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The Jewish Sport Report: All the Jewish players to watch in the 2023 Australian Open
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Happy Friday the 13th!
Sports fans are among the most superstitious folks out there. Do you have a game day ritual, a lucky jersey, or some other inexplicable tradition that your team can’t win without? Let us know by replying to this email.
And if there’s any masked Jason we should be afraid of, it’s Pittsburgh Penguins left winger Jason Zucker, who is putting together his best season since he was traded to Pittsburgh three years ago.
A Jewish guide to the Australian Open
Diego Schwartzman shown during his match against Serbia’s Dusan Lajovic at the 2020 Australian Open, which Schwartzman won in straight sets, Jan. 24, 2020. (Manan Vatsyayana/AFP via Getty Images)
The first major international sports tournament of the year is upon us, as tennis stars from around the world descend upon Melbourne for the Australian Open, which begins Monday.
Before we get into this year’s tournament, we remember Jewish tennis legend Dick Savitt, who died Jan. 6 at 95. Savitt won the 1951 Australian Open and Wimbledon Grand Slams, becoming the first Jewish player to win either tournament. May his memory be a blessing.
Now here are the Jewish stories to watch at the 2023 Grand Slam down under:
Madison Brengle
The 32-year-old Delaware native is ranked 62nd in women’s singles and looks to make it past the second round for the first time since 2016.
Taylor Fritz
Fritz does not identify as Jewish, but his maternal grandfather was Jewish, and his great-great-grandfather was David May, the German-Jewish immigrant who founded Macy’s. Fritz is the best player of this bunch, entering the Australian Open as the 8th seed on the men’s side, with a men’s singles world ranking of 9. Fritz made it to the fourth round last year.
Camila Giorgi
The Italian star, who has said her favorite book is “The Diary of Anne Frank,” is ranked 69th in women’s singles and reached the third round last year.
Aslan Karatsev
Karatsev was born in Russia, but moved to Israel at 3 years old and has said the country still feels like home. He’s currently ranked 52 in men’s singles, two years after reaching the semifinal in a Cinderella run in 2021.
Diego Schwartzman
Ranked 25th in men’s singles, Schwartzman got his start at his local Jewish sports club in Argentina. He made it to the second round in last year’s Australian Open.
Denis Shapovalov
Shapovalov, ranked 22nd in men’s singles, was born in Tel Aviv to a Ukrainian Jewish mom and Russian Orthodox Christian dad. He often wears a cross when he plays, but his mom considers him Jewish. He reached the quarterfinal last year.
* One last Jewish tennis note: Elina Svitolina, the Jewish Ukrainian athlete who had taken a break from playing due to the war in her home country — and the birth of her first child last fall — has announced that she will return to playing this year.
Halftime report
KEN-GRATULATIONS. Veteran baseball reporter Ken Rosenthal has been named a co-winner of the National Sports Media Association’s 2022 sportswriter of the year award. In addition to his TV work for Fox Sports, Rosenthal has written for The Athletic since 2017.
NEVER FORGET. A Jewish community center in Boca Raton, Florida, is currently featuring an exhibit with rare Holocaust sports memorabilia from Jewish historian Neil Keller. The collection includes more than 100 items from Keller’s personal collection, including an autographed family photo that belonged to Victor “Young” Perez, a World Champion boxer who was killed during the Holocaust.
NOMINATED. High school basketball players Noam Mayouhas and Johny Dan, who play at the Los Angeles Jewish day school Valley Torah (Ryan Turell’s alma mater), were nominated for the 2023 McDonald’s All American West team for the annual high school all-star game.
Jews in sports to watch this weekend
IN FOOTBALL…
The NFL playoffs begin this weekend with the Wild Card round, and two Jewish players remain: Jake Curhan of the Seattle Seahawks and Greg Joseph of the Minnesota Vikings. The Seahawks face the San Francisco 49ers on Saturday, while the Vikings host the New York Giants on Sunday. Both games are at 4:30 p.m. ET on FOX.
IN BASKETBALL…
Deni Avdija and the Washington Wizards host the New York Knicks tonight at 7 p.m. ET. Ryan Turell and the Motor City Cruise play the Ontario Clippers Sunday at 2 p.m. ET.
