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Why are there so many Jewish sports halls of fame?
(JTA) — On one wall of the dining hall at the Indiana University Hillel sit 36 framed photographs of Jewish alumni who have made an impact in the sports industry, from athletes to executives. It’s the IU Jewish Sports Wall of Fame.
One of those pictures is of Josh Rawitch, who has had a long career as an executive in baseball. At first, Rawitch told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, he questioned whether he was truly worthy of being honored alongside fellow Hoosiers like Mark Cuban, the billionaire businessman and owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, and Ted Kluszewski, a four-time All-Star with the MLB’s Cincinnati Reds in the 1950s.
But then Rawitch thought about the location of the wall, and who it might impact.
“You’re going to have young people, 18, 19 years old, walking in there looking at the wall, seeing all these people who are up there who have gone on to do significant things in the industry,” Rawitch said. “That’s actually pretty cool. That actually inspires them. If I was 18 and I’d have walked in and that wall had been there when I was a freshman, I would have thought, ‘that’s really cool.’ I would love to be like one of those people someday.”
Rawitch knows a thing or two about halls of fame: He’s the president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. He said institutions like the one he leads are important “repositories for history.”
“I think having a hall of fame of any kind in any city essentially does two things — it honors people who are really good at what they do, and it documents the history of what’s gone on in that industry,” he said.
The Indiana University Jewish Sports Wall of Fame, located in the dining hall at Indiana University Hillel. (Courtesy)
The display that honors Rawitch in Bloomington is just one of many halls, walls and exhibits across the United States and the world — many of them small — that honor Jewish greatness in sports. From Southern California to Philadelphia, St. Louis to Washington, D.C., similar organizations and institutions recognize Jewish athletes, coaches, executives, media members and beyond.
Why so many?
“We want to call attention to that because of the antisemitic trope that Jews are not good soldiers, farmers or athletes. We need to overcome that,” said Jed Margolis, who runs the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Israel, which has honored over 400 athletes since 1981 and is housed in Netanya after being founded in the United States. “It’s simply not true. And telling the stories out there will help inspire people and lay to rest some of those falsehoods which I think are important to overcome.”
In the fight against antisemitism, Steve Rosenberg, who chairs the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, said “the best defense is a good offense.” The Philadelphia hall, which inducted its first class in 1997 and has moved locations multiple times, has 183 total inductees, including former NFL tight end Brent Novoselsky and longtime 76ers broadcaster Marc Zumoff.
“We shine the light on the great accomplishments of Jews in sports. And we need to do more of that in the world,” Rosenberg said.
Rosenberg added that he thinks there should be even more halls of fame, for Jewish actors, architects, poets and so on, “so that we can celebrate our accomplishments, not in the way that we pat ourselves on the back, but that we can talk about all the great things that we do as a people.”
For Craig Neuman, the chief programming officer at the St. Louis Jewish Community Center, a key feature of Jewish culture is the sense of connection Jews feel when they discover that a celebrity is Jewish. That sense of pride is clear in the work Neuman does with the St. Louis Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, which has its own hallway at the JCC.
“I can’t imagine any other place in the world where you would say, ‘I feel connected to this other country, or these other people, by sheer virtue of our religion,’” Neuman said. “There’s some pride that’s involved with that.”
Like the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame seeks to recognize the most elite athletes — Jewish world record holders, Olympians and the like. Or, as Margolis put it: “We’re looking for the best of the best: the Hank Greenbergs, the Mark Spitzes, people like that.”
Jed Margolis, left, with former Israeli basketball star Mickey Berkowitz, back center, and his family, at the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Netanya, Israel. (Courtesy of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame)
At the local halls of fame, the criteria are different. Rawitch likened it to the dynamic between national versus state and local politics.
“As the National Baseball Hall of Fame, I think it’s pretty clear that we are honoring the absolute greatest who ever played or worked within the game of baseball nationally,” Rawitch said. “Clearly, that should be harder to get into than, say, the California Baseball Hall of Fame or the New York Baseball Hall of Fame. But I don’t think it should diminish if you’re a recipient of that. It should be an honor for anybody who’s named to any sort of hall or wall of fame.”
Inclusivity is central to the local halls of fame.
“I think we want to, on some level, send a message that says, ‘hey, just because you’re not in Cooperstown doesn’t mean that you didn’t have an impact in the world, on your sport, in your community,’” said Neuman.
But that doesn’t mean the standards for entry aren’t high. In fact, in St. Louis, candidates for induction must possess more than just athletic accomplishments — there’s also the “mensch factor.”
