Uncategorized
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.
—
The post Why your synagogue, and mine, needs a pickleball court appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
The Israeli government wants you to stop calling Oct. 7 a ‘massacre.’ Yes, really.
The Oct. 7 attack was a massacre. But Israeli authorities would prefer you not call it that.
The Prime Minister’s Office demanded that a bill establishing a national memorial for the incursion remove the term “massacre” from its title, with Minister Mickey Zohar explaining that since Israel is “strong,” no one can “massacre the people of Israel.”
In other words: To accurately describe what happened when Hamas struck Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 —killing almost 1,200 and kidnapping 251 hostages — is unpatriotic, signals weakness, and is, somehow, leftist.
This is not really a matter of semantics. It’s an attempt to control language in order to distort reality. And it’s tied to the Netanyahu government’s vast project of evading accountability for the many military and political failures that contributed to the horrors of Oct. 7.
Their method is time-tested. Early versions of it appear in classical sources, in which rulers often rename actions to soften their meaning.
King Saul masks disobedience as a religious act. King David cloaks the fact that he planned the death of his romantic rival Uriah in the language of war.
Ancient Greeks observed that political conflicts alter not only reality but also the meaning of words. Thucydides described how during civil strife, recklessness was called courage, moderation was branded as weakness, and caution was treated as betrayal, illuminating how language could be inverted to serve passion and polarization.
In ancient Rome, the phenomenon assumed a more formal character. The emperor Aurelian gave himself the title restitutor orbis, meaning “restorer of the world”; he framed a series of brutal conflicts he embarked on to reunite the Roman empire as an act of correction, rather than conquest. It was a formulation that wrapped violence in a mantle of legitimacy and proper governance.
As political systems evolved, so did linguistic sophistication. During the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror was overseen by a body called the Committee of Public Safety. The Nazi regime called its deportations of Jews to concentration camps “resettlement” and described some executions as “special treatment.” Stalin did not cause famine; there were “grain procurement difficulties.” Mao Zedong did not preside over catastrophe; he launched a “Great Leap Forward.”
George Orwell identified this mechanism with unmatched clarity in his novel 1984. His fictional government’s “Ministry of Truth” serves the function of degrading language until truth becomes inexpressible, with the slogan “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
The contradictions are deliberate. Their purpose is to train citizens to accept inversion and surrender their independent grasp of reality.
Orwell’s deeper insight was that the corruption of language precedes the corruption of politics. When words lose precision, accountability dissolves. Reality becomes malleable, and loyal followers will believe whatever they are told. If aggression is always “defense,” repression always “order,” and censorship always “responsibility,” there is little limit to what rulers can do.
The American novelist Kurt Vonnegut put it even more sharply — beautifully, even — in 1973’s Breakfast of Champions: “In nonsense is strength.”
This phenomenon is not confined to totalitarian regimes. Democracies, too, are tempted to soften language when confronting failure. Even — and perhaps especially — in Israel.
Thus, the killing of civilians becomes “harm to uninvolved civilians,” phrasing that distances attention from human reality. Torture becomes “moderate physical pressure.” Extrajudicial killings become “targeted prevention.”
Set aside the question of whether these measures are ever justified: It’s essential to note that the language itself undergoes distortion for political ends.
The Netanyahu government has a specific goal behind this approach. Avoiding the word “massacre” in describing Oct. 7 fits into its broader strategy of evading responsibility for the disaster itself.
Netanyahu has refused to accept any blame since the first hours after the attack, including by arguing that no investigation into his actions could take place during wartime, while prolonging the war as much as possible. At the same time, his allies attacked the Supreme Court to justify avoiding a state commission of inquiry with real authority.
To refuse to call Oct. 7 a massacre is to suggest it was somehow less brutal or devastating than it was. So let us dispel the nonsense.
A massacre involves the deliberate killing of a large number of defenseless people. It does not imply permanent strategic defeat. It does not preclude a military response afterward. It does not suggest inherent weakness. It describes a specific act: the intentional slaughter of civilians under circumstances in which they cannot defend themselves.
