For aspiring college basketball players who want to maintain their Shabbat observance, Yeshiva University has long been the obvious destination.

But when Ze’ev Remer was a senior in high school, the most compelling pitch came from a radically different source. Not only did this school play on Saturdays, but it didn’t even have a campus Hillel, let alone a kosher meal plan. And then there was its name.

California Lutheran University, which like Yeshiva plays in NCAA Division III, was a school and a team where Remer, who grew up Orthodox and rocks a hand-knit kippah on and off the court, would always stick out. But it had recruited him the hardest. And it was only an hour’s drive away from Los Angeles, meaning his family could go to games.

He had to admit, too, that there was something undeniably interesting about being the only Jew in the squad. At Cal Lutheran, which is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, he could show people what Orthodox Judaism was about.

“I thought to myself, if I were in a religious place where I was comfortable, what would I be accomplishing there?” Remer, 20, said in an interview from the school’s Thousand Oaks campus. “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.”

For years, Orthodox high schools across the country have been constructing gyms, hiring deep coaching staffs, and building winners on the belief that sports — especially basketball — could boost school spirit and alumni relations, and serve as a potent vector of cultural transmission. But their efforts hinge on friendly competition with secular opponents. Remer, who graduated from one of those schools, is part of a small group of Orthodox athletes on an audacious new frontier: playing for the other team.

As they get to know their freshman point guard, Remer’s coaches and teammates have learned what people like him can’t eat (Chipotle, Starburst), what they can’t do on Saturdays (ride in cars, reply to texts), and — because it’s the main thing they want to know — how they keep that thing on their head (bobby pins, hair). And Remer, alone in a desert of his own making, is finding out what his belief is truly worth.

“I see people who are close to God and people who aren’t,” Remer said. “The people I see who are closer to God, have more of a modest, respectful type of lifestyle, and I really appreciate that.” Photo by Jon Putman for the Forward

The lonely student-athlete of faith

Among Orthodox student-athletes at secular universities, Remer has chosen a particularly non-Jewish environment. The student body of Washington University in St. Louis, where Yogi Oliff plays basketball, is about one-quarter Jewish. At Texas A&M, where Sam Salz wears a yarmulke under his football helmet, there’s an 18,000-square-foot Hillel. And though Wake Forest, where Elie Kligman plays catcher, isn’t known for a thriving Jewish scene, its Hillel touts a mailing list of a few hundred undergrads. (And there’s an AEPi fraternity.)

By contrast, Cal Lutheran (undergraduate enrollment around 2,500) not only lacks an Orthodox community, it has only a few dozen Jewish students total according to the university pastor — and judging by the curious glances Remer says he’s grown accustomed to around campus, many more who may have never seen a real, live Orthodox Jew before. Though the school tends to emphasize its diversity more than its Lutheranism, its leadership takes pride in its Christian roots. During a weekly “chapel hour” most campus facilities close, and the chapel itself — a strikingly modern building that curves into a steeple — is a campus focal point.

Among Remer’s teammates, even those who had spent time around Jewish people knew little about them; in conversation, one said growing up he’d often seen Jewish people walking on Saturdays to, “er, what’s the church called?”

To acculturate the team to the player, head coach Russell White had Remer give the group a preseason explainer on Orthodox Judaism, which included primers on Shabbat, tzitzit and tefillin (which they might observe him wearing on overnight trips). Of course, the hardest thing for the non-Jewish Kingsmen to wrap their heads around was, and continues to be, the dietary restrictions. 

“Someone was like, ‘Take half my candy bar,’” Remer recalled. “And it’s like, ‘Sorry, I can’t eat it — I just ate meat.’ They’re like, ‘What does that even mean?’”

Buoyed as he is by the novelty of these interactions, being the only Orthodox Jew on campus does get lonely. It might be convenient to have his parents deliver home cooked meals once a week, but in lieu of a kosher cafeteria, it isn’t ideal. He’s mindful enough of his roommates not to make cholent in his dorm; even if he did, would anyone share it with him?

Isolation has given Remer a lot of time to think about why he’s observing Orthodox Judaism to begin with. It’s also made him more devout.

“I see people who are close to God and people who aren’t,” he said. “The people I see who are closer to God, have more of a modest, respectful type of lifestyle, and I really appreciate that.

“In this situation, the only way for me to have that relationship with God is by being super strict on certain things. Like, I have to put on my tefillin every day. I have to pray. I don’t know if I was at YU, with a nice Jewish population, that I would have that same drive. Because there, I would just be another Jew. I wouldn’t feel like my yiddishkeit has to come from me.”