IN HOCKEY…
Jason Zucker and the Pittsburgh Penguins play the Winnipeg Jets tonight and the Carolina Hurricanes Saturday, both at 7 p.m. ET. (Mark Friedman was sent back down to the AHL this week.) On Sunday, each of the NHL’s three games feature a Jewish player: Adam Fox and the New York Rangers play Montreal, Quinn Hughes and the Vancouver Canucks face Carolina, and Jakob Chychrun and the Arizona Coyotes play the Jets.
IN TENNIS…
The Australian Open begins Monday. The daily match schedule is released the prior day, so check here on Sunday afternoon.
The Strug-gle is real
Has Carlos Correa surpassed Jewish gymnast Kerri Strug for the most famous ankle in sports?
One Twitter user posed the question this week after the star shortstop finalized his free-agent contract with the Minnesota Twins — after two $300+ million deals fell through over concerns about his ankle. Strug, of course, fought through a serious ankle injury to clinch the gold medal for the United States at the 1996 Olympics.
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The post The Jewish Sport Report: All the Jewish players to watch in the 2023 Australian Open appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel’s Netanyahu Hopes to ‘Taper’ Israel Off US Military Aid in Next Decade
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published on Friday that he hopes to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.
Netanyahu has said Israel should not be reliant on foreign military aid but has stopped short of declaring a firm timeline for when Israel would be fully independent from Washington.
“I want to taper off the military within the next 10 years,” Netanyahu told The Economist. Asked if that meant a tapering “down to zero,” he said: “Yes.”
Netanyahu said he told President Donald Trump during a recent visit that Israel “very deeply” appreciates “the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here too we’ve come of age and we’ve developed incredible capacities.”
In December, Netanyahu said Israel would spend 350 billion shekels ($110 billion) on developing an independent arms industry to reduce dependency on other countries.
In 2016, the US and Israeli governments signed a memorandum of understanding for the 10 years through September 2028 that provides $38 billion in military aid, $33 billion in grants to buy military equipment and $5 billion for missile defense systems.
Israeli defense exports rose 13 percent last year, with major contracts signed for Israeli defense technology including its advanced multi-layered aerial defense systems.
US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Israel supporter and close ally of Trump, said on X that “we need not wait ten years” to begin scaling back military aid to Israel.
“The billions in taxpayer dollars that would be saved by expediting the termination of military aid to Israel will and should be plowed back into the US military,” Graham said. “I will be presenting a proposal to Israel and the Trump administration to dramatically expedite the timetable.”
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In Rare Messages from Iran, Protesters ask West for Help, Speak of ‘Very High’ Death Toll
Protests in Tehran. Photo: Iran Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law, via i24 News
i24 News – Speaking to Western media from beyond the nationwide internet blackout imposed by the Islamic regime, Iranian protesters said they needed support amid a brutal crackdown.
“We’re standing up for a revolution, but we need help. Snipers have been stationed behind the Tajrish Arg area [a neighborhood in Tehran],” said a protester in Tehran speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. He added that “We saw hundreds of bodies.”
Another activist in Tehran spoke of witnessing security forces firing live ammunition at protesters resulting in a “very high” number killed.
On Friday, TIME magazine cited a Tehran doctor speaking on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital recorded at least 217 killed protesters, “most by live ammunition.”
Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Setare Ghorbani, a French-Iranian national living in the suburbs of Paris, said that she became ill from worry for her friends inside Iran. She read out one of her friends’ last messages before losing contact: “I saw two government agents and they grabbed people, they fought so much, and I don’t know if they died or not.”
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Report: US Increasingly Regards Iran Protests as Having Potential to Overthrow Regime
United States President Donald J Trump in White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Thursday, December 18, 2025. Photo: Aaron Schwartz via Reuters Connect.
i24 News – The assessment in Washington of the strength and scope of the Iran protests has shifted after Thursday’s turnout, with US officials now inclined to grant the possibility that this could be a game changer, Axios reported on Friday.
“The protests are serious, and we will continue to monitor them,” an unnamed senior US official was quoted as saying in the report.
Iran was largely cut off from the outside world on Friday after the Islamic regime blacked out the internet to curb growing unrest, as videos circulating on social media showed buildings ablaze in anti-government protests raging across the country.
US President Donald Trump warned the Ayatollahs of a strong response if security forces escalate violence against protesters.
“We’re watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” Trump told reporters when asked about the unrest in Iran.
The latest reported death toll is at 51 protesters, including nine children.