A group of Utah rabbis were told to remove signs that declared "I'm a Jew and I'm proud" from a basketball game on Monday because they were told it was causing a distraction to the players.
Rabbi Avremi Zippel, a longstanding Utah Jazz fan, and three other rabbis brought the signs to the Delta Center Monday night to protest the involvement of Kyrie Irving, now a Dallas Mavericks player. Irving was suspended from the Brooklyn Nets in 2022 for tweeting a link to a movie widely considered to be antisemitic and for initially failing to disavow it.
Zippel said in a string of posts on X that Irving spotted the sign early in the first quarter and told him: "No need to bring that to a game." Zippel said Irving then spoke to Mavericks security staff, before Jazz officials came to check the rabbis' tickets and tell them to put the signs away.
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The Jazz said in a statement that the signs were in breach of its audience code of conduct that maintains games must be played "without distraction or disturbance."
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