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Meet Abbey Levy, rising Jewish star in the brand new Professional Women’s Hockey League
(JTA) — One of Abigail Levy’s most powerful Jewish memories comes from a family Passover celebration when she was a child. In keeping with the tradition of searching for the afikomen, someone hid a broken piece of matzah and set her and the other children loose to find it.
“It got a little heated,” she recalled. “I ended up with a giant welt on my forehead.”
Levy’s competitive spirit then foreshadowed her career today, including her willingness to take lumps in pursuit of a win: She’s a professional ice hockey player, a goaltender in the brand-new Professional Women’s Hockey League, which took the ice for the first time on Jan. 1.
Levy is the backup goalie for PWHL New York, one of six teams in the new league, which like the others is named for the city where it plays. It’s an outcome that Levy, 23, could not have imagined while growing up in Congers, New York, about an hour north of the city in Rockland County.
“I never knew girls played hockey,” she said during a practice this week.
Her journey to the sport began as a spectator, watching her brother play. But by the time she was 10, Levy wanted in on the action. She asked her father Justin if she could join a team, and he said yes without hesitation.
Levy first played on boys’ teams in the New York City area. When she was 12, she met her best friend, Emma Kee, at hockey camp, and the pair made the trek to Minnesota to attend Shattuck-St. Mary’s School, a boarding school known for its hockey program.
Levy said her dad would visit on weekends, bringing his New York Jewish humor with him. “My dad is the biggest jokester on the planet,” she said. Still, being away from home didn’t come easy to Levy.
“When I was away from home in Minnesota for prep school, I realized life is not all about hockey, it’s about who’s around you, too,” she said. “I had to find a family within this group in order to play my best, and I know that everyone else around me has to do the same thing. Because all these girls are living away from home.”
Levy has carried the importance of family — real and chosen — with her ever since.
She spent her first two years of college playing for Minnesota State University, then transferred to Boston College. There, she was just a few hours away from Jewish holiday celebrations with her family, including her four siblings. The experience remains the strongest element of her Jewish identity.
“My parents definitely tried to teach me around the holidays,” she said. “But I think as a kid I was a little brat sometimes. I definitely just stuck with hockey and that was probably always on my mind. And now growing up, I’ll probably have to go back and look more into the religion.”
Levy set program records at both schools she attended. Playing for Boston College as a graduate student in 2022-2023, Levy was a semifinalist for the National Goalie of the Year award, and her .947 save percentage was the second-best in the country and set a single-season record at the school.
Levy was the third-string goalie on the U.S. Women’s National Team that won the gold medal at the International Ice Hockey Federation’s 2023 Women’s World Championship, though she did not appear in a game during the tournament.
When New York recruited Levy to join their roster ahead of the 2024 season, it was as much for for her reputation as an exemplary teammate as it was her skill on the ice.
“We like the person she is. We like the way that she takes care of herself and takes care of her teammates,” New York general manager Pascal Daoust told JTA. Levy was selected 64th overall in the 11th round of the PWHL draft in September and signed a one-year contract.
Abbey Levy is bringing a big style of play to the big city!
She’s ready to kick things off with her hometown team, @PWHL_NewYork! pic.twitter.com/7LRN40OI65
— PWHL (@thepwhlofficial) November 12, 2023
“There’s nothing to manage with her,” Daoust said. “We all know that goalies have their very own world or routine,” but Levy takes time to process feedback and listen as much as she talks, he added.
Daoust also hailed Levy’s consistency at the net.
“Sometimes a goalie is great one hour and not the next,” Daoust said. “You’re left to wonder, who’s going to be in the net?” But when Levy allows a goal, she recovers right away, he said.
As a teammate, Levy is known for her relaxed and supportive demeanor.
“Abbey is a very calm and chill presence in the dressing room. Nothing really fazes her,” said Lindsey Post, a fellow goaltender on the New York team. “She’s fun to be around. When we’re in the gym together, we’re always laughing. Same with on the ice, so she’s just a good goalie partner to have. We like to support each other all around along this road.”
Levy said building relationships with her teammates off the rink is critical to their success on it.
“I understand how to be friends with women, how we work, and how to push someone to do their best,” she said. “I know that will make our team so much better, because women care about things outside of the rink, as well as in the rink.”
“It’s just the little things on the ice like being valued and someone coming up to you and going out of their way and saying, ‘hey, you did great there,’” Levy continued. “And then off ice, hanging out together and inviting each other out to things.”
Playing in New York, Levy knows she’s fortunate to be close to her family. But for her teammates — many of whom hail from Canada — it can be isolating to play so far from home.
