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For National Women’s Soccer League commissioner Jessica Berman, growing women’s soccer starts with Jewish values
(JTA) — Some sports fans collect trading cards. Others collect autographs. You could say Jessica Berman collects sports leagues.
Berman, a Jewish day school alum with deep roots in New York’s Jewish community, took the reins of the National Women’s Soccer League in April 2022. It was the latest stop in a decorated and pioneering front-office career that has included prominent positions with the National Lacrosse League and the National Hockey League — as well as a portfolio as a labor lawyer that included work with the NBA, NFL and MLB.
The National Women’s Soccer League, which held its inaugural season in 2013, currently has 12 teams and a regular season that runs from March through October. Berman stepped in at a crucial time for the league, which was navigating the a major sex abuse scandal in 2021 that led to lifetime bans for four coaches and the resignation of one of Berman’s predecessors.
In addition to managing the fallout from that scandal, Berman is charged with presiding over the league’s continued growth. The NWSL added two teams in 2022 and plans to expand to 16 teams by 2026. This comes at a time when the FIFA Women’s World Cup has also experienced an uptick in popularity and grew to 32 countries this year. This summer, 61 NWSL players appeared on World Cup rosters in the tournament.
“Hopefully that inspires people to recognize that when we invest resources in girls and women, that great things will happen and that they’re incredible, their athleticism is incredible and incredibly entertaining,” Berman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
One of her goals, she said, is to “have people here in this country recognize that if you loved watching the World Cup, you don’t have to wait every four years to get excited.”
Berman’s love of sports began during her childhood in Brooklyn, where she grew up in a Conservative Jewish household and attended Jewish day school from first through eighth grade at the East Midwood Jewish Center. She said she regularly celebrated Shabbat with her family and spent Jewish holidays with her extended family, who were Orthodox. She said she was “definitely raised with a very strong sense of being Jewish in my community.”
Berman, who is in her mid-40s, said she didn’t play traditional team sports growing up, in part because of a lack of access. Title IX, the federal statute guaranteeing equal access to sports for boys and girls, had been enacted in 1972 but had not yet changed the sports landscape everywhere.
“Looking back on it, having grown up in a very urban environment where Title IX I don’t think permeated the urban centers as quickly as it did suburbs, there really weren’t sports for girls in my childhood,” she said. “And even in my community, it was definitely not something that girls did.”
Instead, Berman’s sports involvement was focused on dance, and she took classes from age 6 through college. Her interest in sports management as a career emerged in high school.
“Having grown up in Brooklyn, I decided that sport was one of the few things in our social fabric that had the power to unite communities,” Berman said. “I was really obsessed with diversity and inclusion and how we could bring people together who had different backgrounds, and decided I wanted to work in an industry that had that kind of power.”
After earning her bachelor’s degree in sports management from the University of Michigan and her law degree from Fordham University, Berman launched her career in sports.
She first worked at the Los Angeles-based law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, which specializes in issues surrounding collective bargaining in professional sports. From there, Berman joined the NHL, where over the course of 13 years she would serve as senior counsel and a vice president overseeing numerous aspects of the league, from legal to corporate social responsibility to the NHL Foundation, the league’s philanthropic arm.
In 2019, Berman became the deputy commissioner of the National Lacrosse League, making her the first woman to hold that title in a men’s professional sports league.
When the opportunity first presented itself, Berman told USA Today, she was hesitant about the demands of the role and what it would mean for her family. But she recalled her son saying, “Are you kidding, Mom? This is going to make you a pioneer.” She spent two and a half years at the NLL before accepting the top job at the NWSL.
Berman said that while each sport has its own unique traditions and cultures, by and large they are more similar than they are different. The biggest change with her job at the NWSL is navigating the gender divide that exists in professional sports — from the fight for equal pay to challenges stemming from sexism, financial constraints and media coverage. Last year, U.S. Soccer became the sport’s first national governing body to promise equal pay for its men’s and women’s national teams, a milestone victory in the fight for pay equity in sports following a long and high-profile fight by members of the women’s team.
