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Jewish teen sinks putts and breaks down barriers on a Lutheran school’s golf team
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
(JTA) — When the Long Island Lutheran Crusaders boys’ golf team begins their 2023 season against oher private, mostly Christian schools, they’ll boast a not-so-secret weapon: Boaz Exodus Ginzburg, the two-time Private School Athletic Association Champion.
Ginzburg is the lone Jewish player on the team, where he has formed bonds with his teammates and broken down barriers on the golf course and beyond. A student at Schechter School of Long Island, he is able to play for “LuHi” because his Jewish day school doesn’t field a golf team.
In a time with rising antisemitism, Ginzburg’s journey is especially resonant. Though he plays on a team with a mascot that may draw concerns for its historic connections to antisemitism and Islamophobia, he feels a bond with his teammates.
“The fact that we’re the LuHi Crusaders, which feels a little bit weird, and also I have to walk into their school and they’ve got crosses everywhere, which is fine, because they’re a Christian school, but it’s just a little awkward for me,” said Ginzburg.
He began his varsity golf career in Port Washington, playing for Schreiber High School’s team while still an 8th grader in 2019, before the 2020 season was canceled. Then, in 2021, he transferred to Schechter. He was able to join the Lutheran High School Crusaders, a golf team in the same conference as his school.
Prior to Ginzburg’s arrival, no player had completed an undefeated season as Ginzburg had, nor were any of the current players champions of their league. Ginzburg accomplished both of these feats during his 2021 and 2022 seasons.
But even that celebration was tinted with otherness. “When I won the championship, it’s these very Catholic kids and the winner is ‘Boaz Exodus Ginzburg,’ which is a little bit odd,” said Ginzburg.
Ginzburg is the lone Jewish player on the Long Island Lutheran team, where he has formed bonds with his teammates and broken down barriers on the golf course and beyond. (Courtesy of Jonathan Klemp)
Ginzburg was on track to lead Schreiber’s team as a freshman during the 2020 season, but the golf team had their season canceled due to COVID-19. At Solomon Schechter, he was able to join his two siblings and study in a fully in-person environment. Other elite athletes at Schechter have been able to play sports at other schools, for which Schechter does not field a team.
Despite being the lone Jewish player on the team, Ginzburg feels totally comfortable with his teammates, and doesn’t see his religion as a barrier between him and them. While Ginzburg isn’t as close with the other players as they are with each other, he still has been able to form friendships with his teammates, finding common interests outside of golf.
“After a month, I was truly integrated,” said Ginzburg. “There’s no barrier because of religion. I only see them three months out of every year for the golf season, but I still talk to them occasionally. One of them is a pretty big Mets fan, so he and I talk about the Mets sometimes.”
Ginzburg’s coach, Jonathan Klemp, watched as he became a true member of the team, and saw it as a testament to his character.
“Upon meeting Bo, it didn’t take me long to figure out that integrating him to the team would go well,” said Klemp. “However, even the most optimistic person wouldn’t have dreamed it would go as well as it did. Bo took it upon himself to get to know each player on the team — even the young, middle school golfers. Bo has been raised right and also naturally is just a caring kid. I also think that he was intentional about making the integration go well.”
LuHi’s number two golfer, Brandon Tapia, has been playing with Ginzburg since Ginzburg joined the team in 2021, and as the team’s top players, they spend a lot of time together.
“As soon as Bo first practiced with us, he was a part of us,” said Tapia. “Bo and I would always be paired as the 1 and 2 player during the matches and in practice too. I got to know him and he got to know me well too. As the years flew by, we’d still be paired in groups together on the course and always have a great time out there.”
Tapia also sees no religious barrier between the two. “We actually thought it was pretty cool to be a team that represented different religious backgrounds,” said Tapia.
Ginzburg and Tapia have learned about religion from the other, and about making friendships across boundaries.
“I asked them a couple of questions in the beginning, and if I get curious about something I’ll either shoot them a text or ask the next time I see them,” said Ginzburg. “I have a better idea of how the different sects are split than I did before.”
Yet the golf course is also a welcome escape from religion.
“They spend all their time at school learning about religion just like I do, so it’s not really the first thing we want to talk about outside of school,” said Ginzburg.
Having Ginzburg on the team, said Coach Klemp, “has affirmed to me that though we all have different backgrounds and beliefs, that we can do wonderful things uniting together for a common purpose. In our case, that purpose is to compete on the golf course in a game we love. I think we all can do well to focus on things we have in common as opposed to dwelling on things that could drive us apart.”
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UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage
A campus event featuring freed Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov drew the condemnation of UCLA’s student government on Tuesday. In an open letter, the UCLA Students Associated Council said that bringing Tov to speak to students “served to legitimize and normalize” atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.
Shem Tov, 23, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and held hostage in Gaza until his release in a prisoner exchange in February 2025. UCLA hosted him on April 14 for a Yom HaShoah event.
“While we affirm the humanity of all people impacted by violence, we reject the selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence,” the student government letter wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the UCLA administration and UCLA Hillel among others. “Israel is currently continuing to carry out what has been widely identified by human rights advocates as a genocide in Gaza, while also expanding its illegal military campaign into Lebanon.