“Regardless of your age, you still need that family and support,” she said. “I get to go home every day to my family in New York. But some of these girls, they don’t. They live alone. So it’s just being that person to say, ‘how are you doing today?’ Or, ‘hey, nice shot.’ I think this is a huge part of hockey.”
Alex Carpenter, a forward who serves as the team’s alternate captain, also praised Levy for her presence on the squad.
“She’s not your stereotypical goalie,” Carpenter told JTA. “She’s pretty relaxed and chill on game days and even practice days. So it’s a lot of fun getting to interact with her more in the professional setting.”
While the PWHL is in its early days, Levy said she appreciates the role she plays as a Jewish athlete, especially as a model for young Jewish girls. There are at least two other Jewish women who play in the league: Boston’s team features defender Kaleigh Fratkin and goalie Aerin Frankel.
“For male athletes, it’s a bit different,” Levy said. “But at least for the women’s game, what I’ve noticed is hockey really is for all of us. Everyone’s very proud.”
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The post Meet Abbey Levy, rising Jewish star in the brand new Professional Women’s Hockey League appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Treasure Trove remembers how Jewish Canadians reached out to rebuild poor neighbourhoods in Israel
Canadian Jewry should be proud of the support it has given to Israel during this very difficult time in its history. The outpouring of love and support is nothing new: it is something we have been doing since long before Israel was born.
To cite one example, this is a street sign in Jaffa that reads that the street is dedicated to the Canadian charities that donated funds to rehabilitate the neighbourhood.
The neighbourhood is Jaffa Dalet, which was built in the 1950s for new immigrants. By the 1970s it was a down-and-out area, one of the poorest in Israel, which had streets with numbers and no names.
Jaffa Dalet was one of 160 distressed neighbourhoods throughout Israel that prime minister Menachem Begin announced in 1978 would be rehabilitated in a joint project between the government of Israel and world Jewry. Named “Project Renewal”, the Jewish Agency joined as a partner, and undertook to twin Jewish communities around the world with specific neighbourhoods in Israel.
Jaffa Dalet was twinned with Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon, and it is the support from these communities, and donations from other Canadians, that is memorialized in this street sign. Other Canadian Project Renewal twinnings were Montreal with Yerucham, Toronto with Beit Dagan, and unfederated communities in Ontario and the West with Or Yehudah.
Today, Jaffa is a mixed community of Jews and Arabs and includes many Falash Mura who arrived from Ethiopia about 20 years ago. The area is again going through a phase of urban renewal (Pinui Binui in Hebrew, literally “evacuation and construction”) in which old apartment buildings are being demolished and replaced with more modern and larger buildings. The process allows existing residents to enjoy new and more spacious apartments without having to leave their neighbourhood, while the area’s infrastructure is updated and more residential units are built.
Jewish Canadians responded when the call came from Israel in the 1970s to help build the country. There is much rebuilding required now as a result of the wars Israel has fought since Oct. 7, 2023, and no doubt Canadian Jewry will continue to respond to the call. Our actions today will long be remembered, whether in the name of a street or in the knowledge that when help was needed, we were there.
Here’s hoping that 2025 finally brings a quick return of the hostages, safety for Israel’s soldiers, comfort to those who have lost so much, and peace for Israel and the entire region.
The post Treasure Trove remembers how Jewish Canadians reached out to rebuild poor neighbourhoods in Israel appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Shabbat Mikeytz: The Power of Dreams
A Torah scroll. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Dreams play a very important part in the Biblical narrative. We have read in recent weeks about Yaakov’s dream of angels going up and down a ladder. Yosef dreamt about his own future — as well as the dreams of the baker and the butcher and those of Pharaoh. The implication is that these dreams were all reliable messages, coming as Yosef says, from God.
The question we have to answer is to what extent dreams should be relied on. To this day, there are people who make a living out of interpreting dreams. Are they charlatans taking advantage of the credulous, or are they onto something?
When it comes to Yosef and Pharaoh, they both had dreams which came true. In the case of Yosef, it’s his turning from a victim in a pit to the ruler of Egypt. In the case of Pharaoh, it’s a premonition of seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. But later on, when the Torah talks about false prophets, it’s talking about dreamers who should not be relied on (Devarim 13).
It will come as no surprise that the Talmud has pages about how to react to dreams and interpret them. Most take dreams very seriously, but disagree over interpretations and their validity. Others do not. The variety and disagreements that you can find in the Talmud are proof of how controversial dreams were then — and indeed, remain so for many people now.
