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All the Jewish players and storylines to watch in the 2022 World Cup
(JTA) — It’s a World Cup like no other in recent memory — starting in late November.
That’s because it’ll take place in Qatar, where temperatures won’t usually fall under 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
The headlines going in are focused on the country’s widely-criticized human rights record. The preparations for the first World Cup hosted in the Arab world have taken years to complete, have cost more than $200 billion and, according to human rights organizations, have led to the deaths of thousands of migrant workers.
Qatar also has no diplomatic relations with Israel, leaving Israeli fans in a tense situation — more on that below.
But beneath these headlines, there are other Jewish angles to the world’s biggest sports spectacle. Let’s dive in.
The US has 2 Jewish players
Matt Turner, left, and DeAndre Yedlin are both on the U.S. men’s national team. (Getty Images)
Jewish professional men’s soccer players from the United States who compete on the world stage are a rare phenomenon. But this year, the U.S. men’s national team has two on its roster — including the likely starting goalie.
Matt Turner, a 28-year-old New Jersey native who didn’t seriously begin playing soccer until he was 14, struggled to prove himself through high school, college and through the start of his professional career. After going undrafted in Major League Soccer, Turner joined the New England Revolution in 2016 and finally in 2020 ascended to the upper echelon of the sport’s goalkeepers. He’s now the backup keeper for Arsenal F.C., one of the top clubs in England’s Premier League.
Turner’s father is Jewish and his mother is Catholic, but he identifies more with the Jewish tradition, according to a profile in The Athletic. Turner’s great-grandparents fled Europe during World War II because they were Jewish and changed their name to Turner at Ellis Island, he explained on soccer journalist Grant Wahl’s podcast. Turner obtained Lithuanian citizenship in 2020.
Turner’s teammates on defense include DeAndre Yedlin, a Seattle native who was raised Jewish but has said he practices Buddhism. Yedlin has a large Hebrew tattoo on his right shoulder in honor of his great-grandparents.
Yedlin, who is of African-American, Native American and Latvian heritage, is in his first year of a four-year contract with the MLS team Inter Miami after spending five seasons with the Premier League’s Newcastle United. He is the only player on the U.S. roster with World Cup experience; he served a bench role in 2014.
While Yedlin’s playing time this year may not be much different, his off-field presence is seen as an asset.
“He’s a glue guy,” said USMNT coach Gregg Berhalter. “He’s there for the team, he creates atmosphere for the team. Sometimes he’s a shoulder to cry on or to talk to. Other times he’s a motivator.”
(A third member of the U.S. team, forward Brendan Aaronson, is not Jewish, but has occasionally elicited questions about his background due to his Ashkenazi-sounding surname.)
A veteran Argentine-Jewish coach is back
José Pékerman, the head coach of Venezuela. (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
José Pékerman, a coaching legend in the sport in Argentina, has already had one miraculous comeback — could he make it two?
As coach of the perennial powerhouse Argentine national team, the 73-year-old made waves calling up a young Lionel Messi to his first World Cup in 2006. He never won a Cup with the team, however, and resigned after 2006. In 2012, he returned to the world stage as coach of the Colombian national team and helped them in 2014 return to the tournament for the first time since 1998. The squad made a surprise run, too, making it all the way to the quarterfinals.
Now he hopes to help Venezuela, which has dropped close to 60th in the international rankings, as their coach.
Pékerman began his soccer career as a kid at the local Maccabi Jewish youth club in Entre Rios, a province north of Buenos Aires.
So are a pair of Jewish Telemundo announcers
Andres Cantor arrives at the Telemundo and NBC Universal Latin America Red Carpet Event in Miami Beach, Fla., Jan. 16, 2018. (Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images)
Telemundo’s coverage of the tournament, as it has for years, will feature plenty of “goooaaaaaals.”
That’s because it will include six-time Emmy award-winner Andres Cantor, the Argentine-Jewish announcer who perhaps is most responsible for popularizing long goal calls in the English-speaking world.
He will be joined by one of his mentees, two-time Emmy nominee Sammy Sadovnik, who has been with Telemundo since 2007 and covered sports since 1989. He’s a proud Jew from Peru who visits Israel every year.
Israel isn’t in the tournament and hasn’t qualified since 1970
The Israeli national soccer team lines up during the national anthem before the start of a match against Australia in Mexico City, May 25, 1970. (Staff/AFP via Getty Images)
Israel’s first and only appearance in the World Cup was in 1970. That half-century hiatus is not due to a lack of talent.
