Julian Edelman, star Jewish wide receiver for New England Patriots, announces retirement
(JTA) — Julian Edelman, the New England Patriots wide receiver who has shown his Jewish pride on a number of occasions, will retire following a stellar 11-year career in which he won Most Valuable Player in Super Bowl LIII.
Edelman, who played in only six games last year due to a chronic knee injury, had his contract terminated Monday by the Patriots in a procedural move, ESPN reported. He announced his retirement in a video posted to social media Monday.
Unheralded out of Kent State and undersized at 5-10 and less than 2oo pounds, Edelman was at his best in the big games, finishing second all-time with 118 postseason receptions, trailing only Hall of Famer Jerry Rice’s 151. He will also finish second all-time among Patriots receivers with 620 catches, behind Wes Welker’s 672.
Edelman, now 34, has a Jewish father but was not raised in the religion. It was during his breakout campaign in 2013 that, coincidentally or not, he identified as Jewish in an interview with the NFL Network.
In 2014, he wore a pin featuring the Israeli flag. Edelman has tweeted about Jewish holidays. He even went on a Birthright-style trip to Israel, and in 2019 visited the country with the Patriots’ Jewish owner, Robert Kraft. He wrote a children’s book that references modern-day Zionism founder Theodor Herzl.
After the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in the fall of 2018 that killed 11, he wore special cleats with Hebrew on them to honor the victims. Last month, he reached out on social media to NBA center Meyers Leonard, who used an anti-Semitic slur while playing a video game on the public Twitch channel.
“Let’s do a Shabbat dinner with some friends,” Edelman wrote Leonard. “I’ll show you a fun time.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion How Trump’s attacks on the university target what has made America great for Jews
-
Culture This Jewish New Yorker survived the Holocaust and the Hungarian Revolution, and is still helping others today
-
Fast Forward Trump says he and Netanyahu are ‘on the same side of every issue’ following talks on Iran, tariffs
-
Fast Forward California school board members accused of antisemitism during contentious meeting
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.