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Rising football star Harry Sheezel could be ‘greatest ever male Jewish athlete in Australia’
MELBOURNE (JTA) — Jews in Australia have seen their community prosper in many areas, from business to the arts to the highest levels of government.
But there is one arena that Aussie Jews have not featured prominently in: Australia’s biggest sport, Australian Rules Football (AFL).
AFL, referred to colloquially as “footy,” is a uniquely Aussie sport, which has been played in some form since teams from Melbourne and Geelong first came together in a paddock in East Melbourne in 1858.
Professional footy is played between two teams of 18 players using an oval ball. Goals are scored when the ball is kicked, airborne, through two tall goalposts set on each end of the oval field. It is similar to rugby but has more players, an oval-shaped pitch and different rules regarding kicking, throwing and tackling.
While many Jews are passionate fans and have been involved with the game’s administration, such as Rabbi Joseph Gutnick, the former president of Melbourne Football club, few Jews have ever played at the highest level of the game.
This has changed with the drafting of a Jewish player, Harry Sheezel, who was selected in November as the 3rd overall pick in the 2022 AFL draft.
A bonafide prodigy, the 18-year-old Sheezel began his footy journey in a local Jewish sporting league, as a member of AJAX (Associated Judaean Athletic Clubs), Australia’s only Jewish football club. Sheezel also graduated from Melbourne’s largest Jewish day school, Mount Scopus Memorial College.
According to Ashley Browne, an Australian sports journalist who wrote a book about Jewish Australian athletes called “People of the Boot,” there have been 11 Jewish football players since 1897.
“It’s very rare for a Jewish player to be drafted to the AFL. It’s been quite incredible,” he said, referring to Sheezel’s meteoric rise. “He spent his whole life at Jewish school. He learned to play football at a Jewish football club. A lot of promising Jewish athletes will go to a [non-Jewish] private school for coaching where there are talent scouts, but Harry stayed at Mount Scopus without having to go to the private school.”
Sheezel is already making a mark. Since debuting in March 2023, he has been ranked in the AFL’s top 10 in disposals — a stat referring to legal touches of the football, which indicates how involved one is in a game (while throwing is allowed in rugby, it isn’t in footy). He set an all-time record for most disposals for a player in their first four professional games (with 127).
After just his first game, his two-year team contract was immediately extended through 2026 and he was nominated for the AFL Rising Star award, which acknowledges the best new player in league competition. The footy season began in March and ends in September.
“You don’t want to get too excited too early, but Harry has the potential to perhaps be our greatest-ever male Jewish athlete in Australia,” said Browne.
Harry Sheezel shown during a match between the Gold Coast Suns and his North Melbourne Kangaroos at Heritage Bank Stadium in Gold Coast, Australia, April 23, 2023. (Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
Mount Scopus, which has produced some famous alumni in its 75-year history — from music industry giant Michal Gudinski to Mark Regev, former Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom — can now add Harry Sheezel’s name to its list illustrious graduates.
“Clearly his talents were nurtured in many different environments, but I believe that his time playing footy at school was one of them. We have a strong sporting culture and Harry was very much part of that,” said Mount Scopus principal James Kennard.
In Australia, many minority communities have gained a foothold in Australian society though footy. The AFL has produced stellar Australian Aboriginal players and more recently, other players from diverse backgrounds, such as Islam. Newly-arrived refugees have also been able to find new audiences through their footy skills. The league even has a multicultural ambassador program, through which faith leaders and others promote the sport in diverse communities.
As the first Jewish player drafted this century, Sheezel’s rise is a cause for celebration in Australia’s Jewish community.
“To see a young Jewish man, one who is the product of a Jewish school and a Jewish junior football club, be so widely celebrated and applauded is a source of great pride,” said Rabbi Zach Gomo, one of the AFL’s multicultural ambassadors.
“I’ve definitely felt the support from the community since before I got picked up to now, being on an AFL list and playing league football,” Sheezel said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It means a lot to have so much support and genuine care from everyone.”
