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‘Swastika boards’ and ‘surf Nazis’: New documentary explores surfing’s history of antisemitism
(JTA) — When he was 13 years old, Josh Greene moved with his family to San Clemente, California, a city known as one of the best spots for surfing on the West Coast. Greene quickly fell in love with the sport, even holding his bar mitzvah party at a local museum dedicated to it.
As a “skinny, very unathletic” teen, Greene said he endured a significant amount of bullying, including some that “extended itself into antisemitism.” Students at his school would compare his physique to that of a Holocaust survivor.
Surfing provided refuge.
“Surfing was my way to really carve my own niche and find the confidence, courage and physical strength I needed,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
But years after his bar mitzvah, Greene learned that his parents had arranged for the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center to remove swastika-engraved boards that were on display, to avoid disturbing the partygoers. Wanting to learn more, he discovered that the sport’s history is full of Nazi imagery: Particularly in the 1960s, seeing surfboards with swastikas or surfers giving “Sieg heil” salutes was commonplace. Serious surfers called themselves “surf Nazis” as a way to signal their intense dedication to the sport.
An aspiring filmmaker — he received his first “real camera” as his bar mitzvah present — Greene decided to combine his two passions and delve into the dark history.
The result, completed before he graduated from the University of Southern California in May 2022, is a documentary called “Waves Apart,” which chronicles the history of antisemitism in surfing. Directed by Greene, the student-produced film was a finalist in the fall for a Student Academy Award, given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
“Waves Apart” made its global debut at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Thursday, before heading to other Jewish and documentary film festivals in California, Denver, Toronto and Maryland.
After chronicling his own journey with surfing and the bar mitzvah incident in the film, Greene interviews surf writer Dan Duane and Jewish history professor Steven Ross, who provide a fuller picture of Southern California’s history of both surfing and Nazism, and their unfortunate overlap. As Duane wrote in a 2019 New York Times article, that overlap runs deep — The first commercially made surfboards made in California are thought to be the “Swastika model,” sold in the 1930s by the Pacific Systems Homes company, which also made prefab houses. The 1960s surfer icon Miki Dora was known to have painted a swastika on at least one of his boards.
Duane cites arguments that claim early surfers, who wanted to be seen as a rebellious subculture, used the swastika only to irk members of mainstream society. But Duane argues back that their antisemitism was part of a clear culture of racism in the largely white surfer community.
“I’ve heard all the predictable excuses for this stuff, like that the swastika was an ancient Sanskrit symbol,” he wrote in The Times. “Putting a swastika on something to anger people means you know that it angers them and very likely why.”
In his movie, Greene also speaks with Jewish surfers, both his classmates at USC and Jewish surfing legends like Shaun Tomson and Israel “Izzy” Paskowitz. Paskowitz shares a story of encountering a surfer with a swastika spray-painted on his surfboard — which his father, the famous surfer Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, destroyed out of anger.
“Right as I was about to graduate, we had the first screening of our film, in our school’s theater,” Greene said. “We drew a packed crowd, and it was so rewarding and such a great sign of confirmation about the film’s message and connectivity with our audience. We saw people crying, people smiling at the end, with the way our film ends with a hopeful tone and message for the future.”
That hopeful message is where Tomson comes in. A former pro surfer and now a motivational speaker, Tomson reached the pinnacle of the sport by winning the 1977 World Surf League championship. He won 19 major professional surfing events in total and is a member of both the Southern California and International Jewish Sports Halls of Fame.
Shaun Tomson is a former world champion surfer. (Courtesy of Tomson)
Tomson, born in Durban, South Africa, also had a surfing experience tied to his bar mitzvah that would prove foundational. Tomson’s father took him on a surfing trip to Hawaii, which Tomson called “the Mount Everest of surfing.”
“For me, it was a total representation of what a bar mitzvah is — it’s coming into manhood,” Tomson told JTA. “And here I was, a young boy paddling out in a 25-foot surf in Hawaii, which was a moment for me that changed my life. I came back to South Africa, and my career and my role in surfing changed after that bar mitzvah present.”
Tomson said he has faced antisemitism before outside of the sport — he was called a “Jew boy” by a fellow member of South Africa’s army as a teenager — but never as a member of the surfing community in the 1970s onward.
“While it’s not an excuse, I think there’s just a lot of ignorance,” Tomson said. “When I say ignorance, perhaps it wasn’t actually directed at Jews, it was more just blatant stupidity, and a lack of awareness of what actually happened in the Holocaust.”
There weren’t many Jewish surfers in South Africa when Tomson grew up, but he said he feels a direct link between his identities as a Jew and as a surfer.
“When you’re out in the ocean, there’s certainly a spiritual and a religious connectivity there, which is totally aligned with Jewish values,” he said.
No experience exemplifies this connection more powerfully than the tragic death of Tomson’s son, Matthew, who died in 2006 at the age of 15 as a result of a schoolyard “choking game” gone wrong. Tomson tells the story in the documentary.
