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Jerry Izenberg covered 53 Super Bowls. His memoir covers his Jewish Newark upbringing.
(JTA) — Over the course of an illustrious 72-year career as a newspaper reporter, Jerry Izenberg has just about seen it all.
The longtime columnist for The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, Izenberg covered the first 53 Super Bowls. He’s been to 58 Kentucky Derbies, not to mention numerous Olympics, World Cups and boxing matches. He considered Muhammad Ali a close personal friend.
But the fiery 92-year-old, who still contributes to the paper as a columnist emeritus from his home in Nevada, doesn’t approve of the term “journalist.” He’s a newspaperman.
He dropped the name of Samuel Pepys, the 17th-century British diarist, as a contrast.
“Every day he took his big diary, and he wrote what he did this day, what he was planning to do later — that’s a journalist,” Izenberg told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I’m not in my world. I’m in the world of other people trying to interpret and to repeat what values they have or what lack thereof they have.”
Izenberg’s latest story breaks that rule. His 17th book, which hits shelves on Monday, is a memoir about his Jewish upbringing in Newark. Titled “Baseball, Nazis, and Nedick’s Hot Dogs: Growing Up Jewish in the 1930s in Newark,” the memoir centers on Izenberg’s relationship with his father Harry, a World War I veteran and former minor league baseball player who passed on his love of the sport to his son.
Izenberg’s father emigrated to the United States as a child, leaving Lithuania with his family to escape anti-Jewish pogroms. As his sportswriter son recounts it, Harry discovered baseball even before he could speak English.
The Izenbergs’ love of baseball transcended all. When Jerry got his first baseball glove at ten years old, it was a milestone that in his father’s eyes surpassed even his bar mitzvah. (Maybe unsurprisingly, Izenberg would later skip bar mitzvah tutoring to play baseball after school.)
“He had given me a lifetime gift — a simple game and a simple shared love for it,” Izenberg writes in the memoir. “It remains there, bright and shining in memory eighty-three years later. In the soul of my memory, I see our kind of shared love of baseball again. It never fades.”
Jerry Izenberg and his father Harry shared a bond over baseball. (Book cover courtesy of The Sager Group, LLC; photograph courtesy of Jerry Izenberg)
The pair’s passion for baseball was closely intertwined with their Judaism. Growing up in Newark in the 1930s and 40s, Izenberg was a fan of the New York Giants baseball team (which left for San Francisco after the 1957 season). They featured a lineup filled with Jewish players: Harry Danning, Harry Feldman and Sid Gordon.
But in the pantheon of Jewish baseball during Izenberg’s childhood, there was a clear king, and — much to the chagrin of Izenberg’s father — he played in Detroit. Hank Greenberg, the greatest Jewish hitter in baseball history, was at the peak of his Tigers career from 1935-1940, winning two most valuable player awards on his way to the Hall of Fame.
At the Izenbergs’ dinner table, there were only a few select topics that were allowed to be discussed: baseball and the Nazis.
In 1938, Greenberg was chasing all-time great Babe Ruth’s single-season record of 60 home runs, which Ruth had set in 1927 with the Yankees. Greenberg would ultimately reach 58 homers, falling just short of history, while drawing several walks in the season’s final games.
“My dad was convinced that was antisemitism,” Izenberg said. “And I said to him, later on when I got into the business and I knew people, ‘did it ever occur to you that the guys who pitched against him didn’t want to be the guy who threw his 60th home run ball? They’d be linked to him forever.’ My father said, ‘That’s an interesting theory, but you’re full of crap.’”
Of all the anecdotes Izenberg shares of his memories with his father, one non-sports related scene stands out. And it has to do with that second dinner table topic.
One Saturday in 1939, Izenberg and his father went to the Newsreel Theatre in Newark, where audiences gathered to watch news and sports highlights of the week. That day, the theater showed footage of the infamous Madison Square Garden rally held by the German-American Bund, the American Nazi organization.
Izenberg remembers leaving the theater with his father, who was visibly angry. His father talked about how the Nazis — or, as he called them, mamzers, Yiddish slang for “bastards” — had to be stopped.