Rav Chisdah said a dream that’s not interpreted is like a letter that’s not read. So if you ignore it, you’re not going to get any message. He also said that neither a good nor a bad dream is entirely fulfilled. On the cynical side, Rav Yochanan said that there’s no such thing as a dream without idle information — which is about right for most of my dreams.
The Gemara deals with the charlatans who make a living out of interpreting dreams. Rav Akiva said that there were 24 interpreters of dreams in Jerusalem, and each one disagreed as to what the interpretation was. Bar Hadaya, a popular interpreter, would give a good interpretation of a dream to anybody who paid him money and a bad interpretation if they did not. One rabbi who had a bad interpretation because he wouldn’t pay the first time, came back with money and then got a good interpretation. Plenty of those are still around today.
Then you have what I might call the Freudians. Shmuel bar Nachmani said that a person is shown in his dream only the thoughts of his own heart (i.e., mind). In other words, dreams are a reflection of the subconscious, which sounds as though it was written by Sigmund Freud himself. Of course they didn’t use those terms at that time. Rava said that one is neither shown a golden palm tree nor an elephant going through the eye of a needle in a dream. Dreams only contain images that a person has actually seen.
Nevertheless, these pages are full of all kinds of attempts to interpret what one dreams. I have to say that after a year of almost constant nightmares, I’m at last beginning to have sweet dreams. And so I wish you all a very happy Hanukkah and may all your dreams be sweet and amusing.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.
The post Shabbat Mikeytz: The Power of Dreams first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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How the Media Blamed Israel for Ruining Bethlehem’s Christmas (Again)
Tourists walk in Manger Square outside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Dec. 2, 2019. Photo: Reuters / Mussa Qawasma.
Once again, it’s that time of the year. But we won’t repeat the obvious: the media love blaming Israel for ruining Christmas in Bethlehem.
We will, however, point at the strategy they use to achieve this.
Here is the issue: The media need to cover what they see. And in Bethlehem, they see a baby Jesus doll placed in rubble; no foreign tourists; and protests in solidarity with Gaza. It is undoubtedly a somber Christmas in Jesus’ traditional birthplace, and it should be reported.
But the media should and can apply critical thinking in their choice of interviewees and background material. And they are not doing so.
The Only Priest in Bethlehem?
The media star of the season, except for Jesus, was (again) Munther Isaac, a pastor at Bethlehem’s Lutheran Church.
Outlets like Reuters, BBC, ABC News, and NBC News were happy to quote Isaac for a simple reason: His church was responsible for the media stunt showing baby Jesus as a Palestinian child amid Gaza rubble.
Fair enough. But nowhere did these outlets mention that Isaac has also justified the October 7 massacre, and has been described as “the high priest of antisemitic Christianity.”
Respected news outlets should not fall prey to the manipulations of one priest. Professional coverage should have bothered to contrast his view with that of other voices in the local Christian community.
But the problem runs deeper. These media outlets rely on Palestinian producers in Bethlehem who would never undermine — out of fear or bias — this anti-Israeli narrative. And their foreign bosses would not dare question their work, because they need their connections.
Selective Background
More proof of the media’s seasonal bias against Israel can be gleaned from the background information provided in certain stories.
Instead of reminding news consumers about the Palestinian Authority’s responsibility for the dwindling numbers of local Christians, many outlets include lengthy background paragraphs about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
In Reuters‘ story, for example, a whole section is dedicated to Israel’s settlement activity. One exceptionally irrelevant passage reads:
Israel has built Jewish settlements, deemed illegal by most countries, across the territory. Israel disputes this, citing historical and biblical ties to the land. Several of its ministers live in settlements and favour their expansion.
Similarly, the AP’s “Christmas in Bethlehem” photo collection includes a picture of the security barrier that partially surrounds the city, as a man just happens to walk past graffiti that reads: “Walls are meant for bombing.” Never mind that this wall stood there when Bethlehem enjoyed crowded and celebratory holiday seasons.
And let’s not forget that this bias is not limited to the Christian holidays. Every holiday celebrated by Palestinians in the region — from Ramadan to Easter — gets automatically evaluated based on Israel’s actions.
It never works the other way around, making it seem that Palestinians bear no responsibility whatsoever. For example, the media never outright blamed Hamas for ruining the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, which was deliberately chosen as the date for the October 7 massacre.
For the media, it seems, the “oppressed” Palestinians are granted automatic virtue, while the Israeli “oppressors” are seen as innately evil. The holiday season is just another opportunity to show it.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post How the Media Blamed Israel for Ruining Bethlehem’s Christmas (Again) first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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