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‘Put in Ryan!’: Orthodox NBA hopeful Ryan Turell’s fanbase turns up in Detroit
DETROIT, Michigan (JTA) — Predicting the outcome of a basketball game is tricky business, but one observer prior to the start of the Motor City Cruise’s latest home game made an easy call: “There’s going to be a lot of yarmulkes here.”
As the stands at the 3,000-seat Wayne State University Fieldhouse filled up prior to the team’s Nov. 17 match-up with the Wisconsin Herd, that much soon proved accurate.
Dozens of Orthodox observers, mostly young boys, took up seats in the arena to cheer for this NBA G League team. They boogied for the dance cam, played dress-up games emceed by the team announcer during the time outs and posed with Turbo, the Cruise’s blue-haired mascot. All told, the Cruise’s Orthodox contingent made up around a fifth of the game’s total spectators — and they were certainly the loudest fans in the stands.
For them, the main draw wasn’t the team itself, which is 1-6 on the season, but its new recruit: former Yeshiva University phenom Ryan Turell, 23, who joined the team only three weeks prior and was about to take the court for his second professional home game ever.
“Put in Ryan!” the kids chanted as if they were cheering on a close friend. A grinning Turell, a Detroit Pistons-branded yarmulke perched atop of his signature golden locks, reveled in their dedication, though at various points he tried to redirect the group’s cheers to something more team-oriented: pushing them to repeat “Let’s Go Cruise” or the traditional incantation “De-fense” instead of focusing on him.
But it was clear who these kids, most of them situated in a section flanking the Cruise’s bench directly behind Turell, were there to see. When Turell first entered the game at the bottom of the first quarter, the crowd erupted in cheers. They quickly pivoted their chants to “Pass it to Ryan!” When he sank a three, they erupted.
“They listened to us, put in Ryan, and look what happened!” gushed Daniel Rodner, an 11-year-old student at the prominent local Jewish day school Yeshiva Beth Yehudah, who was at the game with classmates Chaim Indig, Chaim Tzvi Seligson and Yoni Perlman. “We’re up five points. Moral of the story: Listen to Ryan. And the crowd.”
(L-r) Yoni Perlman, Chaim Tzvi Seligson, Chaim Indig and Daniel Rodner showed up early to see Orthodox Jewish athlete Ryan Turell play for the Motor City Cruise in Detroit, Nov. 17, 2022. The four boys are classmates at Yeshiva Beth Yehudah Jewish day school in the Detroit area. (Andrew Lapin/JTA)
In contrast with the antisemitism controversy unfolding elsewhere in the NBA, as Brooklyn Nets point guard Kyrie Irving served a suspension and delivered multiple apologies after sharing antisemitic content online, an entirely different scene was playing out in Detroit: an image of Jewish joy at the thrill of having a rooting interest in the game.
“Jews love basketball. They really do,” Turell told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency after the game. “The Jewish community is incredible, them coming out and cheering me on. It really means the world to me. And it’s special, because it’s bigger than basketball.”
The Pistons franchise has recognized this opportunity, offering kosher hot dogs at their development team’s concession stand. There are plans for an upcoming Jewish Heritage Night on Dec. 4, to feature Hanukkah gelt and menorah giveaways; opportunities for Jewish day school students to high-five and stand with Pistons players during the National Anthem, and a game to be played between two local Jewish day school basketball teams at the Pistons’ practice facility. At the Herd game, staff photographers frequented the Turell fan section, framing images of cheering kippah- and tzitzit-clad children with their favorite player in the background.
It didn’t matter that the Cruise ultimately lost the game 117-105, with the Herd pulling away only in the final minutes. What mattered was that Turell scored five points and saw five minutes of play time — and, in so doing, served as an inspiration to many Orthodox youth. Some of the kids in the stands Thursday said they were fans of the Pistons, or of the NBA more generally, but nearly all of them had followed Turell since his Y.U. days.
“I think that [Jewish] people who would normally, maybe, reject basketball after listening to Kyrie Irving and hearing what he had to say, can find a bright spot with Ryan Turell,” Jonas Singer, who was attending the game with his younger brother Leo, told JTA.
The siblings recalled how they were “freaking out” when they heard Turell would be coming to Detroit: “I was dreaming of him even making the G League,” Jonas said. “And when I heard I was actually going to be able to watch him, I was going insane.”
Motor City Cruise player Ryan Turell (front, right) watches his team from the bench as his Orthodox fans cheer on the NBA G League team from the stands in Detroit, Nov. 17, 2022. (Andrew Lapin/JTA)
Turell isn’t from Detroit, but his well-documented quest to become the first-ever observant Jew to play in the NBA has captured the hearts and minds of the Motor City’s Orthodox population (which includes Gary Torgow, the chair of Detroit Pistons sponsor Huntington Bank). Local synagogues and day schools have organized group outings to see Turell play. He’s prayed with them and made a special appearance at Yeshiva Beth Yehudah’s annual fundraising dinner, which has in the past attracted sitting U.S. presidents and top state figures.
Turell credited Pistons vice chair Arn Tellem, who is Jewish, with ensuring that he had all necessary accommodations to be able to remain Sabbath-observant while he plays. The franchise has accommodated him with hotel bookings within walking distance to away games on the Sabbath and kosher meals. Turell has certainly returned the favor by providing the chance to expand into a new fanbase and score a PR coup in the process. At his Cruise debut Nov. 7, one fan, Gideon Lopatin, showed up with a homemade blonde Turell wig.
Scott Schiff, vice president of business operations for the Cruise, said social engagements for the team are up this season but that attendance numbers with Turell on the team were difficult to compare: Last season was the Cruise’s first ever and Turell has only played two home games to date. Still, Schiff said, there was “a core group of the Jewish population coming out to support him every game.”
Turell has also brought out young Jewish fans on the road, including at a game in Cleveland the following weekend, when local Jewish day schools organized a huge crowd to see him play and speak afterwards.
After the Herd game, Jewish kids mobbed Turell when he came out to sign autographs, including a basketball from Chevy Shepherd, one of the few young Jewish girls who had come out to see him play that night. (“Let’s go Ryan,” Shepherd told JTA.)
He also signed Bodner’s yarmulke, which the boy planned to show off at school the next day.
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The post ‘Put in Ryan!’: Orthodox NBA hopeful Ryan Turell’s fanbase turns up in Detroit 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.
