Dr. Jonathan Halpert, a New York City basketball icon, now in his 42nd season at the helm of the Yeshiva University basketball program. He is the longest tenured men’s college basketball coach in New York City history – on a list that includes CCNY’s Nat Holman; NYU’s Howard Cann; and St. John’s mentors Lou Carnesecca and Joe Lapchick. Additionally, Halpert is currently the fourth-longest tenured active head coach in all of basketball, ranking only behind Jim Smith (Saint John’s, Minn. – 50th season), Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Herb Magee (Philadelphia Univ. – 47th season) and Glen Robinson (Franklin & Marshall – 42nd season).
An alumnus of Yeshiva University High School for Boys, and Yeshiva University as both an undergraduate and doctoral student, Halpert enters 2012-13 just two wins shy of becoming the seventh head coach in New York City history to register 400 career victories. This would put the mentor in exclusive company with: Carnesecca (526); Howard Cann (NYU; 429); Joe Nesci (NYU; 424); Nat Holman (CCNY; 423); Ray Rankis (Baruch; 419); and Claire Bee (Rider/LIU Brooklyn; 412).
Yeshiva opened a basketball court, which was named in Halpert’s honor after the 2011-12 campaign, on its Wilf Campus in 1985. From the opening of the gym in 1985, Halpert owns a 333-316 record, and led the Maccabees to 15-straight .500-plus records (1987-88 to 2001-02). He has coached four teams to the Eastern College Athletic Conference postseason championship tournaments (first: 1996-97), as well as the Skyline Conference playoffs in 10 of the last 13 seasons.
Halpert has received a pair of Skyline Conference Coach of the Year awards (1999-00, 2009-10), as well as the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) “Guardians of the Game” honor in 2003-04. The Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association (MBWA) bestowed him with its “Good Guy” award in 1997-98, and he led YU to a pair of College Basketball Officials Association (CBOA) Sportsmanship Award in 1979-80 and 1996-97. During his illustrious career, Halpert has coached over 300 student-athletes, including a trio of father/son tandems.
The subject of numerous articles in the New York media, as well a feature piece on ESPN in early 1997, Halpert received his bachelor’s and bachelor of Hebrew literature degrees from Yeshiva in 1966. He went on to earn a master’s degree from New York University in educational psychology, and later received a Ph. D. from the Ferkauf Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Yeshiva, with a concentration in mental retardation, in 1978. Halpert resides in Flushing, N.Y., with his wife, Aviva. The couple are the proud parents of five children (Tzippora Baratz; Ariella Kaszovitz; Tzofit Goldfarb; Rabbi Yehuda Halpert; and Rafi Halpert – who has joined the Macs’ coaching staff for the 2012-13 season), and grandparents of 18 children.