“I’m an 8-year-old kid, and I say, ‘But dad, they’re in Germany,’” Izenberg recalled. “And he looks at me, he says, ‘They’re not in Germany, they’re here.’ And he was right.” Indeed, following Hitler’s rise to power, Nazi-sympathizers could be seen marching down Newark’s streets.
The move theater incident is illustrated on the book’s cover — and was followed by a frequent father-son ritual: getting hot dogs at the popular chain Nedick’s.
To Izenberg, the virulent antisemitism of his youth — including the Bund, the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan and the rise of Father Charles Coughlin, the antisemitic “radio priest” — is a corollary for the current state of antisemitism, which is again on the rise in the United States, punctuated, he said, by the 2017 antisemitic white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, which he blames on former President Donald Trump.
Izenberg said he doesn’t believe any law can force people to love or even like one another, but that “you could legislate people and pressure people into keeping their damn mouth shut.”
He went on: “And for 30 years, we had that. We got relief from antisemitism… And then one day in Charlottesville, that son of a bitch gave them the license to say whatever they want. And that was a trigger that lit the flame of antisemitism, which then began to grow all at once. It was always in their minds. But it was not fashionable. They made it fashionable.”
Despite the anti-Jewish sentiment that was ever-present in his youth, Izenberg said he has not faced antisemitism in his journalism career. As a columnist who has covered just about every sport, Izenberg has received his fair share of criticism — most notably having his car windows smashed by two men who did not approve of Izenberg’s defense of Muhammad Ali, when at the height of his career the boxer stirred controversy with his support for the Nation of Islam and his refusal to enlist in the military.
Jerry Izenberg, right, and boxer Muhammad Ali were close personal friends. (The Private Collection of Jerry Izenberg)
Izenberg has written about social issues frequently throughout his career — especially race relations — a tendency that he said is inspired by the value of “tikkun olam,” or repairing the world. It’s an idea he learned from Rabbi Joachim Prinz, the famous activist leader who spoke just before Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington.
After leaving Nazi Germany, Prinz settled in Newark, on the same block as the Izenbergs. He would become a close family friend, and even offered to help Izenberg prepare for his bar mitzvah, despite the fact that his family belonged to a different synagogue.
Izenberg said he is guided by tikkun olam, “because I know [Prinz would] want me to keep it in the back of my mind, and my father would, too.”
“I’ve always tried not to fix the world — I don’t overrate myself that much — but I could fix the little part of it, the space that I take up,” he added. “And my job was a pathway to that.”
Izenberg’s decades-long career in sports journalism has earned him numerous accolades, including induction into 17 different halls of fame, among them the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame.
Along the way, he’s worked with and alongside a number of notable journalists, including ESPN reporter Jeremy Schaap, who previously hosted “Classic Sports Reporters,” for which he invited veteran sportswriters like Izenberg on the show to discuss various topics from sports history.
“For someone like me who really treasures that art form, Jerry was one of its master practitioners, and he’s still doing it, which is amazing,” Schaap told JTA.
Schaap hailed the breadth of Izenberg’s career, which he said epitomized the kind of big-city sports columnist that has become increasingly rare in the digital age.
“He’s a maniac, there’s no other way to put it,” Schaap said with a laugh. “All those Super Bowls, all those fights… the energy, the enthusiasm, the passion, all those things, in addition to the skills, makes him unique and has made him unique for decades.”
Schaap added that he and Izenberg shared a sort of unspoken bond over their Jewishness, and that Izenberg has taught Schaap a few Yiddishisms over the years. Izenberg’s tendency to slip Yiddish into his prose is evident in the memoir, from a comical retelling of his bris in the prologue to the frequent frustrated “genug” (“enough”) he heard from his mother as a child.
Ultimately, Izenberg said his parents represent the tachlis — the bottom line — of the memoir, and what he hopes readers take away from it. Izenberg said writing the memoir was cathartic for him, and that it even serves as a sort of love letter to his father.
“We were not, you know, ‘I love you dad,’” Izenberg said. “We were very respectful, but we didn’t express it. I tried to express it in this book. I hope I did.”