Away games

Cal Lutheran head coach Russell White (R) schedules Saturday games to tip off after Shabbat ends. “I just wanted him to be comfortable,” White says. Photo by Jon Putman for the Forward

When White scouted Remer as a senior at Shalhevet High School, he liked what he saw. The sturdy, maybe-six-foot floor general took care of the ball and responded well to pressure. “Those tend to turn into pretty good players,” White said.

Remer was open to the idea of Cal Lutheran, but wanted to know how an Orthodox athlete would fit in. Over the phone, the two sketched out a rough plan. White said he would try to schedule Saturday home games after 7 p.m.; on the road, Remer would try to stay at a hotel walking distance from the gym.

“Being aware of the faith and the rules that are a part of that, I just wanted him to be comfortable,” White said of those conversations. “If he was comfortable, I wanted him to come play for us.”

Playing on Shabbat was not a difficult decision — he’d been doing that at public parks and in his parents’ backyard his whole life. When the Kingsmen do have a Shabbat game, Remer marks the day by sporting an all-white yarmulke and by not double-knotting his shoelaces (because doing so may constitute Sabbath-prohibited work).

Still, navigating the Jewish day of rest has proved challenging in a way this whole experiment was meant to: It forced him outside of his comfort zone, where he would have to make his own choices.

Push came to shove around a recent Saturday night game against University of Redlands — whose campus is about 100 miles east of Cal Lutheran’s. Remer felt unsure about the hotels in the area, and having recently gotten into a car crash, he didn’t want to make the long drive in the rain Friday afternoon. The team bus was leaving on Shabbat. He got on it.

When he was young, and dreaming of playing college basketball, he had considered this scenario. “If Shabbat was going to be an issue, I couldn’t really see that stopping me,” he said. “I’m obviously trying to be as machmir (stringent) as possible in everything I can, but I still have dreams and I still have ambitions, and I can’t let Judaism totally dictate everything I do in life.”

His teammates were curious, and he leveled with them — told them that technically, he was not supposed to be on this bus. And then he sat for two hours, with no electronics, alone with his thoughts, as the bus traversed the Los Angeles basin.

Eventually, he made peace: His religious journey was longer than this bus ride.

Against Redlands, in his first start for the Kingsmen, Remer scored 12 points, a season high.

“I just try to be as halachically correct as the situation I’m in,” Remer said, using the term that refers to Jewish law, “and try to keep in mind that it might not be in the best situation right now for Shabbat, but I know that it is Shabbat, and I know what Shabbat is.”

Remer was called on to lead the Kingsmen in prayer after a recent practice. “I appreciate that they do pray,” he said afterward. “As a religious person, I like that.” Photo by Jon Putman for the Forward

Handling the pressure, protecting the ball

Shalhevet’s old go-to guy gets only a few shots a game as a freshman. But if he’s only barely begun to make an on-court impression, Remer has already seen a small measure of validation for his college choice. Back when Kanye West’s antisemitic vitriol was dominating the news, one of his teammates asked him about it. Was it not true that the Jews, like, own Hollywood? Remer calmly disabused him.

“It was a learning moment for everybody,” he says now. “I don’t think that it meant to come out in a way of hate or anything. I think it was just: ‘I don’t know.’ Let’s learn.”

At the conclusion of each practice, White will gather the team in a circle and call on someone to lead the group in prayer. Remer normally refrains from responding to these invocations, which tend to be addressed to Jesus.

Until last week, when a reporter and photographer were in attendance, Remer had not been asked to lead one. Now he was.

Put on the spot, he waited a beat, unsure how to proceed. Then, head bowed, he ad-libbed: “Dear God, thank you for keeping us healthy and letting us play the game we love. We pray for Lojong” — an injured teammate — “and pray for anyone who needs to get better. Amen.”

Later, he said it had felt uncomfortable. “But — I don’t know — I don’t see anything wrong with it,” he added. “I appreciate that they do pray. As a religious person, I like that. It just felt a little too Christian.”

Recently, he’s given thought to a hypothetical: If he weren’t playing basketball, would he still go to school here? He’s come to the conclusion that all things considered — the proximity to home, the computer science degree he’s pursuing, and the friends he’s made on the team — he probably wouldn’t transfer out. He’s enjoying the first-year grind, growing comfortable with the uncomfortable.

After all, it’s what he signed up for.

