogs at their development team’s concession stand. There are plans for an upcoming Jewish Heritage Night on Dec. 4, to feature Hanukkah gelt and menorah giveaways; opportunities for Jewish day school students to high-five and stand with Pistons players during the National Anthem, and a game to be played between two local Jewish day school basketball teams at the Pistons’ practice facility. At the Herd game, staff photographers frequented the Turell fan section, framing images of cheering kippah- and tzitzit-clad children with their favorite player in the background.
It didn’t matter that the Cruise ultimately lost the game 117-105, with the Herd pulling away only in the final minutes. What mattered was that Turell scored five points and saw five minutes of play time — and, in so doing, served as an inspiration to many Orthodox youth. Some of the kids in the stands Thursday said they were fans of the Pistons, or of the NBA more generally, but nearly all of them had followed Turell since his Y.U. days.
“I think that [Jewish] people who would normally, maybe, reject basketball after listening to Kyrie Irving and hearing what he had to say, can find a bright spot with Ryan Turell,” Jonas Singer, who was attending the game with his younger brother Leo, told JTA.
The siblings recalled how they were “freaking out” when they heard Turell would be coming to Detroit: “I was dreaming of him even making the G League,” Jonas said. “And when I heard I was actually going to be able to watch him, I was going insane.”
Motor City Cruise player Ryan Turell (front, right) watches his team from the bench as his Orthodox fans cheer on the NBA G League team from the stands in Detroit, Nov. 17, 2022. (Andrew Lapin/JTA)
Turell isn’t from Detroit, but his well-documented quest to become the first-ever observant Jew to play in the NBA has captured the hearts and minds of the Motor City’s Orthodox population (which includes Gary Torgow, the chair of Detroit Pistons sponsor Huntington Bank). Local synagogues and day schools have organized group outings to see Turell play. He’s prayed with them and made a special appearance at Yeshiva Beth Yehudah’s annual fundraising dinner, which has in the past attracted sitting U.S. presidents and top state figures.
Turell credited Pistons vice chair Arn Tellem, who is Jewish, with ensuring that he had all necessary accommodations to be able to remain Sabbath-observant while he plays. The franchise has accommodated him with hotel bookings within walking distance to away games on the Sabbath and kosher meals. Turell has certainly returned the favor by providing the chance to expand into a new fanbase and score a PR coup in the process. At his Cruise debut Nov. 7, one fan, Gideon Lopatin, showed up with a homemade blonde Turell wig.
Scott Schiff, vice president of business operations for the Cruise, said social engagements for the team are up this season but that attendance numbers with Turell on the team were difficult to compare: Last season was the Cruise’s first ever and Turell has only played two home games to date. Still, Schiff said, there was “a core group of the Jewish population coming out to support him every game.”
Turell has also brought out young Jewish fans on the road, including at a game in Cleveland the following weekend, when local Jewish day schools organized a huge crowd to see him play and speak afterwards.
After the Herd game, Jewish kids mobbed Turell when he came out to sign autographs, including a basketball from Chevy Shepherd, one of the few young Jewish girls who had come out to see him play that night. (“Let’s go Ryan,” Shepherd told JTA.)
He also signed Bodner’s yarmulke, which the boy planned to show off at school the next day.
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The post ‘Put in Ryan!’: Orthodox NBA hopeful Ryan Turell’s fanbase turns up in Detroit appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage
A campus event featuring freed Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov drew the condemnation of UCLA’s student government on Tuesday. In an open letter, the UCLA Students Associated Council said that bringing Tov to speak to students “served to legitimize and normalize” atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.
Shem Tov, 23, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and held hostage in Gaza until his release in a prisoner exchange in February 2025. UCLA hosted him on April 14 for a Yom HaShoah event.
“While we affirm the humanity of all people impacted by violence, we reject the selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence,” the student government letter wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the UCLA administration and UCLA Hillel among others. “Israel is currently continuing to carry out what has been widely identified by human rights advocates as a genocide in Gaza, while also expanding its illegal military campaign into Lebanon.
“In this context, elevating a single narrative, absent of critical political and humanitarian framing, serves to legitimize and normalize these ongoing atrocities.”
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s director emeritus, called the statement “completely ridiculous.”
“You can’t present the narrative of your experience without it being called ‘one sided,’” Seidler-Feller said. “There has to be a counter-story to persecution. Is there a counter-story to killing people?”
UCLA Hillel executive director Daniel Gold dismissed the criticism in Tuesday’s letter as antisemitic.
“Hillel at UCLA and Students Supporting Israel UCLA would like to apologize…for absolutely nothing,” he wrote in a statement. “Members of UCLA student government have once again shown they are anti-dialogue, anti-learning, anti-truth, anti-student and antisemitic.”