The release of Izenberg’s memoir is in no way a sign that the nonagenarian is slowing down. Even though he claims he works less than he used to, Izenberg said he plans to write six columns about next weekend’s Kentucky Derby.
He already has plans for his next few books, too — including a biography of New Jersey’s own Larry Doby, who was the second Black player in the MLB and first in the American League.
“I’ve had a great life, and I’m having a great life, but I ain’t done yet,” Izenberg said.
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The post Jerry Izenberg covered 53 Super Bowls. His memoir covers his Jewish Newark upbringing. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Ukraine Leverages Drone Defense Expertise to Aid Gulf, Strengthen Strategic Role Amid Iran War
Fire ignited at the impact site following an Iranian missile strike, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in central Israel, March 13, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Gideon Markowicz
As the US-Israeli war with Iran reshapes regional security dynamics, Ukraine is leveraging its battlefield-honed drone defense expertise to assist US allies in the Gulf, potentially strengthening its diplomatic standing and shifting the balance of power, experts say.
Earlier this week, a team of around 200 Ukrainian military experts arrived in the Middle East to provide both “expertise” and “practical support” in countering Iranian drones.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that specialized units have already been deployed in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, with additional personnel en route to Kuwait, as Kyiv strengthens coordination with countries across the region.
Since the start of the war last month, Ukraine has actively offered its technology and personnel to Middle Eastern partners to assist the United States and its allies in countering Iranian drones, positioning itself as a key strategic player amid conflict and shifting diplomatic alliances.
Zelenskyy stressed that he had instructed government officials “to present options for assisting the relevant countries” in a way that safeguards Ukraine’s own critical defense needs amid the ongoing war with Russia and its relentless missile and drone attacks.
“Ukrainian experts will operate on-site, and teams are already coordinating these efforts,” Zelenskyy said in a statement.
Among a delegation of military, intelligence, and defense officials traveling to the Gulf was National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov, as the group worked to finalize what was described as “concrete agreements.”
“Ukraine has the greatest experience in the world in countering attack drones,” Zelensky said. “Without our experience, it will be very difficult for the Gulf region, the entire Middle East, and partners in Europe and America to build strong protection.”
“We are ready to help those who help us,” the Ukrainian leader continued. “The regimes in Russia and Iran are brothers in hatred and that is why they are brothers in weapons. And we want regimes built on hatred, to never, never win in anything. And we want no such regime to threaten Europe or our partners.”
According to John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, DC-based think tank, Ukraine has “unmatched experience” in developing and scaling cost-effective systems that can detect and neutralize the one-way attack drones widely used by Iran.
The Iranian regime has been supplying Russia with drones throughout the war in Ukraine, and Moscoe has been reportedly supplying Tehran with intelligence, satellite imagery, and drone technology to target US forces.
“With Russia working to help Iran kill American servicemembers, that’s all the reason for the United States and its Middle East allies to take advantage of Ukraine’s hard-won expertise,” Hardie told The Algemeiner.
“Replicating Ukrainian solutions at scale won’t happen overnight, but Ukrainian deployments to the Middle East could offer a taste of some of the Ukrainian technology, namely interceptor drone systems,” he continued.
Hardie argued that this expertise could help Ukraine “cultivate closer security cooperation” with the United States and its Arab allies, while also opening opportunities for Kyiv to expand its defense industry exports and strengthen its role as a key security partner in the region.
When the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran struck back quickly, firing missiles and long‑range drones at military and civilian targets in neighboring countries — repeatedly hitting infrastructure and population centers even as it claimed to be focusing solely on US military assets.
In just the first few days of the conflict, Iran launched more than 500 ballistic missiles and over 2,000 unmanned aerial systems (UAS) — remotely operated or autonomous aircraft commonly used for surveillance and strike missions.
Even though the regime’s ballistic missile launches have dropped sharply since then due to US and Israeli strikes on its launchers and broader missile program, its drone attacks are, while also down significantly, proving more difficult to stop with air defenses, threatening key military targets as well as civilian areas.
Some regional countries struggle to defend against Iranian drones because these low-cost systems consistently evade fighter jets and conventional air defenses. They have struck a wide range of targets — from diplomatic and economic sites to residential areas — including Dubai International Airport and Saudi oil facilities.
