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Why your synagogue, and mine, needs a pickleball court
(JTA) — The weekday minyan at my synagogue has been moved from the sanctuary to its airy social hall. And whenever I attend I have the same lofty thought: This would make a great pickleball court.
Pickleball, the subject of countless breathless articles calling it the fastest growing sport in America, is essentially tennis for people with terrible knees. Players use hard paddles to knock a wiffle ball across a net, on a court about a third as big as a tennis court. It’s weirdly addictive, and because the usual game is doubles and the court is so small, it’s pleasantly social. I play on a local court (I won’t say where, because it’s hard enough to get playing time), where a nice little society has formed among the regulars.
“A nice little society among the regulars” is also how I might describe a synagogue. Or at least that’s the argument I fantasize making before my synagogue board, in a “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”-style speech that will convince them to let me set up a net in the social hall so I can play in the dead of winter. I dream of doing for synagogues and pickleball what Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, did for shuls and pools: He popularized the notion of “synagogue-centers” that would include prayer services as well as adult ed, Hebrew schools, theater, athletics and, yes, swimming pools.
I might even quote David Kaufman, who wrote a history of the synagogue-center movement called “Shul With a Pool”: “Kaplan was the first to insist that the synagogue remain the hub from which other communal functions derive. Only then might the synagogue fulfill its true purpose: the fostering of Jewish community.”
Alas, the title “Mordecai Kaplan of Pickleball” may have to go to Rabbi Alex Lazarus-Klein of Congregation Shir Shalom, a combined Reform and Reconstructionist synagogue near Buffalo, New York — which knows from winter. Last week he sent me a charming essay saying that his synagogue has begun twice-weekly pickleball nights in its social hall. About 40 members showed up on its first night in November, and it’s been steady ever since.
“When my synagogue president presented the idea during High Holy Day services, many of our members rolled their eyes,” Lazarus-Klein, 49, wrote. But the rabbi counters by citing Kaplan and paraphrasing one of his forebears, Rabbi Henry Berkowitz, a 19th-century Reform rabbi who encouraged synagogues in the 1880s “to create programming related to physical training, education, culture, and entertainment to help better compete with social clubs. Over the years, synagogues have experimented with all types of sports activities including bowling, basketball, and, more recently, Gaga. Why not pickleball as well?”
Lazarus-Klein also told me in an interview that his synagogue doesn’t do catering, so the “social hall just sits empty except for High Holidays or bigger events.”
“Our buildings were built for just a few times a year. It’s a shame,” he said. “We have tried as a congregation to get our building more use. We rent to a preschool, we have canasta groups, we have adult education. But for large swaths [of time], especially the social hall is just completely empty.”
Lazarus-Klein wrote that the pickleball sessions have attracted regular synagogue-goers, as well as “many others who had never been to any other synagogue event outside of High Holy Days.”
The players also cross generations, including the rabbi’s 9- and 12-year- old sons and congregants as old as 70. “With a little ingenuity and a few hundred dollars, our empty social hall is suddenly filled several nights a week.”
I offered the rabbi two other arguments for in-shul pickling. First, hosting pickleball honors the spirit of any synagogue that has “Shalom” in its name: By bringing the court under its roof, the synagogue avoids the turf battles between tennis players and picklers that are playing out, sometimes violently, in places across the country.
And I shared with Lazarus-Klein my obsession with the synagogue as a “third place” — sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s idea of public places “that host the regular, voluntary, informal and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.”
“That’s a great way of thinking of it,” said Lazarus-Klein. “I think our membership does kind of use it that way. It’s another base, not where they’re working and not where their home is, where they can feel at home.”
The “shul with a pool” has long been derided by traditionalists who say the extracurriculars detract from the religious function of synagogues. Kaufman quotes Israel Goldstein, the rabbi of B’nai Jeshurun in New York, who in 1928 complained that “whereas the hope of the Synagogue Center was to Synagogize the tone of the secular activities of the family, the effect has been the secularization of the place of the Synagogue…. [I]t has been at the expense of the sacred.”
Lazarus-Klein, who was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. argues that there is sacred in the secular, and vice versa.
“I think a synagogue is a community,” he told me. “A community is a place that supports each other and it’s certainly not just about Jewish ritual, right? It’s about being together in all different ways. And the pickleball just really expands what we’re able to offer and who we’re able to reach.”
Kaplan, I think, deserves the last word: The synagogue, he wrote in 1915, “should become a social centre where the Jews of the neighborhood may find every possible opportunity to give expression to their social and play instincts. It must become the Jew’s second home. It must become [their] club, [their] theatre and [their] forum.”
It must become, I know he would agree, a place for pickleball.
—
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Spike Lee says his pro-Palestinian NBA All-Star Game fit wasn’t meant as a dig against Deni Avdija
(JTA) — The director Spike Lee says he was not targeting the first Israeli NBA All-Star when he wore a pro-Palestinian outfit to the All-Star Game on Sunday.