“I see my friends at Maryland, I see my friends at UCLA, and everything’s easier for them,” Remer said. “But I think that’s what makes me unique. Like, it’s definitely gonna define me in the long run.”

The post The college is Christian. Its point guard wears a yarmulke. appeared first on The Forward.

Republicans in the House of Representatives successfully ousted Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the Foreign Affairs Committee in a party-line vote today. The approved resolution listed a number of justifications for the vote, including a tweet by Omar from 2019 claiming that American support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins,” which critics denounced as antisemitic.

At the time, the congresswoman subsequently deleted the tweet and apologized. Although she has been one of Congress’s most outspoken critics of Israel, a fact also recounted in the resolution, she has not said anything of the kind since.

While this may be an unwelcome reminder about the speed of life, it has been four years since Omar’s offending tweet. Other than partisan point-scoring, which Speaker Kevin McCarthy desperately needs after requiring 15 floor votes to be elected by his own party, it is hard to think of why this controversy should now be re-litigated. But one reason that is certainly not a catalyst for Omar’s expulsion from the committee is House Republicans’ concern for antisemitism.

As Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) stated before the vote today, 90% of Jewish members of the House were set to vote to keep Congresswoman Omar on the committee “because we believe in the human capacity to learn from mistakes, to make amends, and that atonement should be rewarded.”

It is true the lopsidedness of the Jewish vote in the House is a reflection of the partisan nature of the vote, but it is also worth remembering that many of these Jewish Democrats who supported Omar issued strong condemnations of her tweet at the time — including Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, her most outspoken and persistent Democratic critic.

Yet these Jewish members of Congress supported Rep. Omar today because they understood this old news was not being dredged up for the benefit of American Jews, but rather for a historically weak Speaker of the House who has chosen to humiliate an opponent loathed by the Republican base. That Congresswoman Omar is a member of a religious and ethnic minority demonized by white nationalists ascendant on the American right is also undoubtedly motivating this solidarity.

Hypocrisy is primarily an offense of shamelessness and it was palpable in the Republican vote against Rep. Omar. If the world were a fair place, we would be spared any and all lectures on antisemitism from a congressional majority that relies on the support of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been named to the House Homeland Security Committee and has previously alleged the existence of Jewish space lasers, and Rep. Paul Gosar, an open and proud associate of Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Additionally, unlike Rep. Omar, former Republican President Donald Trump has never dreamed of apologizing for his multiple and overt uses of antisemitic tropes surrounding Jews, finance and political influence.

What may be most baffling in the hypocrisy department is that McCarthy himself has invoked the antisemitic specter of disproportionate Jewish political power in America — and on Twitter, no less. Before the 2018 midterm elections, McCarthy tweeted that “we cannot allow Soros, Steyer, and Bloomberg to BUY this election! Get out and vote Republican November 6th. #MAGA.”

McCarthy has dismissed the notion that he was being antisemitic, noting the three Jewish donors he accused of trying to “buy” the election were united in his mind not by faith but politics. Perhaps so, but wasn’t this precisely the problem with Rep. Omar’s tweet? It is not antisemitic to point out AIPAC’s political influence in Congress, which it proudly touts in its own materials, but it may be problematic to do so with careless language that could harm American Jews.

There may be no one in Congress morally less fit to judge Ilhan Omar than Kevin McCarthy (Perhaps Greene). While he deleted his own trope-laden tweet, he has never apologized for it, let alone faced any formal censure.

But if there was one moment that encapsulated the absurdity of the Republican claim that this political assault on Rep. Omar was about fighting antisemitism, it definitely arrived when Rep. Max Miller of Ohio, who sponsored the resolution, rose to speak in its favor alongside an enlarged poster of Rep. Omar’s words from 2019.

Rep. Miller is one of two Jewish members of the House Republican caucus, and I have no basis for doubting the sincerity of the offense he took upon reading those words. But the words he amplified for the country have not existed in their original form in almost four years. Omar deleted the tweets two days after writing them and apologized; they have been artificially kept alive not by Omar but by Republicans who refuse to accept her disavowal of them. Ironically, if any viewer finds themselves agreeing with those words, Republicans are arguably much more responsible for that than Omar.

What we witnessed today was not a congressional majority standing up against antisemitism. Instead, a deadly serious issue was exploited for partisan purposes. The vast majority of American Jews did not call for this unnecessary and cynical spectacle, but we may be haunted by its endless afterlife.

To contact the author, email opinion@forward.com.

