For the second year in a row, American-Israeli professional basketball player Jared Armstrong has organized basketball camps for children from Philadelphia to teach not only skills on the court but also about combating antisemitism and racism. But this summer, Armstrong said the camp took on added significance, coming after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel and rising antisemitism around the world.

“From my own experience, I think all kids in life will experience some sort of racism, whether you’re Asian, whether you’re white, whether you’re Black,” Armstrong, 28, told eJewishPhilanthropy. “There’s a lot of ignorance in this world, a lot of prejudice. I continue to say, ‘You have more similarities than differences to the person to your right and to the left of you. You just have more or less melanin in your skin.’”

Launched in 2023, Armstrong’s nonprofit JAB Camp — JAB stands for Jared Armstrong Basketball — brings together players from all backgrounds, from first through eighth grade, for a weeklong Philadelphia-based camp that doesn’t just teach basketball, but offers “educational components that they don’t learn in school,” he said. These include sessions on financial literacy, nutrition, antisemitism and racism.

As a Black Jewish American who grew up in Maryland and Philadelphia before moving to Israel in 2020, Armstrong has friends from all backgrounds and, on the court, he can’t discriminate who he passes the ball to, he explained.

This year’s JAB Camp was held this summer, from June 17 to 21, at the Kaiserman JCC in Philadelphia and had 90 participants, half of whom were of color. Roughly 20% were Jewish.

Hate, antisemitism and racism are concepts “people are taught,” Andrew Goretsky, regional director of ADL Philadelphia, who helped organize JAB Camp’s antisemitism and racism training, told eJP. “People can also unlearn them.”

The way to combat hatred is to “get in front of all the bad messaging that proliferates hate and bias,” he said. It’s important to do it when people are young.

To teach this at the camp, younger attendees learned about each other’s backgrounds and older participants shared their experiences with racism and antisemitism. By the third day, they were opening up to one another: a Jewish child shared about how someone sprayed antisemitic graffiti on his synagogue and an African American child shared about a higher-up at his school calling him a racial slur.

“The goal is to get the students to know each other, connect with each other and learn about the experience of each other,” Goretsky said. “Because it is harder to hate someone when you know them.”

Armstrong tries to cultivate a message of positivity. He grew up attending Congregation Temple Beth’El in Philadelphia, a predominantly African American congregation with members who observe Shabbat and other aspects of halacha, but which is generally not recognized by the wider Jewish community.

When Armstrong attempted to make aliyah in 2022, the Israeli Ministry of Interior refused to offer him citizenship, even after he went through a Conservative conversion.

“I was accused of only wanting to move to Israel for the job opportunity to play basketball for Hapoel Haifa. Also, accused of being a Black Hebrew Israelite,” he told The Jerusalem Post at the time.

Pressure from Joey Low, an American venture capitalist and investor in Israeli startups, as well as a successful media campaign, led to Armstrong’s citizenship being granted last year. However, he did not immigrate as a Jew, under Israel’s Law of Return, “but as a promotion to the country,” he said, referring to a clause under which the Israeli Interior Ministry can grant citizenship in exceptional cases.

Today, he plays for Hapoel Eilat and is an advocate for Israel. “God was trying to teach me something,” he said. “I don’t look at it from a negative standpoint. I just try to stay positive… I felt fighting for citizenship was bigger than me. It was more so for my family, the way I grew up.”

The Oct. 7 terror attacks showed Armstrong how important his camps were. At the time he was living in Ashkelon, 10 miles from Gaza. A rocket landed 100 feet from his apartment. Hamas had penetrated the nearby community of Sderot, killing more than 50 civilians and 20 police officers.

“I watched in disbelief as parts of the world celebrated and cheered for the murder and kidnapping of innocent people, torn from their loved ones,” he wrote on Instagram last month.

Similar to former professional basketball player Tamir Goodman, who held free clinics in Jerusalem after the massacres, that December, Armstrong began holding free monthly clinics in Ashkelon to support kids whose school was still not in session and who had family members fighting in the war.

“We saw basketball as a way to bring them together,” he said, “to get them out the house and take their mind off things.”

In partnership with Tomer Glam, the mayor of Ashkelon, and Peter Robert Casey, CEO of JDS Sports, a sports and entertainment private equity firm that owns and manages Five-Star Basketball, JAB Camp renovated an Ashkelon basketball court, at the cost of nearly $25,000.

“We hope this court refurbishment project not only improves park safety — by fixing all of the cracks and slopes on the playing surface — but also brings people from different walks of life together during these hard and dividing times,” Casey told eJP. “Jared was the face and force behind this project.”

One of Armstrong’s biggest strengths is how approachable he is, Steve Rosenberg, a JAB Camp board member whose son played basketball with Armstrong when they were both 12, told eJP. “He’s not a 6-foot-8 guy. He’s 6-foot, 6-foot-1. He’s an approachable guy. He’s a guard. He’s not a center. He’s got this affable smile and this great personality and he just knows how to talk to young people and how to really get the best out of them.”

Armstrong also isn’t afraid “to speak out,” Rosenberg said. “He uses the platform with which he has been given to foster a better understanding of the similarities that exist between [African American and Jewish] communities.”

Armstrong has a lot of supporters. This year, JAB camp has provided programming to over 500 kids in partnership with Lids Foundation, Five-Star Basketball, Reebok and many individual donors.

Someday, hopefully the war between Israel and Hamas will end, Armstrong said, and when it does, people will need to find ways to bring communities together, including through sport. “Everybody needs everybody for this world to work.”