Israel was one of the founding members of the Asian Football Confederation, joining in 1954, and would enjoy international success culminating in winning the 1964 AFC Cup. But Israel’s success was overshadowed by geopolitics — many AFC member countries began to boycott playing Israel over time.
In 1958, Israel won its World Cup qualifying group without playing a single opponent due to protests. In 1974, the AFC expelled Israel from the confederation in a 17-13 vote organized by Kuwait.
Israel would wander the soccer desert for two decades before securing full membership in the Union of European Football Association. Israel remains the only UEFA member without any territory in Europe.
That membership brings tough competition: Israel is in the same conference as soccer powerhouses like Spain, France and Italy. In the 2022 qualifiers, Israel was grouped with Denmark, also a perennially top-tier team.
Despite the tough competition and frequent antisemitism Jewish and Israeli players face across Europe, the Israeli Football Association is content where it is.
“We prefer our clubs and national teams playing at the European level,” Shlomi Barzel, a spokesman for the IFA, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2018. “We find a warm, welcoming and challenging home in Europe.”
Israelis normally aren’t allowed into Qatar, but this World Cup is an exception
Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani arrives for the opening of the Arab summit in Algiers, Algeria, Nov. 1, 2022. (Fethi Belaid/AFP via Getty Images)
Israelis normally aren’t allowed into Qatar, and direct flights from Israel aren’t allowed into the Muslim-majority country. But for the World Cup, Qatar announced it would allow direct flights from Tel Aviv to its capital Doha for Israeli fans, and depending on Israeli government approval, for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as well.
Israeli diplomats will also be permitted to offer support to Israelis during the World Cup — which will be crucial since Qatar, which is part of the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities, has a very limited Jewish communal presence. Chapters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement normally help Jewish tourists procure kosher food and offer other support, but the closest Chabad center in the region is in the United Arab Emirates.
And while as many as 20,000 Israelis could make the trip, the Israeli government is still urging them to be careful.
“The Iranian team will be in the World Cup and we estimate that tens of thousands fans will follow it, and there will be other fans from Gulf countries that we don’t have diplomatic relationship with,” a senior Israeli diplomat warned fans as part of a Foreign Ministry campaign. “Downplay your Israeli presence and Israeli identity for the sake of your personal security.”
RELATED: Check out the Jewish Sport Report’s Soccer Spotlight video series, hosted by former professional soccer player Ethan Zohn. The first episode, with Major League Soccer VP Jeff Agoos, is out now.
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The post All the Jewish players and storylines to watch in the 2022 World Cup appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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YiddishPOP can bring more diversity to American Jewish education
Every Sunday morning, a group of families in Stockholm, Sweden, meets in a local school to create handicrafts, do gymnastics — and learn Yiddish.
Katka Mazurczak, the instructor of this grassroots group called The Yiddish Club, told me that the families seem to really enjoy the weekly Yiddish immersion. One of the resources she uses is YiddishPOP, a free online animated and game-based learning tool that features short episodes about a young teenager named Nomi, her robot sidekick Moby and her friends.
I’ve known about YiddishPOP for years and often share its videos with my grandchildren. The episodes cover topics that are familiar and easy for children to relate to. In one, a friend of Nomi’s finally scores a basket. In another, Nomi and Moby laugh as they look at their comical reflections in funhouse mirrors.
Each story is accompanied by a video clip presenting the new vocabulary and grammar, interactive games and a multiple choice quiz.
“Children love YiddishPOP,” said Mazurczak, who also uses the program when teaching kids in more formal school settings like the Stockholm Jewish Hillel School, known as Hillelskolan. “It has captivating graphics, clear speech and the movie goes at a good pace. Some episodes are really funny and kids laugh out loud.”
Part of the appeal of YiddishPOP, particularly for beginners, lies in Moby’s slapstick antics. I too find myself laughing during those scenes.
In a time when seeking diversity has become a main focus in schools across America, Jewish educators might want to consider introducing young students to the multi-faceted language and culture of Ashkenazic Jewry, using a contemporary language learning tool like YiddishPOP.
Teaching the Yiddish language through animation and interactive games helps it come alive for children, depicting it as a natural, even cool way to express Jewish identity, rather than stereotypically sending the language to the dustbin of history.
