Uncategorized
The Jewish Sport Report: A deep dive into Jewish memory with Rocky Balboa
This article was sent as a newsletter. Sign up for our weekly Jewish sports newsletter here.
Happy February, readers! This month brings us the Super Bowl, baseball’s Spring Training, and the NBA, NHL and NFL All-Star games.
This weekend, you can catch Jack Hughes (New Jersey Devils) and Adam Fox (New York Rangers) in the NHL All-Star Game on Saturday afternoon.
There are no Jewish players participating in the NFL Pro Bowl this weekend (a shanda), but you can always rewatch this amazing 61-yard field goal from Greg Joseph on Dec. 24.
Finally, you can still vote for Orthodox prospect Ryan Turell to appear in the G League Next Up game during NBA All-Star Weekend.
A deep dive into Jewish memory with Rocky Balboa
Paul Farber is the creator and host of a new podcast about the Rocky Balboa statue in Philadelphia. (Gene Smirnov)
Rocky Balboa is a fictional character, and his statue in Philadelphia was first made as a movie prop. So why do millions of people from around the world visit the monument every year?
That’s the question monuments expert Paul Farber sets out to answer in his new NPR podcast “The Statue,” which explores the history and significance of the statue dedicated to “the most famous Philadelphian who never lived.”
Farber also learned some fascinating Jewish nuggets from the “Rocky” franchise. Not only is there the Jewish funeral scene in “Rocky III” — which he has thoughts about — but Rocky’s love interest Adrian was originally supposed to be Jewish.
I caught up with Farber this week to hear about how he got into the project — it started with a scolding from his mother, of course — and what Rocky, and sports fandom in general, can teach us about collective memory.
I found the conversation fascinating. Read it here.
Halftime report
A HOMA RUN. Golfer Max Homa won the Farmers Insurance Open last weekend, his first PGA Tour victory since becoming a father last year. Heralded for his humor and down-to-earth online persona, Homa is also helping the PGA step up its TV game, serving as a consultant of sorts. During the tournament last week, Homa conducted a live interview while playing.
THE JEWS OF FENWAY. Team Israel pitcher and veteran big leaguer Richard Bleier was traded to the Boston Red Sox this week. He is the second reliever, and second Team Israel member, that Boston baseball boss Chaim Bloom acquired in the past two weeks, joining Ryan Sherriff.
VROOM VROOM. Robert Schwartzman will begin the upcoming Formula One season as Ferrari’s reserve driver, just one step away from having his own seat in F1. The 23-year-old was born in Tel Aviv and spent the first three years of his life in Israel before moving to Russia and eventually Italy. He told Jewish Insider that he got his passion for racing from his father, who died in 2020.
KEEPING THE FAITH. The Forward talks to Ze’ev Remer, a point guard who plays basketball at California Lutheran University, about his experience as an Orthodox Jew at a Christian school. “If you just continue being stuck in an echo chamber, in Jewish day schools and with Jewish friends, you’re never gonna reach out and educate other people,” he said.
MENSCH ON THE BENCH. Journeyman catcher Ryan Lavarnway will head to Miami next month to play for Team Israel in the World Baseball Classic. “Through this team, I kind of found my place in the community,” Lavarnway told sportswriter and baseball historian Gordon Edes. “The worldwide Jewish community embraced me, and I embraced it.”
HONORED, AGAIN. In 2021, Holy Cross basketball legend Sherry Levin had a mezuzah hung in her honor. Now the school has retired her jersey, too.
Meyers Leonard opens up about his antisemitic mistake
Meyers Leonard of the Miami Heat warms up before a game against the Washington Wizards in Washington, D.C., Jan. 9, 2021. (Scott Taetsch/Getty Images)
In March 2021, Miami Heat player Meyers Leonard made a life-altering mistake: he used an antisemitic slur while livestreaming on the video game platform Twitch. Leonard would be suspended and fined, traded and ultimately released.
Leonard apologized at the time, and immediately began a journey of learning and engaging with the local Jewish community in South Florida — a process known in Jewish tradition as teshuva.
The 7-footer spoke to Jewish ESPN reporter Jeremy Schaap, in an interview that was featured this week on the ESPN Daily podcast and the “Outside the Lines” program.
As he eyes a return to the NBA, Leonard is opening up about the incident and how the Jewish community welcomed him in and helped him begin to heal.
Jews in sports to watch this weekend
IN HOCKEY…
Jack Hughes and Adam Fox are both representing the Metropolitan Division in the NHL All-Star Game tomorrow. Their squad takes on the Atlantic All-Stars at 4 p.m. ET on ABC.
IN BASKETBALL…
Two Jewish players will take on the Nets tomorrow in New York. Deni Avdija and the Washington Wizards play the Brooklyn Nets at 6 p.m. ET, and former Yeshiva University star Ryan Turell will play his first game back in the Empire State at 7 p.m. ET when his Motor City Cruise take on the Long Island Nets. Y.U. fans plan to show up in full-force for Turell’s New York homecoming.
IN GOLF…
Jewish golfers David Lipsky and Ben Silverman are at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am this weekend in California — a tournament that pairs pros with amateurs (including big-name celebrities). Silverman, who won the Bahamas Great Abaco Classic last week, will pair up with none other than Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
Fool me twice…
Perhaps the biggest story in sports this week was the (second) retirement of legendary quarterback Tom Brady, who ends a 23-year career with seven Super Bowl rings. Reactions poured in from around the league, including from Jewish New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Brady’s former teammate Julian Edelman.