The post Antisemitism is not the reason Ilhan Omar lost her committee seat appeared first on The Forward.

A U.S. appeals court on Thursday declared unconstitutional a federal law making it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to own firearms.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the latest victory for gun rights advocates since a Supreme Court decision last June granting a broad right for people to carry firearms outside the home.

That decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, announced a new test for assessing firearms laws, saying restrictions must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” and not simply advance an important government interest.

In Thursday’s decision, Circuit Judge Cory Wilson said banning people under domestic violence restraining orders from owning firearms “embodies salutory policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society.”

But the judge, appointed by Donald Trump, said Bruen made such a consideration irrelevant, and that from a historical perspective the ban was “an outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted.”

The court threw out the guilty plea and six-year prison sentence for Zackey Rahimi, who admitted to possessing guns found in his Kennedale, Texas, home after prosecutors said he participated in five shootings in Dec. 2020 and Jan. 2021.

Rahimi had been under a restraining order since Feb. 2020, following his alleged assault of a former girlfriend.

The office of U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton in Dallas, which prosecuted Rahimi, had no immediate comment.

A federal public defender representing Rahimi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The 5th Circuit is based in New Orleans, and its decision applies in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

It had upheld the federal law last June 8, just over two weeks before the Bruen decision, but withdrew its opinion and ordered additional briefing.

In a concurrence, Circuit Judge and Trump appointee James Ho said the nation’s founders “firmly believed” in the government’s role in protecting people from violence and the right of individuals to bear arms, and that these principles “are not inconsistent but entirely compatible with one another.”

A gauge of global stocks climbed for a third straight day and longer-dated U.S. Treasury yields were flat on Thursday, as policy announcements from a host of central banks added to optimism that the cycles of interest rate hikes may be near an end.

After the U.S. Federal Reserve raised rates by 25 basis points (bps) on Wednesday, as was widely expected, markets rallied following comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledging the “disinflationary” process may have begun.

The European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of England (BoE) hiked by 50 basis points each on Thursday, with the BoE signaling the tide was turning against inflation and the ECB indicating at least one more hike was on the horizon.

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq rallied, with the S&P 500 closing at its highest intraday level since Aug. 19 and the Nasdaq closing at its highest since Sept. 12, getting an additional boost from a 23.28% surge in Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc (META.O), its biggest daily percentage jump since July 25, 2013, following its quarterly results and $40 billion buyback announcement. That helped the S&P communication services sector (.SPLRCL) jump 6.74%, its biggest daily percentage gain since March 13, 2020.

“The reaction to yesterday’s Fed comments really encouraged investors to go risk-on,” said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments in New Vernon, New Jersey.

“The bottom line for investors, I think, is that the Fed’s comments were unexpected.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) fell 39.02 points, or 0.11%, to 34,053.94 while the S&P 500 (.SPX) gained 60.55 points, or 1.47%, to 4,179.76 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) added 384.50 points, or 3.25%, to 12,200.82.

On the economic front, weekly initial jobless claims dropped to a nine-month low, showing the labor market remains strong, while worker productivity in the fourth quarter accelerated. Investors will eye the January payrolls report on Friday for further signs of labor market strength.

With 46% of the S&P 500 having reported results, earnings for the quarter are expected to decline 2.4% from the year-ago period, according to Refinitiv data, compared with a 1.6% expected decline at the start of the year.

After the closing bell, Amazon shares lost 6.56% and Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O) dropped 6.09% after their quarterly results.

European stocks also jumped, with the STOXX 600 closing at its highest level since April 21 as it notched its biggest one-day percentage gain in a month.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index (.STOXX) rose 1.35% and MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe (.MIWD00000PUS) gained 1.12%. The MSCI index hit its highest intraday level since May 5 and was on track for its ninth gain in the past ten sessions.

Benchmark 10-year notes were unchanged to 3.398%, reversing an earlier move lower.

The dollar bounced, however, from its biggest one-day percentage drop in nearly a month on Wednesday, while the euro and sterling weakened following the ECB and BoE announcements.

The dollar index rose 0.773%, with the euro down 0.73% to $1.0909.

The Japanese yen strengthened 0.21% versus the greenback at 128.67 per dollar, while sterling was last trading at $1.2228, down 1.20% on the day.

In commodities, the dollar strength served to dent oil prices, with U.S. crude settling down 0.69% at $75.88 per barrel and Brent settled at $82.17, down 0.81% on the day.

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