One school that has tried out YiddishPOP is the Krieger Schechter Day School in Baltimore, MD. When the school piloted the program with its third-grade class last year, the director of the lower school, Toby Kaplowitz, was impressed.
“Though students had just four sessions, they were truly engaged and walked away with both a sense of the language and an appreciation for its connection to their Jewish learning,” Kaplowitz wrote in an email. Krieger plans to continue using YiddishPOP with these same students, as they transition to fourth grade.
Last year, YiddishPOP began distributing $500 microgrants to help teachers and parents bring the Yiddish program to schools. Dana Yudovich Katz, a teacher at Kehillah High — a supplemental program for students in grades 8–12, run by the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston — was the first recipient. She added YiddishPOP to a course she had initiated with the teens called TAM: A Taste of Yiddish Language and Culture. Tam is Yiddish for “flavor.”
Most of the students came away from using YiddishPOP with a positive feeling towards the language. As one student in Yudovich Katz’s class told her: “The film was good at using the words in a way I could understand because it was just slow enough.”
The YiddishPOP team is now working on teacher materials that will make it easier for people without a background in Yiddish or language teaching to use YiddishPOP. Teachers and school administrators who’d like to apply for a YiddishPOP microgrant can do so here until July 31.
The post YiddishPOP can bring more diversity to American Jewish education appeared first on The Forward.
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UK Jewish leaders demand answers after Muslim police group paper calls Zionism a form of hatred
(JTA) — British Jewish groups say they are alarmed about revelations that a fraternal society for Muslim police officers published a policy paper that described Zionism as a form of anti-Muslim hatred and called the Israeli army a “Zionist terrorist group.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews called the paper posted by the National Association of Muslim Police “disturbing” in its presentation of Jewish identity, history and the nature of antisemitism.
“If this is being circulated among officers, it poses a direct challenge to the integrity of policing and it should be withdrawn immediately,” the group said.
NAMP has distanced itself from the report and, in a statement, rejected any allegation that the group “supports Hamas.”
The 39-page paper titled “From Past Prejudices to Present Policies: Confronting anti-Muslim hatred and Promoting Human Rights,” was written by NAMP’s then-vice president, Khaldoun Kabbani, and published in July 2025. It says “Zionism represents one of the manifestations of anti-Muslim hatred”; likens the war in Gaza to the Holocaust; and disputes facts about Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, including that Israeli children were killed.
The Spectator, a right-wing British newspaper, drew attention to the report in a piece published on Friday that said the report illuminated “the disturbing truth about the National Association of Muslim Police.” The group has a formal affiliation with 16 of 43 police departments in the U.K. and says it represents more than 20,000 officers.
Kabbani, a forensics officer, was briefly the chair of the Scottish Muslim Police Association but planned to move abroad after retiring earlier this year, according to a post by the group on LinkedIn.
The revelation of the NAMP report comes at a time of heightened tension over policing in the U.K., amid both a surge in anti-Jewish crimes and a renewed uproar over a December murder that has fueled allegations of “two-tier policing” that treats some victims differently from others. The Spectator referenced the victim, Henry Nowak, in the column about NAMP.
The NAMP report has spurred distress for many British Jews who are on edge amid a string of violent incidents targeting Jewish communities. The Campaign Against Antisemitism, a watchdog group, said its polling shows that 83% of British Jews do not think the police are doing enough to protect them — and that the report suggested their concerns were well founded.
“The people responsible for publishing this extremist screed on the official police.uk web domain are unfit to be police officers and must be immediately investigated by their respective forces’ professional standards departments and dismissed,” Steven Silverman, CAM’s director of investigations and enforcement, said in a statement.
“British Jews have long suffered two-tier policing that sees antisemitic crime go unpunished,” he said, adding that CAM would press the British government “ensure a clear message is being sent. This cannot pass with the document being quietly deleted.”
The report was removed from NAMP’s website over the weekend. The group distanced itself from the report in a statement published on Tuesday, saying that it had removed the report “immediately” after learning about its existence and emphasizing that the author was “no longer associated” with NAMP.
“We understand that the publication of this document has affected several communities, and we regret any concern, discomfort, or misunderstanding it may have caused,” the group said.
It added, “NAMP categorically does not ‘defend’ Hamas or any other proscribed organisation. We condemn all forms of terrorism and extremism.”
The document is “deeply troubling,” a spokesperson for the Jewish Leadership Council, which coordinates British Jewish groups, said in a statement.
