Riley Weiss, of Hewlett, signs endorsement deal with Foundation to Combat Antisemitism

Nicholas Spangler | July 20, 2025

Originally Published in Newsday HERE

Riley Weiss, the Long Island basketball standout now playing for the Division I Columbia University Lions, has signed what she said is the biggest endorsement deal of her young career.

The deal is not with a purveyor of sneakers or sports drinks but rather with the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, a nonprofit — funded in part by a $113 million gift from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft — that last week announced a name, image and likeness partnership program (known as an NIL) intended to “increase the visibility of Jewish athletes at the collegiate level, promoting their unique, multifaceted identities and advancing Jewish pride.”

Weiss is a rising junior guard who averaged almost 18 points per game last season when the Lions reached the NCAA Tournament (they lost to West Virginia in a first-round game), was the all-time leading scorer at Hewlett High School and she had five 50-point games during her high school career. She and five other Jewish athletes appear in videos being pushed out over the foundation's and her own social media channels. “It is a chance to showcase that I’m proud to be Jewish,” she said in an interview.

The sponsorship program is rolling out at a time of rising anti-Jewish hate across the United States and is predicated on the belief — borne out by Pew Research Center studies — that huge numbers of Americans, while not hateful, do not personally know any Jews, making them less likely to engage against antisemitism, said Adam Katz, the foundation's president.

It also marks an unusual development for the multibillion-dollar NIL marketplace, many of whose top earners are men who play football or basketball and whose deals promote products, not causes.

Weiss declined to disclose the terms of her deal, though she laughed when asked if it would be enough to buy a house. Closer to a “nice meal,” she said.

Her motivation, she said, was different from deals she has already done with Shake Shack, the Hoop Culture clothing and lifestyle line and a Manhattan coffee shop.

“I’m not doing it for the money,” she said. “It’s something that resonates with me. I wouldn’t be part of something that wasn’t meaningful to me.”

Darrell Lovell, a clinical assistant political science professor at West Texas A&M University and co-author of the book “Name, Image, and Likeness Policies” (Routledge, 2024) said the program was “one of the more unique that I’ve seen” but appeared to be a “textbook example of how NIL should be used. It’s contracting out to a student athlete to use their name, image and likeness to advance your cause, whether that cause is religious, or whether that cause is selling Lamborghinis.”

College protests

Weiss’s time at Columbia has overlapped with a number of high-profile pro-Palestinian demonstrations that drew the alarm of pro-Israel Jewish organizations and the cancellation of $400 million in research funding by the Trump administration.

The protests made Weiss "more aware of” her Judaism, she said. “I’m not the most religious person, and my family, growing up, wasn’t the most religious,” she said. “But it’s become more a part of my life, especially since getting to college.”

The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism's introductory video featuring Weiss and the other athletes has already been released over the nonprofit’s social platforms, including Instagram and TikTok.

It includes brief interviews and competition or training footage. It shows a wrestler, a woman’s track and field star working out in the gym and a towering male basketball player leading his locker room in a rousing chant of “Shabbat Shalom!”

Weiss’ segments show archived game footage of her as a ponytailed girl draining a long jumper and as a young woman in an interview in her family’s Hewlett home. “There’s not so much representation in women’s basketball for young Jewish athletes,” she says.

Her own Instagram — she is shooting over a defender in the profile picture — now features an image from the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism campaign, too. It is a picture of Weiss, spinning a basketball on her forefinger, captioned “Jewish Athlete Ambassador.”