Lee’s outfit which featured a keffiyeh-patterned sweater and flag-themed bag strap. Some of his critics charged that he had chosen the outfit especially because Deni Avdija, the Israeli star of the Portland Trail Blazers, was taking the court.
Lee put that idea to rest in a post on Instagram late Tuesday, saying that he had not known Avdija was Israeli because the Trail Blazers are a West Coast team. (Lee is a New York Knicks superfan.)
“There has been some conjecture about what I wore to the games on Saturday and Sunday. The clothes I wore are symbols of my concern for the Palestinian children and civilians, and my utmost belief in human dignity for all humankind,” Lee wrote. “What I wore was not intended as a gesture of hostility to Jewish people or to support violence against anyone, nor was it intended as a comment on the significance of Deni being an an All-Star.”
About his lack of familiarity with Avdija, whose World Team fell short in the round-robin contest featuring 28 NBA stars, Lee added, “He can BALL. NOW I DO KNOW.”
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Eli Sharabi’s ‘Hostage’ memoir named Jewish book of the year
(JTA) — Eli Sharabi’s memoir “Hostage,” recounting his experience in Hamas captivity after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, has been named Book of the Year by the National Jewish Book Awards, organizers announced Wednesday.
The awards, presented by the Jewish Book Council and considered among the most prestigious honors in Jewish literature, recognize outstanding English-language books of Jewish interest across dozens of categories. Founded in 1950, the program is the longest-running North American awards initiative devoted to Jewish books.
Sharabi’s memoir, which details his abduction from Kibbutz Be’eri and the more than year he spent in captivity, became a bestseller in Israel and was later released in English in the United States.
“This recognition means so much to me, not only personally, but for the memory of my family and all those we lost,” Sharabi said in a statement. “’Hostage’ is my testimony, a story of my survival, written so others could bear witness. I hope it helps ensure that what happened is never forgotten.”
Other major winners reflect the breadth of contemporary Jewish writing, spanning scholarship, fiction, memoir and children’s literature.
In American Jewish studies, Pamela S. Nadell won for “Antisemitism, an American Tradition,” a look at the forms antisemitism took in the country from the early Dutch settlers to the present day. The Russian-born journalist Julia Ioffe took the autobiography and memoir prize for “Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy.” The book blends memoir, journalism and history to examine modern Russia through the lens of women’s experiences.
Jack Fairweather’s “The Prosecutor: One Man’s Battle to Bring Nazis to Justice,” the story of a Jewish judge and Holocaust survivor from Stuttgart who pursued Nazi perpetrators in post-war Germany, won the biography award.
Fiction honors went to Allison Epstein for “Fagin the Thief,” a retelling of the Dickens novel “Oliver Twist” from the perspective of its Jewish antihero, and Zeeva Bukai received the debut fiction prize for “The Anatomy of Exile,” about the multigenerational echoes of a secret love affair between an Israeli Jewish woman and a Palestinian poet.
The Hebrew fiction in translation category recognized “Dog,” by Yishay Ishi Ron, translated by Yardenne Greenspan, which also earned a selection in the book club category. The novella’s protagonist is an Israeli combat veteran haunted by his service in one of the Gaza campaigns prior to Oct. 7.
This year’s awards arrive as the Jewish discourse has been reshaped by the aftermath of Oct. 7, a global surge in antisemitism and the polarizing debate over Israel that followed. Last year’s winner for book of the year, “10/7: 100 Human Stories” by Lee Yaron, was also an account of the attacks and their aftermath.
Jewish anxieties in light of Oct. 7 are the subject of Sarah Hurwitz’s “As A Jew: Reclaiming Our Story From Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us,” which won in the contemporary Jewish life and practice category. Hurwitz, a speechwriter in the Obama administration, provides a primer on Jewish history, texts and practices in order to counter what she calls misinformation among Jews, their allies and their critics.
“Especially amid rising antisemitism and Jewish authors facing increased scrutiny, Jewish books have the power to create and sustain community,” said Naomi Firestone-Teeter, CEO of Jewish Book Council, in a statement announcing the winners.
In “Hostage,” Sharabi writes about the terror of his abduction and the daily struggle to survive after Hamas fighters stormed Kibbutz Be’eri. He would spend 491 days in captivity, much of it in tunnels beneath Gaza, before being released on Feb. 8, 2025, as part of a negotiated deal. Throughout the ordeal, Sharabi clung to the hope of rescue, writing: ‘I refuse to let myself drown in pain. I am surviving. I am a hostage. In the heart of Gaza. A stranger in a strange land. In the home of a Hamas-supporting family. And I’m getting out of here. I have to. I’m getting out of here. I’m coming home.”