“Women’s sports has just historically been under-resourced, undervalued and measured based on past performance, not future potential,” Berman said. “And it has unfortunately created what has become historically, I think, a self-fulfilling cycle of not being in a position to reach its full potential.”
As women’s soccer is on the rise in the U.S. and around the world, another demographic is particularly underrepresented: Jewish women. There were no known Jewish players in the World Cup, though there have been in the past, and few, if any, in the NWSL.
“I can’t think of a cultural barrier or a reason why that would be true,” Berman said. “Particularly when you think about the hotbeds of soccer and girls soccer in our country, they’re certainly places where there are plenty of Jews in those communities. So I have no idea why that would be the case.”
While Jewish representation is lacking on the pitch, Berman is not the only Jewish woman in a prominent position in the NWSL. Two former players, Yael Averbuch West and Cami Levin Ashton, are now general managers in the league.
Averbuch West said Berman is dedicated to helping the league and its clubs continue to grow and frequently checks in to offer support — including by attending games in person.
While the two haven’t explicitly discussed their Jewishness, Averbuch West said Berman “feels familiar” because of their shared background. “Especially Jewish women in sports, there’s not many of us,” she added.
Averbuch West, who last played in 2018, said she still hears from fans who say she is their favorite player because she is one of the rare Jewish players.
“I think for young soccer fans and players, to see a Jewish woman involved in the game and running one of the best leagues in the world is hugely important,” Averbuch West said.
Does Berman feel her Jewish values overlap with her job? “Oh my God, yes,” she said. “In this role in particular, I’ve never felt more aligned with the values that were instilled in me as a child, which include empowering others and ensuring that there is an equal playing field, that marginalized and underrepresented groups have to support each other and work together.”
Berman said a central part of her Jewish education was focused on the history of oppression shared by the Jewish and Black communities.
“The values I was raised with was to say, like, we are less than 1% of the population,” she said. “That doesn’t only mean that we have to support and invest in our own people and communities, but also look out for other marginalized groups and recognize that there’s a shared experience in not being offered the opportunity to be taken seriously and treated fairly.”
Berman, who now lives in Westchester County and belongs to Westchester Jewish Center, a Conservative congregation, said Judaism is still part of her family life. Her older son was supposed to celebrate his bar mitzvah in Israel, but that was derailed by the pandemic. Her younger son is preparing for his bar mitzvah in December, and Berman said she plans to take her kids to Israel next summer.
In May, Berman was honored by UJA-Federation of New York, where she was presented with the David J. Stern Leadership Award, named for the longtime Jewish NBA commissioner who died in 2020.
National Women’s Soccer League Commissioner Jessica Berman holds the David J. Stern Leadership Award with her children, Noah, left, and Andrew, right. (Michael Priest Photography)
One of the speakers at Berman’s honorary luncheon was Mark Wilf, a Jewish businessman and philanthropist who owns the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings as well as the professional men’s and women’s soccer clubs in Orlando. Wilf has also led the boards of the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Agency for Israel, as well as 70 Faces Media, JTA’s parent company, and is active in Holocaust awareness efforts.
Wilf, as a team owner, first met Berman during her interview process for the job. He said he was “immediately impressed.” He also serves on the league’s executive committee, and said Berman has succeeded in “getting the league to grow in a variety of ways” — including through expanding the league office and number of teams, and in engaging with teams, players and the players union.
“I think given the role of the growth of women’s sports — you have the Women’s World Cup just recently, and you’ve seen all the growth in terms of the interest in the game, purchasing of franchises, the expansion process — I think that’s in large part [due] to her professionalism that’s helped build the league to where we are now,” Wilf said.
Throughout her career, Berman has worked closely with a number of other Jewish industry leaders, including NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who Berman said is “unapologetic about his Jewish heritage,” and NBA commissioner Adam Silver, from whom she said she has learned best practices as a league commissioner.
As the NWSL approaches the end of its regular season and looks toward the playoffs and beyond, Berman is grateful for the opportunity she has to “do what I think sports do best, which is use our power to change the world,” she said.