“This document appears to falsely associate an ideology held by the majority of Jewish people as a threat to Muslims. It also engages in deeply troubling Holocaust inversion and denial of some of the worst atrocities carried out by Hamas on October 7th,” the spokesperson said. “At a time of rising antisemitism including violent attacks on British Jews, this document further threatens community cohesion and police forces should be clear in distancing themselves from it.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said it plans to speak with the “relevant” government and police departments to discover the paper’s provenance, how it’s being used and “how to ensure that the valued relationships of trust between British Jews and the police are not being undermined.”
The Metropolitan Police of London, the largest police department in the U.K. and a formal NAMP affiliate, declined to comment on the report. The department has recently stepped up policing in Jewish communities in an effort to stem antisemitic violence.
The post UK Jewish leaders demand answers after Muslim police group paper calls Zionism a form of hatred appeared first on The Forward.
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Jacob Reses, Vance’s Jewish chief of staff, to leave administration
(JTA) — Jacob Reses, the Jewish chief of staff to Vice President JD Vance, is leaving the administration at the end of the summer, a source confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Thursday.
Reses, who’s been in his role since Vance and President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, is perhaps the closest Jewish official in Vance’s orbit. He has had a close relationship with the vice president since Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign in Ohio.
A source familiar with the matter confirmed NBC News’ initial report that Reses informed Vance of his decision months ago, after his wife became pregnant. Vance said in a statement on Thursday that he will “miss him dearly, but he won’t be far, and I plan to keep his counsel close until our paths cross again.” Reses’ plans for his next role are currently unknown.
Vance has recently drawn the ire of some Jewish Republicans who say that he has refused to confront antisemitism on the right, including from former Fox news host Tucker Carlson. (Carlson’s son is also a Vance staffer.) A New York Magazine profile published in March suggested that Reses was on board with Vance’s approach, and revealed that Reses used his private X account to amplify voices calling on Jews to embrace, rather than resist, the Christian nationalist current surging within the GOP.
Reses has been “by my side for my whole career in public life,” Vance said in a statement.
“I can’t imagine having been on this life-changing journey without him,” Vance said. “From day one of my time as a Senator-elect, I could not have asked for a more loyal and discerning advisor and friend as my chief of staff.”
The personal bond between the two men was on display in January, when Vance took part in Reses’ wedding to Rachel Altman at a synagogue in Rockville, Maryland, delivering a Jewish prayer under the chuppah. Chabad of Princeton University, Reses’ alma mater, posted a photo of the couple with the vice president, celebrating the occasion as an expression of Jewish pride.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DTrUKXEDOQE/?img_index=3
That closeness, and Reses’ reported alignment with Vance’s stance on right-wing antisemitism, have not spared Reses from becoming a target of antisemites. In one instance, a white-nationalist website ran an article about him headlined, “Another Nail in the Coffin — Jew Runs J. D. Vance.”
A Jewish Telegraphic Agency profile published in 2024, when Vance was selected as Trump’s running mate, traced Reses’ Jewish identity and his journey from a Democratic-leaning Jewish teenager in southern New Jersey, whose grandfather escaped the Holocaust in Lithuania, to one of the most influential conservatives in Washington. His trajectory included internships for Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, a political conversion at Princeton and stints at the Heritage Foundation and in the office of Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley.
On Thursday, Republican leaders and Trump administration officials sang Reses’ praises in statements shared with JTA.
“Jacob Reses has been an invaluable, loyal, and trusted hand to Vice President Vance and President Trump,” said Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition. “As a proud Jewish American, whose own family story carries the weight of our people’s history, Jacob brought both conviction and clarity to one of the most consequential roles in Washington.” Brooks added that the RJC has “no doubt he will continue to play a critical role moving forward.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who’s seen as a possible challenger to Vance for the 2028 presidential nomination, said that Reses served Vance and the entire administration “with distinction,” and that he “understands the moment we’re in and he spent every day fighting to deliver results for the President.”
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, said he was proud to have Reses “by my side in negotiating some of the toughest deals for the President.”
“Don’t let Jacob fool you — beneath his kind exterior he’s a killer,” Witkoff said. “It’s been a delight to get to know him through the Vice President, and our foreign adventures from Israel to Pakistan have been historic.”
He added, “We haven’t seen the last of him.”
The post Jacob Reses, Vance’s Jewish chief of staff, to leave administration appeared first on The Forward.