The USAC did not respond to a request for comment.
As college campuses across the country became a hotspot for pro-Palestinian activism following the Oct. 7 attack, UCLA, with an activist history and a large Jewish population, stood out as a major flashpoint. Its student encampment was the site of a riot in April 2024 and eventually cleared by police in riot gear.
The USAC has sided with pro-Palestinian protesters throughout. In a Feb. 2025 letter titled “We Are All SJP,” the USAC, which is democratically elected by the roughly 30,000-member UCLA student body, condemned Chancellor Julio Frenk’s suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine. The letter referred to Israel only as “the Zionist state” or put the country’s name inside quotation marks.
The University of California has since been sued by the Department of Justice, which said that UCLA created a hostile work environment against Jewish and Israeli faculty in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The post UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump extends ceasefire with Iran, even after Iran balks at new round of negotiations
(JTA) — President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he would unilaterally extend the U.S.-Israeli ceasefire with Iran, even though Iran had not agreed to his conditions or even to return to the negotiating table.
Trump announced the decision on Truth Social just hours before the two-week-old deal was set to expire. Citing Iran’s “fractured” leadership, Trump wrote that he had been asked by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to “hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
Vice President JD Vance’s planned trip to Islamabad, where talks were set to take place, was postponed indefinitely after Iran failed to confirm its participation in negotiations.
Trump added that the United States would maintain its naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, despite Iran’s repeated calls for the restrictions to be lifted.
The announcement marked a sharp departure from the president’s statements earlier in the day, telling CNBC that, if a deal was not made before the deadline, “I expect to be bombing.”
In a statement Tuesday, Sharif thanked Trump for his “gracious acceptance” of Pakistan’s request to extend the ceasefire, adding that the country would “continue its earnest efforts for a negotiated settlement of the conflict.”
The announcement adds to uncertain about the war’s future, including for Israelis who lived through six weeks of Iranian bombing, and renews questions about Trump’s commitment to achieving his war goals, which have varied and included blunting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, achieving regime change, and destroying Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles. He said earlier this week that he was asking Iran to limit its nuclear program for 20 years, five years longer than was required by the deal struck by Barack Obama in 2015. Trump exited that deal in 2018.
Last week, Trump announced a different ceasefire, between Israel and Lebanon, on Truth Social, contradicting Israel’s claim that the Iran ceasefire would not apply to its fighting with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed proxy in Lebanon.
Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire extension came during the night in Israel, after Israelis began their celebration of Independence Day. It drew criticism from one of his staunchest pro-Israel supporters, the Zionist Organization of America, whose national president Morton Klein said in a statement that “interminable delay is the standard Islamic Iranian regime negotiating tactic” and that acceding to it represented a victory for Iran. The statement did not mention Trump.
The post Trump extends ceasefire with Iran, even after Iran balks at new round of negotiations appeared first on The Forward.
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Alan Dershowitz quits Democratic Party, calling it ‘most anti-Israel party in U.S. history’
(JTA) — Alan Dershowitz, the prominent pro-Israel attorney whose clients have included Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, announced on Monday that he was leaving the Democratic party and registering as a Republican.
Describing himself as a “lifelong Democrat,” Dershowitz wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he had decided to “bite the bullet and register as a Republican,” citing Democratic support for an arms embargo on Israel last week and the Michigan Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
“There is no denying that the hard left, anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party has moved from the fringe to the mainstream,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that “Republicans have their own antisemitic fringe, but for now it remains a fringe.”
The announcement formalized a political evolution for Dershowitz, who defended Trump during his first impeachment and has increasingly broken with Democrats over Israel in recent years.
In 2021, Dershowitz nominated Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Avi Berkowitz, Trump’s top Middle Eastern envoy during his first administration, for the Nobel Peace Prize over their hand in shaping the Abraham Accords.
Dershowitz — who has recently faced scrutiny over his ties to Epstein, and previously denied allegations of sexual misconduct made by one of Epstein’s accusers — panned the Democratic Party as the “most anti-Israel party in U.S. history” in the op-ed.
“I believe that the Democratic Party’s hostility to Israel represents a deeper and more dangerous shift away from the center and toward a radical approach that is bad for America and the free world,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that he intended to “work hard to prevent the Democrats from gaining control of the House and Senate.”
Dershowitz’s comments are in line with Trump’s statements about Jews and the Democratic Party. He has repeatedly expressed amazement at how any Jews could vote for the Democrats considering his own record when it comes to Israel.
The post Alan Dershowitz quits Democratic Party, calling it ‘most anti-Israel party in U.S. history’ appeared first on The Forward.