“My job is to inspire the next generation to think differently about opportunity, and in particular, women and girls,” she added. “I can’t imagine my purpose being more manifested than it is in this role right now.”
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The post For National Women’s Soccer League commissioner Jessica Berman, growing women’s soccer starts with Jewish values appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Herzog Confirms Behind-the-Scenes Negotiations with Hamas – Deal ‘Possible’
Israeli President Isaac Herzog looks on during a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, not pictured, in Washington, DC, on Oct. 25, 2022. Stefani Reynolds/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – President Isaac Herzog revealed on Sunday that contacts are ongoing between Israel and Hamas for a ceasefire and hostage release deal.
In a conversation with Yael Alexander, the mother of the abductee Edan Alexander who has been held captive for 422 days by Hamas, Herzog said that “there are negotiations behind the scenes – and it is possible.”
“I reiterate the call – now, after the agreement in Lebanon, it’s time to make a deal and bring the captives home,” Herzog said.
His meeting comes after Hamas released a video over the weekend showing Edan Alexander, an American-Israeli who was captured on October 7, 2023, while serving in the IDF. The video showed him pleading for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President-Elect Donald Trump to secure a deal.
“There are negotiations with a bitter and cruel enemy whose entire purpose in the video was to demoralize us all,” he said. “On the contrary – I think this video gave us a lot of strength.”
“I had a sleepless night,” Yael Alexander said – “Edan, his voice. and the video which plays continuously. You can see from the video that Edan is going through hell, he is screaming and his eyes look sad, but this gave me a lot of strength – Edan strengthened us with his call to us. We released this video, so everyone can see – Edan is alive, and many other captives are alive and the time has come to do something and release them.”
Out of the 101 hostages held in Gaza, estimates range as to the number still living, with some going as low as two dozen.
The post Herzog Confirms Behind-the-Scenes Negotiations with Hamas – Deal ‘Possible’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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The Voice of Jacob
Chabad Rabbi Zvi Kogan. Photo: @Chabad/X.
JNS.org – The Jewish world is grieving the horrific murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan in the United Arab Emirates. A gentle ambassador of Judaism, his young life was snuffed out by the perpetrators of evil. We grieve with his young widow, his parents and his family. May God grant them strength, solace and only simcha (“happiness”) in the future.
In this week’s Torah portion, Toldot, we read of the birth of twin sons to Isaac and Rebecca. These twins could not have been less identical. Genesis 25:27 tells us, “The boys grew; Esau became an expert hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a guileless man, dwelling in the tents (of Torah).”
Esau was a wild man, hunting animals as well as women. Jacob was a student of Torah. One was a gladiator, the other a sage. Esau would become the father of Rome, the destroyers of our temple, while Jacob went on to become one of the founding fathers of our faith, the patriarch who fathered the 12 tribes of Israel.
Who should we want our children to emulate: the wild warrior or the gentle scholar?
“The voice is the voice of Jacob, and the hands are the hands of Esau,” said Isaac when he was going to bestow the all-important blessings to his son and heir apparent. Jacob is forever represented by the soft voice of the Torah, of wisdom, reason and ethics. Esau, however, is not symbolized by the voice but by the violent hands that strike out and hurt others.
Jewish heroes have always been the peaceful giants of philosophy, wisdom, ethics and morals. Violent murderers are the antithesis of everything we stand for.
I feel that there is a danger today, when our heroes are our Israel Defense Forces soldiers, pilots and naval officers, as they surely should be. They are superheroes of body and soul. Every time a young man or woman puts on a Tzahal uniform, they put their lives on the line. They are prepared to give their lives to defend our homeland and our people. The most secular kibbutznik becomes a tzaddik, the holy of holies, when he makes that courageous commitment.
In fact, the Sheloh—Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz (1558-1628)—wrote that at the holiest moment of the year, on Yom Kippur, at the very climax of the Neilah service when we shout out Shema Yisrael (“Hear O Israel”), we should have in mind to give our life for God, Al Kiddush Hashem “to sanctify his name,” and it will be considered as if we actually did.
