The Only Jewish Player in the NFL – Atlanta Jewish Times

Unlike last year, when NFL rosters were sprinkled with Jewish players, the 2024 season has thus far seen precious few take the field, the most notable being journeyman placekicker Greg Joseph, currently with the New York Giants.

The 30-year-old Jewish native of Johannesburg, South Africa, whose childhood revolved around soccer – not football – played college football at Florida Atlantic University.

Notably, the Giants represent the third team Jospeh has suited up for this year. Shortly after surviving the Green Bay Packers’ 53-man roster cut at the close of training camp, Joseph, a Minnesota Viking for the past three years, was released; a couple weeks later, the Detroit Lions signed Joseph to their practice squad, only to give him the boot the following week. And then, in mid-September, after getting pinballed around the NFC North for the past year, the seven-year NFL veteran cracked the Giants’ gameday roster when the even more seasoned Graham Gano was shelved with a Week 2 hamstring injury.

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How long Joseph continues to line up for field goals, extra points, and kickoffs for one of the league’s most storied franchises remains uncertain. Gano’s health looms as a major question mark and Joseph’s performance with the New York Football Giants, currently in the cellar of the NFC East, has been inconsistent. After misfiring on his only field goal attempt during his Giants debut against the Cleveland Browns (one of his several former teams), Joseph went an immaculate eight-for-eight over the next two games, one of which was a nationally televised 20-15 loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Sept. 26 when Joseph’s booming right foot accounted for all of New York’s points.

“Most important is the team winning, which we didn’t do tonight,” Joseph said after the Cowboys game on Thursday Night Football. “One kick doesn’t define me. It never will. Head up, onto the next one, short memory. I just feel like I have to be Greg Joseph. They’ve done an awesome job letting me know they know who I am, what I stand for and how I work. I’m not going to change that. Process over results.”

Unfortunately for Joseph, the results weren’t as favorable during the Giants’ next primetime matchup at MetLife Stadium – an Oct. 13 Sunday night clash against the Cincinnati Bengals – as he was wide left on both of his fourth-quarter field goal attempts (47 and 45 yards) in his team’s 17-7 loss. In speaking to the media following the deflating defeat to a then-slumping Bengals team, Joseph came across as a true stand-up guy.

“It felt good [off my foot],” said Joseph, who nailed his only field goal try during the following week’s 28-3 blowout loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. “I have to go look at the film, be hard on myself, reassess, see what I want to fix mechanically and mentally process-wise. And go from there. Every ball I put my foot to, it’s on me. I expect to make every kick.”

And during clutch situations earlier in his career, that has often been the case. Just two years ago, while kicking for Minnesota, Joseph, who broke into the NFL last decade as an undrafted free agent, was in the midst of a historic season during which he drilled an unprecedented five game-winning kicks, including a 61-yarder (ironically, against the Giants) that stands as the longest in Vikings history.

But even more impressive than Joseph’s string of late-game heroics over the course of his solid three-year run with the Vikes is his passion for learning more about his Jewish heritage, specifically as it relates to the Holocaust. Though Joseph and his family emigrated from South Africa to the U.S. in 2001, his familial roots stem from Eastern Europe: his maternal great-grandparents both hailed from Lithuania, from which they fled amidst the growing persecution of Jews in the 1920s. Ever cognizant of the plight of Eastern European Jewry from a century ago, Joseph has made it an off-season priority to travel around the world to visit museums and the actual sites where the horrors of genocide occurred. Before he turned 30, Joseph had already been twice to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.; participated in an NFL goodwill tour of one Naval base and 11 Army bases in Poland; and visited, among other harrowing sites, the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz, Kovno Ghetto and Panevėžys Ghetto.

“Back in the day I knew, ‘Oh, my family’s from Lithuania.’ But I probably couldn’t even spell Lithuania before I went into this deep dive,” Joseph shared in an interview published on the Vikings’ team website in March 2023.  “I’m me because of the people who came before me … that knowledge and that closeness to my family is important because I’ll be able to pass it down to my kids someday.

“My dad is half Lithuanian, a quarter German and a quarter Polish, so he’s looked back and seen how his family was affected by the war and possible family members who were tragically lost in the Holocaust. Obviously it’s personal to me because of my religion and my pride in being Jewish … but I think it’s more crucial than ever for people to educate themselves on these horrific events in history – not just the Holocaust – so we can do our best as the human race to be the most humane we can be and stop these tragic events from ever happening again in the future.”

If Joseph remains with New York for the balance of the regular season, Falcons fans can see him in person when the Giants travel to Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sunday, Dec. 22 for a Week 16 matchup.