Those who have coached Sheezel along the way know that he has always been extraordinarily gifted at the sport.
“I coached Harry for 5 years at AJAX Junior Football Club alongside his father Dean,” said Jason Wrobel. “He was always a gun footballer. Even as a 5-year-old, doing Auskick [junior football], he was already very talented.”
Each of Sheezel’s matches have attracted a huge number of Jewish fans, including former Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. While traditionally most Jewish footy fans align with teams that have roots in Melbourne’s historically Jewish suburbs like Carlton, Sheezel was drafted by the North Melbourne Kangaroos, a team that has relatively few fans within the Jewish community.
But this is rapidly changing, and each of North Melbourne’s games now have a large Jewish cheering section. Some of Sheezel’s footy fans have been seen waving Israeli flags, which conveniently align with North Melbourne’s blue and white color scheme.
Those flags caused a brief brouhaha when a complaint about them being waved at the stadium was lodged with the AFL. While the AFL initially advised that in the future Israeli flags would be banned at matches, they quickly walked back this directive by apologizing for the confusion in March and clarifying that Israeli flags were welcome at matches.
Sheezel has also been the brunt of antisemitic comments from other fans, including after the draft.
Dean Sheezel, Harry’s father, doesn’t pay attention to any of the negativity.
“We just ignore that. I don’t give it the time of day. Harry has ignored it too and he doesn’t give it the time of day. He focuses on football, and it doesn’t affect him or us in any way,” he said.
Another problem for the immediate Sheezel family is that they now have to support North Melbourne after 50 years of history supporting Hawthorn, another AFL football team based in a suburb of Melbourne.
“We were mad Hawthorn supporters. We are now fully North Melbourne. You wouldn’t have known I barracked for [supported] Hawthorn for 50 years,” said Dean Sheezel.
Based on the extraordinary start to Harry Sheezel’s footy career, the Sheezel family are likely to be joined by thousands of other Jewish and non-Jewish fans alike.
“Harry Sheezel is going to inspire a generation of young footballers,” said Wrobel. “I think it’s a fantastic example of the path that can be taken for lots of young kids. He is definitely a role model. There are going to be boys and girls trying to follow in his footsteps. In the past there have been some Jewish AFL players, but to achieve this level it was considered, by many, that you couldn’t go to a Jewish school or couldn’t play for a Jewish club. But Harry proves you can, and that is exciting for Jewish kids.”
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The post Rising football star Harry Sheezel could be ‘greatest ever male Jewish athlete in Australia’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
(JTA) — Israel criticized Ukraine Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Though the Ukrainian organization shared a mutual opposition to Soviet rule with the Nazis, it also promoted antisemitic rhetoric and some of its members participated in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. Melnyk initially sought cooperation with Nazi Germany but was later detained by the Nazis as relations with Ukrainian nationalist groups deteriorated.
The ceremony marked the latest flashpoint in a longstanding dispute over Ukraine’s commemoration of World War II-era nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration. In 2018, the country designated the birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a holiday, and in 2017, a statue was unveiled honoring a nationalist leader whose regime killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution.
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Glory to every Ukrainian hero! Glory to all our Ukrainian warriors! Glory to our people!,” Zelensky, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X marking the ceremony, adding that he was “grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
The post Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’
(JTA) — The U.S. Department of Justice sued the University of California for the second time this year over allegations of an antisemitic campus environment at UCLA, claiming the school “was deliberately indifferent to the suffering of its Jewish and Israeli students” after Oct. 7.
The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims UCLA violated the students’ civil rights by failing to intervene during pro-Palestinian encampment activity in early 2024. It follows an earlier suit that focused on the university’s treatment of its Jewish and Israeli employees, and comes 10 days after the university unveiled its own “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.”
“Earlier this year, we sued UCLA for subjecting its Jewish and Israeli employees to an antisemitic hostile work environment,” assistant U.S. attorney general Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release. “Now, the Department of Justice calls UCLA to account for its toleration of the equally appalling hostile educational environment against its Jewish and Israeli students.”