“When you are in a position where people might look up to you because of some accomplishments, and whether it’s because you’re an athlete, or you’re a politician, or a lawyer or whatever the profession that puts you in the public’s eye, there’s a certain responsibility that comes along with that,” said Neuman. “It’s a great example to set that, yeah, this guy was a great baseball player, but he was also a great human being as well.”
The St. Louis Jewish Sports Hall of Fame has 84 members inducted across eight classes dating back to 1992 — including Chicago Cubs ace Ken Holtzman and basketball legend Nancy Lieberman. The last group was enshrined in 2018.
Many of those inductees represent more than the typical professional sports — baseball, basketball, football, soccer and hockey. There are racquetball and handball players, even a hot air balloonist. (Whether that counted as a sport was a topic of debate for the selection committee.)
In Philadelphia, a similar conversation was held around whether poker should qualify — in that case, poker was allowed, but it turned out the candidate in question wasn’t actually Jewish.
For Rosenberg, recognizing people from a diverse range of sports is an important part of the work, especially as he works to engage younger members of the community.
“I want the young people, particularly the young Jews, to know that there’s a place for you, no matter if you’re a golfer, a swimmer, a gymnast, a baseball player, whatever you want to do, that you can go on to achieve greatness and that greatness will be recognized,” Rosenberg said.
He added that very few people stop by the hall of fame.
“The reality is, if I stood at the hall of fame on any given day, people that are coming in just to see the hall of fame, we couldn’t get a minyan,” Rosenberg said, referencing Judaism’s 10-person prayer quorum. “Maybe over the course of a year. But we do get the sort of incidental traffic, people that are going to the JCC for other activities.”
The Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. (Courtesy)
The Philadelphia hall’s journey to the JCC was not a simple one. The collection used to have a permanent space at a local YMHA, featuring typical sports artifacts like bats and jerseys. Then it moved into the Jewish federation building — until September 2021, when Hurricane Ida caused severe flooding that destroyed much of the hall of fame’s memorabilia. The current exhibit at the JCC is more two-dimensional, Rosenberg said.
One of the Philadelphia inductees is Arn Tellem, the vice chairman of the NBA’s Detroit Pistons and a longtime agent who represented A-list athletes like Kobe Bryant. Throughout the 2000s, Tellem was regularly ranked among the top agents in all of sports, and he is a member of the Southern California, Michigan and Philadelphia Jewish Sports Halls of Fame.
By the time Tellem got the call from the Philadelphia hall in 2015, he had received his fair share of recognition. But that didn’t make this honor count any less for the Philadelphia native. Rosenberg said Tellem “couldn’t wait to come” to the ceremony, bringing three tables worth of supporters with him.
“Arn Tellem isn’t doing this for recognition, or for money, or for fame,” Rosenberg said. “He has that. It means something to him.”
That sentiment seems to be shared by honorees from across the halls. Rosenberg added that he has seen some inductees moved to tears by the news. When Chris Berman, the ESPN broadcaster who has anchored the network’s flagship program “SportsCenter” since a month after it launched in 1979, was honored by the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, he was “very touched,” said Margolis.
Lauren Becker Rubin, a former star lacrosse and field hockey player at Brown University, was inducted into the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2018.
“It was a big honor for both me and my family,” Becker Rubin told JTA. “I think the connection of celebrating both the athletic achievement and the community makes it meaningful on another level.”
Becker Rubin, who is now a mental performance coach, is also a member of Brown’s athletic Hall of Fame for setting numerous school records in both sports during her college career. But being recognized by her local Jewish community was a particularly special honor, she said.
After her induction, Becker Rubin joined the hall’s board. “Celebrating positive achievements and putting out positive messages about Jewish athletes is a good counter to the negative rhetoric that is out there,” she said.
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The post Why are there so many Jewish sports halls of fame? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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US Rep. Randy Fine Says It Would ‘Be Nice’ to See JD Vance Condemn Tucker Carlson
Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) leaves the US Capitol after the last votes of the week on Sept. 4, 2025. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), one of the most strident supporters of Israel in the US Congress, indicated during an event on Tuesday that he would like to see Vice President JD Vance criticize popular conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson’s antisemitic conduct.
“I think it’d be nice,” Fine said when asked by The Algemeiner whether he thinks Vance, who is friends with Carlson, should publicly distance himself from the controversial pundit.
“I think that, you know, given that Tucker’s become a deranged lunatic, I think we should all be speaking out against Tucker,” Fine said.