Tomson explained that his particular expertise is tube riding — the picturesque but challenging technique of riding inside a tunnel-like wave. Two hours before Tomson’s son died, he called his father to share an essay he had written about how in tube riding, “the light shines ahead.” Just hours later, Tomson received the devastating news.
“So when I was trying to make sense of the world and my life, and why God had done this to me, I went back to my old shul,” Tomson said. “The old shul where I’d had my bar mitzvah. And I look at that lamp of everlasting light that represents the hope and faith of Judaism. And I thought of the words that my son wrote, ‘the light shines ahead.’ And I realized that Judaism’s about hope.”
The film ends on that hopeful tone: The last scene features a group of Jewish surfers at a beach in Malibu, reciting the Shema prayer in the water, before hitting the waves as the sun begins to set. In the last shot, the group sits down to a Shabbat meal on the beach.
“Surfing can be seen as a microcosm for issues like that and I think we would be doing our sport a great disservice if we ignored our own signs of darkness,” Greene said. “I think that by making a film like this, we can dispel ignorance and divisiveness, and instead promote inclusivity, community and equality for all surfers and all people.”
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Some US Senators Skeptical About Military Options for Iran
Demonstrators and activists rally in support of nationwide protests in Iran, outside the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 10, 2026. REUTERS/Tom Brenner
Some US lawmakers in both major parties on Sunday questioned whether military action against Iran is the best approach for the United States as Iranian authorities face growing turmoil.
US President Donald Trump in recent days has left open the possibility of American intervention in Iran, where the biggest anti-government protests in years have led to the Revolutionary Guards blaming unrest on terrorists and vowing to safeguard the governing system.
But at least two US senators sounded notes of caution during interviews on TV networks’ Sunday morning programs.
“I don’t know that bombing Iran will have the effect that is intended,” Republican Senator Rand Paul said on ABC News’ “This Week” show.
Rather than undermining the regime, a military attack on Iran could rally the people against an outside enemy, Paul and Democratic Senator Mark Warner said.
Warner, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” warned that a military strike against Iran could risk uniting Iranians against the United States “in a way that the regime has not been able to.” History shows the dangers of US intervention, said Warner, who argued that the US-backed 1953 overthrow of Iran’s government set in motion a chain of events that gradually led to the rise of the country’s Islamic regime in the late 1970s.
The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported that US military and diplomatic officials will brief Trump on Tuesday about options for Iran, including cyberattacks and potential military action.
Iran has said it will target US military bases if the United States launches an attack. But Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who has often touted a muscular approach to foreign policy, said Trump “needs to embolden the protesters and scare the hell out of the [Iranian] regime.”
“If I were you, Mr. President, I would kill the leadership that are killing the people,” Graham said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” show. “You’ve got to end this.”
Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of the Iranian shah who was ousted in 1979, said on Sunday he is prepared to return to Iran to lead a shift to a democratic government.
“I’m already planning on that,” Pahlavi said on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “My job is to lead this transition to make sure that no stone is left unturned, that in full transparency, people have an opportunity to elect their leaders freely and to decide their own future.”
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Bob Weir, Grateful Dead Co-Founder and Rhythm Guitarist, Dead at 78
Bob Weir poses at the red carpet during the 67th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, California, U.S., February 2, 2025. REUTERS/Daniel Cole
Veteran rock musician Bob Weir, the Grateful Dead’s rhythm guitarist who helped guide the legendary psychedelic jam band through decades of change and success, has died at age 78, his family said in a statement on Saturday.
He was diagnosed with cancer in July and “succumbed to underlying lung issues” surrounded by loved ones, according to the statement, posted on Weir‘s verified Instagram account. It did not mention when or where he died.
Just weeks after starting cancer treatment last summer, Weir had returned to his “hometown stage” at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco to play in a three-night celebration of his 60 years in music, his family recalled. Those shows turned out to be his final live public performances, according to Rolling Stone magazine.
Along with his late fellow Grateful Dead co-founder and lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, who was at the center of the universe for “Deadheads,” as diehard Dead fans are known, Weir was one of the group’s two frontmen and main vocalists for most of the band’s history.
It was Weir who sang the verses on the band’s trademark boogie anthem, “Truckin’,” and who wrote such key songs as “Sugar Magnolia,” “Playing in the Band” and “Jack Straw.”
The youthful, ponytailed “Bobby” grew into an eclectic songwriter whose handsome appearance and diverse musical influences helped broaden the band’s appeal. British newspaper the Independent called Weir “arguably rock’s greatest, if most eccentric, rhythm guitarist.”
After Garcia’s death at age 53 in 1995, Weir carved out an interesting if somewhat neglected solo career – much of it with his band, RatDog – and participated in reunions of surviving Dead members in different configurations.
LONG STRANGE TRIP
“As the one good-looking guy in the Dead, baby-faced Weir was always what passed for the band’s sex symbol,” the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Joel Selvin wrote in 2004. “He didn’t care about that, either. In fact, he always seemed to secretly relish subverting that image.”