The timing is auspicious — the star-studded film “80 For Brady” hits theaters today. The movie has been panned already, but I’m not convinced Brady’s retirement isn’t just a marketing ploy. Oh well. I’ll still see it.
—
The post The Jewish Sport Report: A deep dive into Jewish memory with Rocky Balboa appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Frank Gehry, renowned architect who began life as Frank Goldberg, dies at 96
(JTA) — Frank Gehry, a Jewish architect who became one of the world’s most renowned innovators in his field for his contributions to modernist architecture, including the famed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, has died at 96.
His death following a brief respiratory illness was confirmed on Friday by the chief of staff at his firm, Meaghan Lloyd, according to the New York Times.
Gehry was born Ephraim Owen Goldberg on Feb. 28, 1929, to a Jewish family in Toronto. In 1947, Gehry moved to Los Angeles with his family and later went on to graduate from the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture in 1954.
The same year, he changed his name to Gehry at the behest of his first wife who was “worried about antisemitism and thought it sounded less Jewish.” He would later say he would not make the choice again.
Among Gehry’s most acclaimed works, which feature his signature, sculptural style, are the Bilbao Guggenheim, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris and the DZ Bank Building in Berlin.
Gehry also often returned to the motif of a fish, including two large fish sculptures in the World Trade Center in New York City and on Barcelona’s seafront. Some tied the fish motif to his recollections about his Jewish grandmother’s trips to the fishmonger to prepare for Shabbat each week.
“We’d put it in the bathtub,” Gehry said, according to the New York Times. “And I’d play with this fish for a day until she killed it and made gefilte fish.”
Gehry began to identify as an atheist shortly after his bar mitzvah. But in 2018, while he was working on ANU-Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, he told the Jewish Journal that Judaism had influenced his career nonetheless.
“There’s a curiosity built into the [Jewish] culture,” he said. “I grew up under that. My grandfather read Talmud to me. That’s one of the Jewish things I hang on to probably — that philosophy from that religion. Which is separate from God. It’s more ephemeral. I was brought up with that curiosity. I call it a healthy curiosity. Maybe it is something that the religion has produced. I don’t know. It’s certainly a positive thing.”
In 1989, Gehry won the prestigious Pritzker Prize, considered one of the top awards in the field of architecture, and in 1999 won the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects. In 2007, Gehry also received the Jerusalem Prize for Arts and Letters and in 2016 won the Presidential Medal of Freedom from then-president Barack Obama.
His survivors include his wife, Berta Isabel Aguilera, daughter Brina, and sons Alejandro and Samuel. Another daughter, Leslie Gehry Brenner, died of cancer in 2008.
The post Frank Gehry, renowned architect who began life as Frank Goldberg, dies at 96 appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Herzog Says Wellbeing of Israelis His Only Concern in Deal With Netanyahu’s ‘Extraordinary’ Pardon Request
Israeli President Isaac Herzog speaks during a press conference with Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics in Riga, Latvia, Aug. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
i24 News – In an interview with Politico published on Saturday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog remained tight-lipped on whether he intended to grant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “extraordinary” pardon request, saying that his decision will be motivated by what’s best for Israel.
“There is a process which goes through the Justice Ministry and my legal adviser and so on. This is certainly an extraordinary request and above all when dealing with it I will consider what is the best interest of the Israeli people,” Herzog said. “The well-being of the Israeli people is my first, second and third priority.”
Asked specifically about President Donald Trump’s request, Herzog said “I respect President Trump’s friendship and his opinion,” adding, “Israel, naturally, is a sovereign country.”
Herzog addressed a wide range of topics in the interview, including the US-Israel ties and the shifts in public opinion on Israel.
“One has to remember that the fountains of America, of American life, are based on biblical values, just like ours. And therefore, I believe that the underlying fountain that we all drink from is the same,” he said. “However, I am following very closely the trends that I see in the American public eye and the attitude, especially of young people, on Israel.”
“It comes from TikTok,” he said of the torrent of hostility toward Israel that has engulf swathes of U.S. opinion since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, “from a very shallow discourse of the current situation, pictures or viewpoints, and doesn’t judge from the big picture, which is, is Israel a strategic ally? Yes. Is Israel contributing to American national interests, security interests? Absolutely yes. Is Israel a beacon of democracy in the Middle East? Absolutely yes.”
Uncategorized
Syria’s Sharaa Charges Israel ‘Exports Its Crises to Other Countries’
FILE PHOTO: Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa addresses the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo
i24 News – Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Saturday escalated his messaging against Israel at the Doha forum.
“Israel is working to export its own crises to other countries and escape accountability for the massacres it committed in the Gaza Strip, justifying everything with security concerns,” he said.
“Meanwhile, Syria, since its liberation, has sent positive messages aimed at establishing the foundations of regional stability.
“Israel has responded to Syria with extreme violence, launching over 1,000 airstrikes and carrying out 400 incursions into its territory. The latest of these attacks was the massacre it perpetrated in the town of Beit Jinn in the Damascus countryside, which claimed dozens of lives.
“We are working with influential countries worldwide to pressure Israel to withdraw from the territories it occupied after December 8, 2014, and all countries support this demand.
“Syria insists on Israel’s adherence to the 1974 Disengagement Agreement. The demand for a demilitarized zone raises many questions. Who will protect this zone if there is no Syrian army presence?
“Any agreement must guarantee Syria’s interests, as it is Syria that is subjected to Israeli attacks. So, who should be demanding a buffer zone and withdrawal?”