Other nonfiction winners included Elissa Bemporad’s “Jews in the Soviet Union: A History: Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life, 1917–1930, Volume 1,” which won in history; Anna Hájková’s “People Without History are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust,” honored in Holocaust studies alongside translator William Ross Jones; and Tobias Schiff’s “Return to the Place I Never Left,” which won the Holocaust memoir award, with Dani James recognized for translation.
Awards recognizing contemporary Jewish thought and scholarship included Lawrence Grossman’s “Living in Both Worlds: Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States, 1945–2025,” and Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach’s “A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe,” which won multiple prizes, including scholarship and women’s studies.
In children’s and young readers’ categories, Alison Goldberg’s “The Remembering Candle,” illustrated by Selina Alko, won for children’s picture book; Janice Shapiro’s “Honoria: A Fortuitous Friendship” took the prize for middle grade literature; and Eugene Yelchin’s graphic memoir “I Wish I Didn’t Have to Tell You This” won in young adult literature.
Other winners include Miriam Udel’s “Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature,” which won in education and Jewish identity; Raegan Steinberg, Alexandre Cohen and Evelyne Eng’s “Arthurs: Home of the Nosh,” honored in food writing and cookbooks; Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s “Golden Threads,” which won for Sephardic culture; Elizabeth E. Imber’s “Uncertain Empire,” for writing based on archival material; and Aharon Shabtai’s “Requiem & Other Poems,” translated by Peter Cole, which won the poetry award.
The winners will be honored at an awards ceremony in New York next month hoisted by the entertainer Jonah Platt. At the ceremony, journalist Sam Feedman will be presented with the council’s Mentorship Award, named in honor of Carolyn Starman Hessel, longtime former director of the JBC. Freedman, a former New York Times reporter and professor at the Columbia Journalism School, taught a popular course that helped over 100 students turn their ideas into books, including “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry,” Gal Beckerman’s 2010 history of the Soviet Jewry movement.
“Sam Freedman changed my life as a writer,” Beckerman said in a statement. “He believed in me before I believed in myself, pushed me to take my work seriously, and opened doors I didn’t even know existed. With tough love and deep generosity, he guided me through the daunting process of writing a book as if it were his own. What he did for me, he did for dozens of writers.”
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Andorra’s tiny Jewish community reels after local carnival features mock execution of Israeli effigy
(JTA) — An annual festival in Andorra drew condemnation from the country’s small Jewish community after an effigy bearing the Israeli flag was staged in a mock trial and then hung and shot.
The incident was part of the traditional Catalan festival Carnestoltes, which occurs yearly before Lent, the 40-day period that precedes Easter. At Monday’s festival in Andorra, where a mock king is typically tried and burned, organizers instead used an effigy wearing blue with the Israeli flag painted on its face.
During the festivities, the Israeli effigy was symbolically tried, hung, shot and burned, according to social media posts and a report in the Israeli outlet YNet.
ABERRANTE muestra de antisemitismo en Andorra durante el carnaval. pic.twitter.com/GeIdF635wd
— Dani Lerer (@danilerer) February 16, 2026
The incident drew outcry from the microstate’s tiny Jewish community, which only just got its first full-time rabbi, a Chabad emissary, in the last two years.
“This is a ritual they perform every year as part of carnival, where they mock many things,” Jewish Andorra resident Esther Pujol told YNet. “This time they dressed the effigy in the colors of the Israeli flag, with a Star of David on its face. They put it on trial, sentenced it to death and carried out the sentence by shooting and burning it. It is completely unacceptable.”
Pujol told the outlet that it was the first time she had seen the festival include anti-Israel or antisemitic elements, and that she had contacted Andorran lawmakers to express her outrage. The mayor of Encamp, the city where the incident took place, and local politicians took part in the ceremony, according to YNet.
The European Jewish Congress also decried the display in a post on X, writing that the mock-execution was a “deeply disturbing act that risks normalizing antisemitism and incitement.”
“This incident requires unequivocal condemnation, full clarification of responsibilities and concrete measures to ensure that antisemitism is never tolerated in public celebrations or institutions in Andorra or anywhere in Europe,” the post continued.
Other Lent festivities have also been the site of antisemitism in recent years, with Belgian celebrations in 2019 featuring antisemitic caricatures and a Spanish parade in 2020 featuring a Holocaust-themed display.
The incident marks a rare instance of open turmoil for Jews in Andorra, which is nestled between France and Spain in the Pyrenees mountains. While France and Spain have seen widespread pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitic incidents in recent years, Andorra has largely avoided similar tensions.
In September, Andorra formally announced its recognition of Palestinian statehood alongside a host of other European nations during the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
But local Jews have also sought to remain under the radar, considering that Andorra officially prohibits non-Catholic houses of worship. The Jewish community calls their gathering place a community center rather than a synagogue. In 2023, Andorra’s parliament elected a Jewish lawmaker for the first time.
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