Weir was the subject of the 2014 documentary “The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir,” which made a case for the Dead’s “other” guitarist as a musical force. Though some Deadheads adopted the trappings of tie-dyed psychedelia, the group itself was deeply attached to American roots music and was credited with bringing experimental improvisation to rock music.
Weir‘s own musical tastes ranged from Chuck Berry to cowboy songs to R&B and reggae.
Thanks to relentless touring, constant musical evolution and a passionate fan base, the Grateful Dead – who existed from 1965 to 1995 – did not have to rely on producing hit records.
“Bob was the wild one,” journalist Blair Jackson wrote in 2012. “He was the rock ‘n’ roller, but also the confident, smooth-voiced narrator on all those dramatic country-rock numbers about desperadoes and fugitives; a perfect fit for those tunes. He was the guy who would screech and scream himself hoarse at the end of the show, whipping us into a dancing frenzy.”
Weir, whose birth name was Robert Hall Parber, was born on October 16, 1947, and raised by adoptive parents in Atherton, California. He did not excel in school, due in part to his undiagnosed dyslexia. In 1964 at age 16, he met Bay Area folk musician Garcia, with whom he formed the Warlocks, who soon morphed into the Grateful Dead.
THE KID
The athletic Weir, who enjoyed football, was the youngest member of the original band and was sometimes referred to as “the kid.”
He was still in high school when he joined up with Garcia, bass guitarist Phil Lesh, organist-vocalist-harmonica player Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and drummer Bill Kreutzmann.
Lesh recalled in his 2005 autobiography that he and Garcia had to make a promise to young Bob‘s mother. “The long and short of it was that if Jerry and I promised to make sure that Bob got to school every day, and that he got home all right after the gigs, she would allow him to remain in the band,” wrote Lesh, who died in October 2024 at age 84. “We somehow convinced her that we would indeed see that he got to school every day. In San Francisco. At 8:00 a.m.”
Eventually Weir moved in to the communal Dead house at 710 Ashbury Street in San Francisco. The group’s first album, “The Grateful Dead,” was released in March 1967.
According to some accounts, Weir was briefly fired from the band in 1968 because his guitar skills were deemed lacking. But he either redoubled his efforts or the others had second thoughts, because he was soon back in. By the time of the band’s two famous 1970 albums, “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty,” Weir was a key contributor.
His 1972 solo album, “Ace,” was a de facto Grateful Dead album that featured Garcia and the others and included well-regarded Weir songs including “Cassidy,” “Black-Throated Wind,” “Mexicali Blues” and “Looks Like Rain.” Many of his best-known songs were co-written with his old school friend, John Perry Barlow, who died in 2018.
As the band’s rhythm guitarist, Weir often played little fills, riffs and figures instead of straight chords. “I derived a lot of what I do on guitar from listening to piano players,” he told GQ magazine in 2019, citing McCoy Tyner’s work with saxophonist John Coltrane. “He would constantly nudge and coax amazing stuff out of Coltrane.”
Even decades after Garcia’s death, Weir never forgot the influence of his old friend. He told GQ that Garcia was still present when Weir played guitar. “I can hear him: ‘Don’t go there. Don’t go there,’ or ‘Go here. Go here,’” Weir said. “And either I listen or I don’t, depending on how I’m feeling. But it’s always ‘How’s old Jerry going to feel about this riff?’ Sometimes I know he’d hate it. But he’d adjust.”
In 2017, Weir was appointed as a United Nations Development Program goodwill ambassador to support the agency’s work to end poverty while fighting climate change.
Weir married Natascha Muenter in 1999. They had two daughters.
“Looking back,” Weir once said, “I guess I have lived an unusual life.”
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Israeli Intelligence: Iran’s Regime at Most Fragile Point Since 1999
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei listens to the national anthem as Air Force officers salute during their meeting in Tehran, Iran, February 7, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Israeli intelligence officials assess that Iran’s ruling Ayatollah regime is at its most fragile point in more than two decades, as nationwide protests continue to escalate.
The scale of the demonstrations and the government’s response have prompted deep concern in Jerusalem.
A near-total internet shutdown is being interpreted as a troubling signal of severe events unfolding on the streets, including widespread killings that remain largely undocumented. Despite protests erupting in roughly 100 cities across Iran, very little video footage has emerged, further underscoring the regime’s clampdown.
Israeli officials warn that the situation could pose a real threat to the stability of Tehran’s leadership if demonstrations continue to grow. However, sources stress that the outcome is highly uncertain. A potential collapse of the regime would not necessarily lead to a democratic government, and intermediate scenarios—such as the replacement of leaders with regents or puppet figures—are also possible.
“The situation is far more complex than it appears,” said a source familiar with security discussions to i24NEWS. “No one truly knows how events will unfold, and we are monitoring every development with extreme caution to determine the best response.”
For now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach is described internally as “monitoring, supporting, hoping.” Israel is keeping a careful distance, allowing Washington to take the lead in applying international pressure on Tehran, while ensuring that the protest movement cannot be linked to Jerusalem in any public way.
Israel’s security establishment continues to follow developments closely, preparing for multiple scenarios in an environment where uncertainty and volatility remain exceptionally high.