Those courageous chayalim make that pledge daily. And far too many have sacrificed their lives in the current war against terror. So it is entirely appropriate that they should be our superheroes. But the inherent danger here is that our children and the younger generation idealize war and military action, heroic though it may be. These wars of defense are a regrettable necessity in our neck of the woods. And today, sadly, Jews everywhere need to be able to defend themselves.
While we honor, cherish and admire our chayalim, they themselves would much rather be at their desktops, in the library or the yeshivah instead of on the front lines.
We dare not forget who we really are, the children of Jacob, B’nai Yisrael. Jacob is our eternal role model. Esau is the antithesis of everything we stand for.
Yes, believe it or not, Jews are pacifists. We are peace-loving people despite the scandalously libelous claims of genocide against us. Our enemies at the United Nations won’t acknowledge it, but it’s who we are.
Yes, we need the IDF, and we need it to be strong and fearless. But that is an unfortunate necessity, not an ideal.
Rabbi Zvi Kogan was a faithful scion of Jacob. His life was cut short by the hands of Esau. Perhaps the appropriate response to this tragedy would be to emulate his ways and enhance our own observance of this sacred ideal or to encourage another to embrace it.
May the voice of Jacob forever drown out and overpower the tumultuous, blood-stained hands of Esau. And may our reluctant warriors be able to go home and resume their gentle lives in peace and security.
The post The Voice of Jacob first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Unable to Destroy Israel Militarily, Its Enemies Resort to Lawfare
An exterior view of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, March 31, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
JNS.org – Jerusalem has decided to appeal the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) decision to issue warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant. Israel submitted an announcement to the ICC on Wednesday regarding its intention, along with a demand to delay the warrants’ implementation.
In its decision, the ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution and starvation as weapons of war as part of a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza.”
Netanyahu has called the accusation a “modern Dreyfus trial.”
Once again, the Jews have been placed in the docket, this time as antisemites seek to punish Israel on trumped-up charges of “genocide” against the Palestinian people, he said.
Netanyahu met in Jerusalem on Wednesday with U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who updated him on the efforts he is advancing in Congress against the ICC and countries that cooperate with it.
Amb. Alan Baker, director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs and the head of the Global Law Forum, told JNS that practically, “assuming states agree to honor the arrest warrants, despite their being inherently invalid and ultra vires [running against] the ICC statute, they could theoretically try to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if they enter their territory.”
In a statement published on Wednesday, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said Jerusalem’s notice of appeal “shows in detail to what degree the decision to issue the arrest warrants was baseless and without any factual or legal foundation whatsoever.”
Israel denies the authority of the ICC and the legitimacy of the warrants issued against the prime minister and the former defense minister, the statement continued.
Should the court reject the appeal, it will underscore to Israel’s friends in the United States and elsewhere the ICC’s bias against the Jewish state, it added.
The court lacks jurisdiction in the case for several reasons.
First, Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute that established the court, and second because Israel has its own independent, robust judiciary. Third, Palestine is not a state and does not meet the criteria for statehood under international law.
By calling for the arrest of Israel’s leaders, the ICC is violating the Rome Statute, which clearly states that complementarity is the crucial factor in such a decision.
Since Israel has a robust judicial system, it is unnecessary and unlawful for the ICC to involve itself in Israel’s internal matters, and by doing so the court breaches its foundational principles.
Furthermore, as a recent Wall Street Journal editorial noted, “The charge of deliberate starvation is absurd. Israel has facilitated the transfer of more than 57,000 aid trucks and 1.1 million tons of aid [into Gaza], even though Hamas’s rampant theft means Israel is provisioning its battlefield enemy, something the law can’t require.”
The warrant also, absurdly, calls for the arrest of Hamas leader Ibrahim al-Masri, otherwise known as Mohammed Deif, whom Israel and Hamas both say was killed in an Israeli airstrike in July.
By naming him together with Israel’s leaders and thereby feigning even-handedness, the ICC has only demonstrated morally repugnant equivalence.