According to Jason Campbell, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a Washington, DC-based think tank, Ukraine has revolutionized counter-drone warfare over the past three years through cost-effective, easily reproducible technologies and adaptive battlefield tactics.
“The Gulf states have invested heavily in high-end and highly capable missile defenses, but the Iran war has demonstrated the need for solutions that can better confront their comparatively inexpensive and easily reproduceable Shahed drones,” Campbell told The Algemeiner, referring to the Iranian-made drones.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Islamist regime in Iran began supplying drones to Moscow, providing a relatively inexpensive way to expand its long-range strike capabilities, which Russia later advanced by producing modified variants domestically and in greater quantities.
Over more than four years of war, Ukraine has dramatically improved its counter-drone strategy, increasingly relying on interceptor drones — low-cost unmanned aerial systems that detect, track, and destroy incoming drones identified by radar — offering a highly effective and economically sustainable alternative to traditional air defenses.
“I would say that this capability has already elevated Ukraine’s (and Ukrainian companies’) status throughout the Gulf,” Campbell told The Algemeiner.
According to multiple media reports, Saudi Arabia is planning a major contract with Ukrainian companies to purchase interceptor drones.
Zelenskyy has also suggested that Ukraine could “exchange” interceptor drones for Patriot air defense missiles, a US-made system designed to detect, track, and intercept incoming ballistic missiles, aircraft, and drones.
“Russia probably is not very excited about the prospect of Ukraine bolstering its air defenses and demonstrating its utility to an array of deep-pocketed clients,” Campbell explained.
“This is a win for US interests and could provide more impetus behind efforts to provide necessary assistance to help Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia,” he continued. “One thing to watch, however, will be the near-term availability of higher end air defenses which remain in high demand now in multiple theaters.”
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Germany Sees Surge in Antisemitic Incidents at Holocaust Memorials
Stolpersteine, or stumbling blocks, defaced in Weimar, Germany with the phrase “Juden sind tater” or “Jews are perpetrators.” Photo: Screenshot
Antisemitic incidents at Germany’s Holocaust memorial sites remain alarmingly high and continue to climb, according to a new report, amid a rising tide of hostility and targeted violence against Jews and Israelis across the country.
On Wednesday, Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) released its latest report detailing a surge in antisemitic attacks at Holocaust memorials, showing that 211 such incidents were registered in 2024 — nearly double the previous year’s total.
Even though the 2025 figures are not yet finalized, the organization warned that this alarming trend shows no sign of slowing, with incidents continuing unabated across the country.
Among reported cases, visitors’ guest books have been repeatedly defaced with comparisons of Israel’s actions to Nazi crimes, guided tours disrupted, staff threatened, and memorials targeted with graffiti and antisemitic stickers, revealing a growing climate of intimidation and hostility at these sites.
According to RIAS’s latest report, most antisemitic incidents are primarily linked to the far-right spectrum, but there is also a rising trend “from a left-wing anti-imperialist and anti-Israel background.”
Staff at memorial sites are also facing a growing number of young visitors promoting revisionist historical claims — efforts aimed at distorting or denying well-established historical facts, including the realities of the Holocaust.
Mihail Groys, a member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, warned that the local Jewish community is increasingly at risk, stressing the urgent need to protect memorial sites in order to preserve historical awareness and ensure such atrocities are never forgotten.
“Attacks on these sites are directed against the memory of the victims of Nazi crimes and against our fundamental democratic values,” Groys told Tagesspiegel. “Especially now, as the last survivors of the Shoah [Holocaust] are passing away, memorial sites must be resolutely protected and strengthened as authentic places of remembrance.”
Deborah Hartmann, director of the House of the Wannsee Conference in Berlin — a memorial and educational center at the site where Nazi officials planned the Holocaust — said the institution has intensified its focus on critically reflecting on antisemitism across its exhibitions, publications, and guided tours since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel — the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
However, she warned that without urgent and sustained funding, these efforts could be at risk, urging authorities not only to increase financial support but also to recognize the growing importance of such educational work in combating antisemitism.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Germany has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to newly released figures, the number of antisemitic offenses in the country reached a record high in 2025, totaling 2,267 incidents, including violence, incitement, property damage, and propaganda offenses.