Carlson has sparked a fierce backlash after inviting white nationalist Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier, onto his podcast, where Fuentes made antisemitic statements about “organized Jewry” and praised Sovet dictator Joseph Stalin. Critics argued that Carlson failed to condemn or even challenge Fuentes, arguing the online provocateur and former Fox News host offered a congenial platform to normalize Fuentes’s view. The controversy has ignited a rift within conservative circles, including public rebukes from Republican senators and Heritage Foundation staffers, highlighting growing tensions over antisemitism and Israel in the Republican Party.
Prior to the Fuentes interview, Carlson stoked outrage after inviting guests who engaged in Holocaust minimization and made remarks in favor of Adolf Hitler. Carlson also suggested that Hamas should be considered a legitimate government and not a terrorist organization.
Carlson has repeatedly alluded to the unfounded notion that Israel deliberately oppresses Christians while minimizing the heavily documented persecution of Christians by Islamic movements, such as the ongoing mass killing of Nigerian Christians.
Furthermore, Carlson’s friendship with Vance has come under increased scrutiny, with many observers fearing that the popular pundit might influence the vice president to adopt harsher views against Israel. Vance raised eyebrows recently after he failed to push back against a college student who asked him why the United States should continue to support Israel while claiming that Jews “openly support the persecution” of Christians.
Vance employs Carlson’s son, Buckley Carlson, as his deputy press secretary. Vance recently lashed out at journalist Sloan Rachmuch after she demanded that Buckley publicly answer questions about his positions on antisemitism and Israel, suggesting that the pundit’s son could be exerting influence over the vice president.
Political analysts have speculated that Vance, who is widely perceived as a likely successor to US President Donald Trump to lead the Republican Party and win its 2028 presidential primary, could break from GOP orthodoxy by establishing a significantly more critical stance against Israel. A series of recent polls suggest that younger Republicans are increasingly skeptical of the US-Israel alliance. Due to his prominence among Republicans and positioning for the party’s future, conservative leaders have called on Vance to repudiate antisemitism forcefully and reemphasize the importance of the bond between the US and the Jewish State.
On Tuesday, Fine, who is Jewish, also expressed hope that antipathy against Israel and Jews won’t become a major feature in the 2028 presidential primary, arguing that the Trump administration has proactively taken a number of aggressive steps to mitigate the influence of antisemitism among conservatives. He also took a swipe at fellow Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA) and Thomas Massie (KY), branding the anti-Israel lawmakers as “antisemites.”
“Hopefully not, because hopefully we’re going to squash this,” Fine said, “I point out this: I serve with two antisemites on the US House of Representatives, and Donald Trump is seeking to have both of them defeated next year in their primaries. I think it’s clear where the president stands.”
Massie enraged Jewish conservatives after claiming that every member of Congress has an “AIPAC babysitter” which monitors their voting record on Israel. AIPAC, a prominent lobbying group, seeks to foster bipartisan support for the US-Israel alliance.
Massie has also refused to vote in favor of a resolution “calling on elected officials and civil society leaders to counter antisemitism and educate the public on the contributions of the Jewish American community.” He sparked outrage in December 2023 after posting a “meme” which contrasted “American Patriotism” with “Zionism.”
Taylor Greene has also sparked ire from pro-Israel conservatives when she attempted, unsuccessfully, to add an amendment stripping military aid to Israel to a large defense spending bill. In recent months, the lawmaker has intensified her rhetoric against Israel, establishing herself as the sole Republican to condemn Israel for “genocide” in Gaza.
Trump has announced his intention to support primary challengers against both members, who have opposed him on a range of issues including Israel.
Fine spoke to The Algemeiner at an event in Washington, DC titled “Exposing and Countering Extremism and Antisemitism on the Political Right” where he was featured as a keynote speaker. The event was organized in response to the rise of Fuentes and a wave of antisemitic rhetoric baacked by major right-wing online influencers.
Fuentes has praised Hitler, engaged in Holocaust denial, called for “perfidious Jews” to be murdered, all while becoming increasingly popular with an audience of disaffected young men. Along with Carlson and Fuentes, Candace Owens, another prominent right-wing influencer, has spent the last two years following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, spreading conspiracy theories about Israel and calling Jews “demonic” and “pedophilic.”
During his keynote speech, Fine said that the fight against antisemitism is an “existential fight for the nature of our country.”
He stressed that no country that has gone down the “path of antisemitism” has survived and urged Jewish conservatives not to ignore antisemites as fringe voices. Fine lamented the growing issue of right-wing antisemitism, claiming that “we have an issue in our own party, where the evil has come into our own midst.”
