While many of his fellow NBA alumni have explored post-playing careers in broadcasting or coaching, Amar’e Stoudemire is considering a very different path.
“That’s a lot of school but it’s not far-fetched, so you never know,” Stoudemire, 43, told TMZ Sports in a story published Monday, July 6, revealing he is considering becoming a rabbi.
Stoudemire was raised baptist but began his conversion to Judaism in 2018. He formally finished the process in 2020, the same year he ended his professional basketball career with Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel.
The former first-round NBA Draft pick spent 14 seasons in the NBA, primarily playing with the Phoenix Suns and New York Knicks. A six-time NBA All-Star, Stoudemire retired briefly in 2017 before returning to the sport and continuing his career in Israel — a decision that, he said at the time, required him to turn “down a lot of money.”
Since stepping away from basketball, he said he has kept himself active both physically and mentally.
“It’s about just continuing to keep your brain active,” he said. “You gotta stay physically fit. I try to keep both of those aspects active in my life so I’m always studying, I’m always preparing myself for whatever’s next. But God willing, things work out in the right direction.”
Stoudemire has not hesitated to share his faith with the public. In March, he posted a photo of himself via Instagram studying his Torah as a way to wish his followers a “wonderful” Sabbath.
“I’m not a perfect man, I made a lot of mistakes in my life. A righteous man falls down 7 times and get up 8,” he wrote in the caption, referring to a proverb in the Hebrew Bible.
If Stoudemire does want to become a rabbi, he will be in for an arduous process. Doing so can take four to six years of full-time study around religious texts, history, philosophy and more.
That would be nothing new to the 2026 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee. He told the New York Times in a 2018 interview that he is already active in studying the Torah.
“I study with elders, with rabbis, with everyone,” he said. “I don’t limit myself.”
That study actually began long before his conversion, thanks to his own curiosity. Stoudemire, who did not go to college, enrolled in classes at Arizona State University after the Suns drafted him, and he began to study the Torah then.
“I spent a lot of time in the library,” he told GQ in 2021. “I’d sit down with my Torah, with my books on geography and western civilization and the encyclopedia and line up all the things I learned within the Torah, to make sure it was all in sync. And I realized there were some similarities with what my mom was saying, that the diaspora could have been taken to America, and I wanted to learn more about that and try reconnecting with that.”
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