By comparison, officially recorded antisemitic crimes were significantly lower at 1,825 in 2024, 900 in 2023, and fewer than 500 in 2022, prior to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Officials warn that the real number of antisemitic crimes is likely much higher, as many incidents go unreported.
In one of the latest incidents, a group of unknown individuals vandalized a Holocaust memorial monument in Hanover, in northern Germany, spraying antisemitic slogans and swastikas — adding to a growing wave of attacks on memorial sites across the Hanover region.
The city’s mayor, Belit Onay, condemned this latest incident, calling it an unacceptable attack on the memory of the victims and a direct affront to the values of tolerance and democracy.
“These slogans on the memorial in the heart of Hanover are yet another sign of how antisemitism all too often breaks through in our society, seeking its place in its center,” the German politician said.
“Antisemitism is and remains a major problem, and combating it is our duty. We continue to stand by our Jewish fellow citizens,” he continued.
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Joe Kent, now under investigation, insinuates to Tucker Carlson that Israel might have killed Charlie Kirk to stoke Iran war
(JTA) — After resigning this week over what he said was Israel’s manipulation of President Donald Trump into war with Iran, former national counterterrorism director Joe Kent is now insinuating Israel may have also killed Charlie Kirk as part of its pressure campaign.
Kent made the comments on a Wednesday evening appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, as the FBI launched an investigation into whether Kent shared classified material. He is also scheduled to appear Thursday evening at a “Catholics for Catholics” gala featuring podcaster Candace Owens, who has promulgated antisemitic conspiracy theories and praised Kent.
“When one of President Trump’s closest advisers, who is vocally advocating for us to not go to war with Iran and for us to rethink, at least, our relationship with the Israelis, and then he’s suddenly publicly assassinated and we’re not allowed to ask any questions about that, it’s a data point,” Kent told Carlson about the 2025 murder of the right-wing pundit. “It’s a data point that we need to look into.”
He did not provide specifics to what he described as “unanswered questions,” beyond referencing texts between Kirk and pro-Israel donors that have already been made public. Yet Kent’s comments, which also insinuated a potential link between Israel and the 2024 attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, provided further grist for figures like Carlson and Owens.
And they came on the heels of his accusations, in his resignation letter, that Israel had also “manufactured” the war in Iraq and the Syrian civil war — claims he defended further in his Carlson interview. Kent’s remarks have fueled further concern among American Jews across the aisle who fear that such comments will drive antisemitism.
“We had already dug up a decent amount of leads,” Kent told Carlson, saying it was his center’s job to investigate “foreign ties” in cases like Kirk’s murder, before higher authorities ordered him to stop. “There was more work for us to do on the potential of a foreign nexus.”
Kent’s alignment with Carlson, who was close with Kirk and has used his podcast to promote various conspiracy theories about Israel and Jewish movements including Chabad, as well as with Owens, point to a growing divide within the Trump administration and its supporters over support for Israel and tolerance for antisemitism. That divide has been exacerbated by war with Iran.
Semafor reported that the FBI’s investigation of Kent, a former congressman with past ties to avowed antisemitic streamer Nick Fuentes, relates to alleged improper sharing of classified information, and that it predated his resignation.
Vice President JD Vance, speaking in Michigan on Wednesday, offered guarded praise of Kent while saying he agreed with his resignation.
“I know Joe Kent a little bit. I like Joe Kent,” Vance said at a manufacturing facility in Auburn Hills. But, he added, “When the president of the United States makes a decision, it’s your job to help make that decision as effective and successful as possible… If you’re on the team and you can’t help implement the decisions of his administration, he has the right to make those decisions, then it’s a good thing for you to resign.”
Vance, who has been criticized in the past for declining to forcefully condemn antisemitism on the right, did not address Kent’s contentions that Israel manipulated Trump into war. The vice president took time from his address to praise Temple Israel, the nearby West Bloomfield synagogue whose security guards fended off a terrorist attack last week.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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