Requests for comment to the Justice Department and UCLA were not immediately returned.
The new suit draws on widely reported accounts of UCLA’s campus environment in spring 2024, when protesters in pro-Palestinian encampments clashed with pro-Israel counter-protesters, sparking violence and turmoil. The failure to protect Jewish students violated their Title VI civil rights, attorneys said.
Citing the report of UCLA’s own task force on antisemitism, published in response to the 2024 campus upheaval, the suit states, “UCLA’s leadership apparently preferred a do-nothing ‘de-escalation strategy’ to protecting their Jewish and Israeli students from an angry mob organized by peers armed with tasers, lumber, and a sword.”
The Justice Department is seeking several redress measures, including the return of all federal grants made to UCLA “during the time of UCLA’s noncompliance with Title VI.” The school had previously resolved several Title VI antisemitism cases under the Biden administration, and also reached a $6.13 million settlement with Jewish groups in a private suit related to the spring 2024 incidents on campus — a case cited in DOJ’s new lawsuit.
The Trump administration has sought to make a particular example of UCLA in its aggressive approach to campus antisemitism. Officials had sought to levy fines in excess of $1 billion against the public university for its alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students, until a federal judge intervened. Several DOJ lawyers have left the department over its UCLA investigation, telling reporters the case was “fraudulent,” a “sham” and driven by pressure to “find” evidence to support further legal action against UCLA.
In addition, some of the most violent clashes on the campuses included perpetrators on both sides of the conflict, leading some members of the UCLA Jewish community to complain that pro-Israel counter-protesters ultimately undercut the Jewish students’ legitimate grievances regarding the harassment they had been facing inside the campus gates.
And the campus environment for Jews remains tense. Last month, the UCLA student senate condemned a campus visit by a freed Israeli hostage, drawing blowback from a university regent.
The post Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic
(JTA) — Dozens of European Jewish leaders, joined by Israeli and American diplomats, decried Antwerp prosecutors who plan to charge two Jewish men with performing illegal circumcisions.
In an open letter on Tuesday to European and Belgian officials, 45 communal and religious Jewish leaders accused the Antwerp Public Prosecutor’s Office of “effectively criminalizing the act of circumcision” and infringing on religious freedom.
Earlier this month, Belgian prosecutors announced their recommendation to refer two mohels, or ritual circumcisers, to the criminal court following investigations into alleged illegal circumcisions.
In Belgium, the law requires all circumcisions to be performed by licensed medical professionals. The two men would be charged with intentional assault or battery against minors and the unlawful practice of medicine.
The European Jewish leaders responded that prosecuting mohels was “antisemitic in nature, reminiscent of efforts taken in Europe against Jewish practice prior to the Second World War.”
They said the potential prosecutions sent a message that “Jews are no longer welcome in Belgium” and “Belgian Jews are now second class citizens with limited rights.” Their appeal was led by the chairman of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin.
Israeli and U.S. officials have also accused Belgium of targeting Jews for practicing their faith.
Gideon Saar, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, called the prosecutors’ decision a “scarlet letter on Belgian society.” He was joined by the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, who said on X that Belgium “will be thought of now as anti Semitic by world.”
Belgium’s foreign minister fired back that it was “inappropriate to publicly criticize a country and tarnish its image simply because you disagree with judicial proceedings.”
“I recall that the proceedings in question were initiated by representatives of the Jewish community themselves,” said Maxime Prévot. “To portray those as a country’s desire to undermine the religious freedom of Jews is defamatory.”
The mohels were first investigated after complaints lodged by Moshe Aryeh Friedman, an Antwerp rabbi. He alleged in 2023 that six local mohels practiced metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser cleans the circumcision wound with oral suction. Over the past two decades, several infants in New York City were infected with herpes as a result of the practice.
The letter from European Jewish leaders did not address Friedman’s claims.
The post Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic appeared first on The Forward.