Fine argued that Carlson is now the “most dangerous antisemite in America” because he still harbors credibility among conservatives from his popular Fox News show and that most people don’t know that he has become a “nutgbag.”
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‘Sharia Stands Against the Oppressor’: CUNY Imam Issues Verbal Fatwa Targeting Jewish Professor at Interfaith Event
City University of New York (CUNY) students protesting Israel and US President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. Photo: Reuters via Reuters Connect
A New York City college has been walloped by what witnesses described as a portentous verbal fatwa which disrupted an interfaith event school officials hoped would unite students around traditional American values of pluralism, tolerance, and equality.
What most surprised the audience and the panelists who were headlining the event was that the heckler at the City College of New York (CCNY) in Manhattan last Thursday was himself a panelist, a local imam and graduate student, Abdullah Mady, who is enrolled in the Master’s in Translational Medicine (MTM) program. When called on to speak, Mady became irate and opened up a prolonged rant in which he called for imposing sharia law on Americans, defended amputating the limbs of misdemeanor level criminals and the wealthy, and denigrated a Jewish co-panelist, Baruch College professor Ilya Bratman.
CCNY and Baruch College are both part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system.
“I came here to this event not knowing that I would be sitting next to a Zionist, and this is something I’m not going to accept. My people are being killed right now in Gaza,” Mady bellowed before challenging the religious bonafides of Muslim students in the audience. “If you’re a Muslim, out of strength and dignity, I ask you to exit this room immediately.”
Mady uttered other pronouncements drawn from the jihadist tradition of radical Islam, in which extremism is offered as a solution to soluble political problems.
“I’m talking about the elite, the filthy rich, the ones that continue to steal from people as we speak today. Those are the ones that deserve their tips to be cut off,” Mady said. “Sharia … stands against the oppressor. When sharia is implemented, pornography — gone. Alcohol industry — gone. Gambling system — gone. Interest is gone, which is what they use to enslave you.”
Ilya Bratman, executive director of the Hillel at Baruch College, told The Algemeiner in an interview on Wednesday that he is no victim but warned that Mady’s ideology is infectious in an age when political actors amass a following by trampling on norms which protect the American system against demagoguery.
“Who are the victims? The students, because they are being indoctrinated, bamboozled, and radicalized,” he said. “The Muslim students are the victims in this story because in this environment they are forced to choose between being supportive of this point of view or disassociated with by their community. That’s very sad, I think. We need education, not indoctrination.”
Bratman noted that just feet away from the panel, a Holocaust survivor was delivering a lecture in another room on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the infamous Nazi-led pogroms in November 1938 that devastated the German Jewish community. That event aimed to teach students how to identify and fight fascism, which Bratman says is fitting given that it took form in Mady’s invective, which promised that Americans could achieve utopia if only they adopt theocratic, anti-capitalist, and antisemitic beliefs.
“It was juxtaposed with another story just downstairs, where an element of fascism was coming through on an American campus,” Bratman explained. “He promoted isolationism, exclusion, superiority, intimidation, hostility, all targeting a very specific type of group, the Jewish people.”
Bratman added that CCNY is not responsible for what transpired, as school officials selected Mady as a panelist based on its belief that he was an average student and New Yorker. However, he noted that Mady’s power to direct masses of students poses a threat to safety and would have led to tragedy had he used his platform to incite violence.
“In this situation, the administration was not trying to do something negative but something amazingly positive,” Bratman explained. “But I think if this person stood up and said, ‘If you are a good Muslim, attack this Zionist.’ And I believe this strongly not because I think they are bad people, but because they have been so bamboozled, so radicalized by ideology. We are at a dangerous moment, a moment of escalation that is a symptom of our society today.”
On Wednesday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul denounced Mady’s conduct as antisemitic.
“This is antisemitism, plain and simple,” Hochul said on the X social media platform, responding to the incident. “No one should be singled out, targeted, or shamed because they are Jewish. I expect to act swiftly to ensure accountability and protect every student’s safety.”
CUNY’s campuses have been lambasted by critics as some of the most antisemitic institutions of higher education in the country.
Last year, the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) resolved half a dozen investigations of antisemitism on CUNY campuses, a consortium of undergraduate colleges located throughout New York City’s five boroughs. The inquiries, which reviewed incidents that happened as far back as 2020, were aimed at determining whether school officials neglected to prevent and respond to antisemitic discrimination, bullying, and harassment.