The Wall Street Journal also highlighted the case of Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the U.N. Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. After she declared that the war against Hamas does not meet the qualifications for genocide, the United Nations announced that her contract will not be renewed, though it has denied the two things are linked.
According to Nderitu, the term “genocide” encapsulates the Holocaust, the Hutus’ mass murder of Tutsis in Rwanda, the Serbian attacks on Bosnian Muslims and the killings being carried out in Sudan.
“As a legal matter, establishing a pattern of violence as a genocide requires demonstrating intent. Israel’s campaign of self-defense doesn’t qualify,” the Journal‘s editorial noted.
The court’s baseless case against Israel’s leaders, coupled with Nderitu’s dismissal, demonstrates that the ICC is abusing the law for political means.
Several world leaders, including President Joe Biden, have harshly criticized the ICC decision.
Biden stated on Thursday evening that warrants were “outrageous.”
Rep. Mike Waltz, tapped by President-elect Donald Trump as National Security Advisor, tweeted, “The ICC has no credibility and these allegations have been refuted by the U.S. government. Israel has lawfully defended its people & borders from genocidal terrorists. You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC & UN come January.”
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has invited Netanyahu to visit his country, assuring him he faces no risk of arrest.
While ambiguous at first, France has declared it will not enforce the warrants as Israel is not a signatory to the ICC.
Some analysts have questioned whether France’s decision was linked to the ceasefire announced Wednesday between Hezbollah and Israel.
Famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz has announced he is assembling a “dream team” to defend Israel in The Hague.
This support is crucial because so much of the international community has fallen for the widespread anti-Israel propaganda.
Hala Rharrit, a former U.S. State Department diplomat who has made her anti-Israel opinions well known, said in an Al-Jazeera interview that most of the world is feeling that “finally, finally, there is a sense that the international community is taking action, far little too late.”
She said that in the State Department, “secretly, many American diplomats are celebrating this.”
Rharrit resigned in April in protest over Biden’s support for Israel.
Several world leaders have condoned the ICC decision.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the ICC warrants “courageous.”
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said, “The states that signed the Rome convention are obliged to implement the decision of the court. It’s not optional.”
Some experts have questioned whether the warrant and its implications could prevent civilized nations from fighting terrorism.
“If this progresses to a large-scale issuance of arrest warrants for a wider range of military people and politicians, it could certainly serve as a warning to states involved in fighting terror,” said Amb. Baker.
“But this issue is more of a blatant Israel-directed issue and would not necessarily be used against other states fighting terror,” he added.
According to Natasha Hausdorff, legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust, “Every phrase of every sentence” in the court’s warrant “was in fact false.”
In a conversation with Matt Frei of Leading Britain’s Conversation (LBC), Hausdorff provided a stinging rebuke to the ICC. “One example is that in furtherance of this allegation of starvation, the prosecutor relied on a report that suggested that famine might come to parts of the Gaza Strip,” she said.
“That report was subsequently debunked by a Famine Review Committee report that indicated it had been based on insufficient or incomplete information and it drew implausible conclusions,” she said.
“The overall conclusion of that process and also from the press release the court put out on Thursday is that they have made that determination to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant on the basis of this slew of false information,” she said.
Should Israel be approaching this challenge differently?
According to Baker, Israel needs to show the countries that are party to the ICC statute “that the issuance of the warrants is ultra vires the terms of the statute since the ICC cannot exercise jurisdiction in the territory of a non-state entity that has no sovereign territory.”
He added that it is “widely acknowledged that no state of Palestine exists, and the fact that the Palestinian leadership has manipulated the United Nations and ICC to treat them as if they are a state doesn’t alter the basic legal and political fact that there is no state of Palestine. Hence the ICC cannot be given jurisdiction by a non-state, and cannot issue arrest warrants.”
“Also,” he said, “as Israel is not a party to the ICC statute, its senior officials enjoy state and diplomatic immunity and thus cannot be arrested.”
The post Unable to Destroy Israel Militarily, Its Enemies Resort to Lawfare first appeared on Algemeiner.com.