Five-and-a-half-feet tall, weighing 160 pounds, and never having played the sport on a varsity team, Sam Salz in no way fits the mold of a college football player—especially at a NCAA football powerhouse like Texas A&M University. Even more unusually, Salz is an Orthodox Jew, who, because of the Sabbath, must sit out the majority of games. He was nonetheless able to convince the school’s coaches to let him on the team, having won them over with his enthusiasm and sense of commitment. Ari Wasserman writes:

Salz never hid his faith, proudly wearing his yarmulke and tzitzit, the head covering and the knotted fringes or tassels on the Jewish prayer shawl that serve as reminders of the 613 commandments in the Torah. But he was initially worried that the coaching staff wouldn’t be understanding of the time constraints of his religion and his need to eat only kosher food.

Texas A&M, though, accommodated Salz. He isn’t expected to participate in team activities on Jewish holidays. The first practice after he was invited onto the team fell on Yom Kippur, and he didn’t attend. The team nutritionist Tiffany Ilten makes sure Salz has access to kosher meals, which they get from a distributor in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. A microwave in the team facility reads “kosher food only.”

Added the former A&M wide receiver Ainias Smith, a fifth-round pick of the Eagles in the 2024 NFL draft: “We needed somebody like that on the team. Once people get here, it seems like everybody feels like they made it. His story motivates us to keep going.” Salz believes he is the only Orthodox Jewish player in college football. It’s not something that is tracked by the NCAA.

With so many ugly stories coming out about Jews’ experience on college campuses, it’s nice to have a good one.

Information about a supposedly near-finalized hostage deal continued to trickle out yesterday. While it’s entirely possible that by the time you read this a deal will be much more certain, it is every bit as likely that it will have fallen through by then. More likely still, we will learn that there are indefinite and unspecified delays. Then there are the details: even in the best of scenarios, not all the hostages will be returned at once, and Israel will have to make painful concessions in exchange, including the release of hundreds of hardened terrorists and the withdrawal from key parts of the Gaza Strip.

Unusually—if entirely appropriately—the president-elect’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, has participated in the talks alongside members of President Biden’s team. Philip Klein examines the incoming Trump administration’s role in the process:

President-elect Trump has repeatedly warned that there would be “all hell to pay” if hostages were not returned from Gaza by the time he takes office. While he has never laid out exactly what the specific consequences for Hamas would be, there are some ominous signs that Israel is being pressured into paying a tremendous price.

There is obviously more here than we know. It’s possible that with the pressure from the Trump team came reassurances that Israel would have more latitude to reenter Gaza as necessary to go after Hamas than it would have enjoyed under Biden. . . . That said, all appearances are that Israel has been forced into making more concessions because Trump was concerned that he’d be embarrassed if January 20 came around with no hostages released.

While Donald Trump’s threats are a welcome rhetorical shift, part of the problem may be their vagueness. After all, it’s unlikely the U.S. would use military force to unleash hell in Gaza, or could accomplish much in doing so that the IDF can’t. More useful would be direct threats against countries like Qatar and Turkey that host Hamas, and threats to the persons and bank accounts of the Hamas officials living in those counties. Witkoff instead praised the Qatari prime minister for “doing God’s work” in the negotiations.”