Hunter College and CUNY Law combined for three resolutions in total, representing half of all the antisemitism cases settled by OCR. Baruch College, Brooklyn College, and CUNY’s Central Office were the subjects of three other investigations.
One of the cases which OCR resolved, involving Brooklyn College, prompted widespread concern when it was announced in 2022. According to witness testimony provided by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law — which filed the complaint prompting the investigation — Jewish students enrolled in the college’s Mental Health Counseling (MCH) program were repeatedly pressured into saying that Jews are white people who should be excluded from discussions about social justice.
The badgering of Jewish students, the students said at the time, became so severe that one said in a WhatsApp group chat that she wanted to “strangle” a Jewish classmate.
“Some of the harassment on CUNY campuses has become so commonplace as to almost be normalized,” the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) alleged in July 2022. “Attacking, denigrating, and threatening ‘Zionists’ has become the norm, with the crystal-clear understanding that ‘Zionist’ is now merely an epithet for ‘Jew’ the same way ‘banker,’ ‘cabal,’ ‘globalist,’ ‘cosmopolitan,’ ‘Christ killer,’ and numerous other such dog-whistles have been used over the centuries to target, demonize, and incite against Jews.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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‘Shoulder-to-Shoulder’: Israeli Medical Delegation Assists in Aftermath of Devastating Hurricane in Jamaica
A look at some of the damage caused by Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica. Photo: Provided
A team of 30 Israeli medical professionals who were deployed to Jamaica to assist the local population in the aftermath of the deadly Hurricane Melissa returned home to Israel on Tuesday, and its commander spoke to The Algemeiner about the challenges they faced as well as the devastation on the Caribbean island.
Professor Ofer Merin is the director general of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem and has been commander of the IDF’s Field Hospital operations for the past 20 years. A trained cardiac surgeon and trauma surgeon, he has been dispatched to oversee medical relief efforts in 10 disaster zones around the world, the most recent being in Jamaica. Merin spoke to The Algemeiner on Tuesday during his trip back to Israel with his delegation of medical professionals, which included doctors, nurses, and paramedical staff from hospitals all around Israel.
“We integrated into the two hospitals and worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the local people,” he said. “It’s by far easier to set up as a stand alone [field hospital] – you come, you set up your tent, you work and see the patients – but this way, you have to integrate and work with them [and] gain their trust, the patients and the healthcare providers.”
The Category 5 hurricane made landfall in western Jamaica on Oct. 28 and caused extensive damage, including the destruction of homes, power and communication outages, damaged sanitation systems, flooding and damages to infrastructure. Recovery efforts are still underway across Jamaica. There have been 45 confirmed deaths, 15 people are still missing as of last week, and more than 1.6 million have been affected, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Merin explained that two hospitals located in the disaster zone were severely damaged and completely non-operational. After speaking with Jamaica’s Ministry of Health, Merin said the decision was made for the Israeli team to assist local medical staff, and assist in treating injured patients and emergency cases at the hospitals instead of establishing their own field hospitals in the disaster areas.
“The challenge here was triaging the patients into the emergency rooms into hospitals that were overwhelmed, trying to figure out what was more urgent and less urgent, and working in a lower resources country than what we are used to in Israel,” he added. “Within two days we gained the trust of everyone over there, the patients [and] the staff members. They let us treat patients independently, and this was quite unique. We also assisted the healthcare providers, which were overworking day and night because of the numbers of patients, and some of them lost family members or their houses.”
Merin said he and his team received tremendous feedback from the locals, who were grateful for their help. “People in the street would say, ‘Oh, you’re from Israel? Thank you so much.’ Jamaicans knew we were there. We got such good feedback. It was really heartwarming. The Jamaican people were amazing. They hosted us with such hospitality and open hands and we gained their trust very quickly.”
Eden Bar Tal, the director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a previously released statement that Israel’s humanitarian mission to Jamaica to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa “reflects the moral and ethical commitment of the State of Israel to extend assistance to regions affected by disasters around the world.”
“Jamaica has a long and unique history of relations with Israel and the Jewish people,” Bar Tal added. “As one of the leading nations in the Caribbean region, Jamaica is an important partner, and we are committed to further strengthening relations between Israel and the countries of the region.”
Hurricane Melissa was the strongest storm to make landfall in Jamaica and the second strongest recorded in the region. The storm also caused extensive flooding and damage in Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. In 2010, after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Israel also dispatched a medical delegation and established a field hospital on the island.
Members of Israel’s medical delegation who traveled to Jamaica to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa. Photo: Provided