“In this context, elevating a single narrative, absent of critical political and humanitarian framing, serves to legitimize and normalize these ongoing atrocities.”
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s director emeritus, called the statement “completely ridiculous.”
“You can’t present the narrative of your experience without it being called ‘one sided,’” Seidler-Feller said. “There has to be a counter-story to persecution. Is there a counter-story to killing people?”
UCLA Hillel executive director Daniel Gold dismissed the criticism in Tuesday’s letter as antisemitic.
“Hillel at UCLA and Students Supporting Israel UCLA would like to apologize…for absolutely nothing,” he wrote in a statement. “Members of UCLA student government have once again shown they are anti-dialogue, anti-learning, anti-truth, anti-student and antisemitic.”
The USAC did not respond to a request for comment.
As college campuses across the country became a hotspot for pro-Palestinian activism following the Oct. 7 attack, UCLA, with an activist history and a large Jewish population, stood out as a major flashpoint. Its student encampment was the site of a riot in April 2024 and eventually cleared by police in riot gear.
The USAC has sided with pro-Palestinian protesters throughout. In a Feb. 2025 letter titled “We Are All SJP,” the USAC, which is democratically elected by the roughly 30,000-member UCLA student body, condemned Chancellor Julio Frenk’s suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine. The letter referred to Israel only as “the Zionist state” or put the country’s name inside quotation marks.
The University of California has since been sued by the Department of Justice, which said that UCLA created a hostile work environment against Jewish and Israeli faculty in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
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Trump extends ceasefire with Iran, even after Iran balks at new round of negotiations
(JTA) — President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he would unilaterally extend the U.S.-Israeli ceasefire with Iran, even though Iran had not agreed to his conditions or even to return to the negotiating table.
Trump announced the decision on Truth Social just hours before the two-week-old deal was set to expire. Citing Iran’s “fractured” leadership, Trump wrote that he had been asked by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to “hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
Vice President JD Vance’s planned trip to Islamabad, where talks were set to take place, was postponed indefinitely after Iran failed to confirm its participation in negotiations.
Trump added that the United States would maintain its naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, despite Iran’s repeated calls for the restrictions to be lifted.
The announcement marked a sharp departure from the president’s statements earlier in the day, telling CNBC that, if a deal was not made before the deadline, “I expect to be bombing.”
In a statement Tuesday, Sharif thanked Trump for his “gracious acceptance” of Pakistan’s request to extend the ceasefire, adding that the country would “continue its earnest efforts for a negotiated settlement of the conflict.”
The announcement adds to uncertain about the war’s future, including for Israelis who lived through six weeks of Iranian bombing, and renews questions about Trump’s commitment to achieving his war goals, which have varied and included blunting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, achieving regime change, and destroying Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles. He said earlier this week that he was asking Iran to limit its nuclear program for 20 years, five years longer than was required by the deal struck by Barack Obama in 2015. Trump exited that deal in 2018.
Last week, Trump announced a different ceasefire, between Israel and Lebanon, on Truth Social, contradicting Israel’s claim that the Iran ceasefire would not apply to its fighting with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed proxy in Lebanon.
Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire extension came during the night in Israel, after Israelis began their celebration of Independence Day. It drew criticism from one of his staunchest pro-Israel supporters, the Zionist Organization of America, whose national president Morton Klein said in a statement that “interminable delay is the standard Islamic Iranian regime negotiating tactic” and that acceding to it represented a victory for Iran. The statement did not mention Trump.
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Alan Dershowitz quits Democratic Party, calling it ‘most anti-Israel party in U.S. history’
(JTA) — Alan Dershowitz, the prominent pro-Israel attorney whose clients have included Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, announced on Monday that he was leaving the Democratic party and registering as a Republican.
Describing himself as a “lifelong Democrat,” Dershowitz wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he had decided to “bite the bullet and register as a Republican,” citing Democratic support for an arms embargo on Israel last week and the Michigan Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
“There is no denying that the hard left, anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party has moved from the fringe to the mainstream,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that “Republicans have their own antisemitic fringe, but for now it remains a fringe.”
The announcement formalized a political evolution for Dershowitz, who defended Trump during his first impeachment and has increasingly broken with Democrats over Israel in recent years.
In 2021, Dershowitz nominated Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Avi Berkowitz, Trump’s top Middle Eastern envoy during his first administration, for the Nobel Peace Prize over their hand in shaping the Abraham Accords.
Dershowitz — who has recently faced scrutiny over his ties to Epstein, and previously denied allegations of sexual misconduct made by one of Epstein’s accusers — panned the Democratic Party as the “most anti-Israel party in U.S. history” in the op-ed.
“I believe that the Democratic Party’s hostility to Israel represents a deeper and more dangerous shift away from the center and toward a radical approach that is bad for America and the free world,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that he intended to “work hard to prevent the Democrats from gaining control of the House and Senate.”
Dershowitz’s comments are in line with Trump’s statements about Jews and the Democratic Party. He has repeatedly expressed amazement at how any Jews could vote for the Democrats considering his own record when it comes to Israel.
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