One of five Jewish coaches to ever take an NCAA Division I men’s basketball team to the Final Four, Bruce Pearl, head coach of the Auburn Tigers men’s team, has been a public supporter of Israel and Jewry.
In 2022, he took his team on a preseason playing tour of Israel, and a men’s basketball team he coached won a gold medal at the Maccabi Games in Tel Aviv. Last week, he defended Israel in a fiery speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition Summit in Las Vegas.
“I wanted to speak to the young people more than anything else because they’re just not equipped to be able to defend Israel at this time,” he told JNS after his speech. “It starts with the foundation. It starts with the roots. It starts with the truth.”
The economy, inflation and border security are more important to the average American than Israel is, according to Pearl. But he told JNS that it is important to him to speak out.
“Right now, Jews in America are being targeted and it’s wrong, and our kids on these college campuses are unsafe,” he said. “Something does need to be done about that.”
At Auburn, a nearly 170-year-old public school in Alabama with a large Christian population but not many Jews, Pearl hasn’t seen much criticism of Israel.
“We’re not a big target, and the evangelical Christians would not have it,” he said. “They just wouldn’t allow it.”
Walking through a recent anti-Israel protest in Washington, D.C., Pearl estimated that only about a third of the protesters looked Arab.
“My heart felt for them because I bet you they’ve felt some real pain. It is a pain inflicted because of their leaders, because the leaders of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah put them in the situation,” he said, of the one-third. “I did feel bad for them.”
But the other two-thirds “looked like hippies from college campuses that would have absolutely no clue or no stake in the game,” Pearl told JNS. “They were just like professional protesters, and as you watch the news, that’s kind of what you see.”
Pearl, who made clear that he wasn’t speaking for his employer, sees himself as a teacher and a leader, who feels responsible for the Jewish community.
“My grandfather would be proud of me for speaking up. My dad, he’d be proud, but he’d be worried that maybe I’m putting myself in a bad position, because all of a sudden, you’re a pretty big target,” the 64-year-old said.
“God has commanded us to be mensches—charitable, generous, kind, giving but unafraid,” he added.
If his team doesn’t live up to high expectations on the hardwood, Pearl knows some will say that he spent “too much time talking about these things” at the expense of recruiting talent.
“I’ve been able to do both my entire career,” he said. “We’re going to do both again this year. God’s blessed us far more than we ever deserve, and I will not be silent.”