On Oct. 7, 2023, armed Hamas militants invaded Israel and committed a massacre, almost unopposed by Israeli security forces, in a crushing national collapse. Families were shot in their homes. People were hunted down, executed, or burned. Hostages were taken. Most of the victims were civilians. It was hours before the public heard anything from the shell-shocked Netanyahu.
Call it what it was. Truth combined with moral clarity, over time, are a nation’s deepest source of strength. Resistance to accurate language serves to dull the recognition that something profoundly shocking occurred — something that demands deep reckoning and change, not a continuation of the morally bereft and misleading status quo.
The post The Israeli government wants you to stop calling Oct. 7 a ‘massacre.’ Yes, really. appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
ADL retracts Tumbler Ridge shooting antisemitism claim
The ADL published and then retracted a claim that the alleged mass shooter at a school in Canada maintained a social media account with antisemitic posts, a day after it posted the erroneous information on its website.
The organization wrote Thursday at the bottom of an updated page about alleged Tumbler Ridge Secondary School shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar that it had incorrectly concluded that an X account containing the posts belonged to the alleged shooter. Nine people were killed in the shooting, including Van Rootselaar.
“A preliminary investigation uncovered an X account appearing to belong to the shooter. Upon further investigation, that X account has been found not credible. References to it have been removed,” the correction read.
Authorities in British Columbia said they could not speculate on the motive of the shooter.
The ADL, the most prominent U.S. antisemitism research and advocacy organization, had posted the claim Wednesday on its website. The Forward has reached out to the ADL for comment.
The error, from the ADL’s Center On Extremism, comes amid broader changes in the ADL’s approach.
The ADL’s original post said that on Sunday — two days before the attack — an X account connected to Van Rootselaar posted, “I need to hate jews because the zionists want me to hate jews. This benefits them, somehow.”
“The Tumbler Ridge shooter’s X profile photo also featured an image of the Christchurch shooter superimposed over a Sonnenrad, a neo-Nazi symbol, and a transgender pride flag,” the ADL wrote in the original post, referencing an antisemitic mass murder in New Zealand.
It did not link to the profile or include images of it, leaving the claim difficult to verify.
The Center On Extremism is a flagship program that has been overhauled in recent years as the organization has shifted toward a greater focus on fighting antisemitism. In September, it deleted its Glossary of Extremism, which had contained over 1,000 pages of background information on hate groups and ideologies. It said at the time that the entries were outdated.
The post ADL retracts Tumbler Ridge shooting antisemitism claim appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Can Trump save Israel from itself?
The Israeli government’s latest steps toward annexing the West Bank prove a dismal point: Catering to right-wing extremists has become the cabinet’s top priority — the rest of the country be damned.
In a blitz before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s White House visit this week, Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich and Defense Minister Israel Katz announced new decisions that will reverse decades-old real estate laws preventing Jews from buying Palestinian-owned land in the West Bank; expand Israeli authority in vast swaths of that territory; and make it easier for Jewish Israelis to buy land and start new communities in or near Palestinian enclaves there, among other subtle changes.
These changes may seem like bureaucratic rejiggering. But in fact, they mark the alarming development of a deliberate strategy to incrementally expand Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, thus killing the two-state solution once and for all.
None of this serves Israel’s best interest. New laws pushing annexation forward will jeopardize Israel’s relationship with the U.S., damage its already faltering democracy, and eradicate any moral high ground the Jewish state still retains after its devastating military campaign in Gaza.
Yet while Israel struggles with a weakened international profile, an economy still recovering from the demands of war, impending talks with Iran, internal democratic conflicts and a re-emboldened Hamas within the decimated Gaza strip, proponents of the new decisions are celebrating the disaster they herald.
“We are deepening our roots in all regions of the Land of Israel and burying the idea of a Palestinian state,” Smotrich said in a statement.
The Yesha Council — the municipal representative for all Israeli settlements, which wants to expand Israeli sovereignty over the entire West Bank — declared the government’s move was “establishing Israeli sovereignty in the territory de facto.”
Energy Minister Eli Cohen might have put it most plainly, saying the changes “actually establish a fact on the ground that there will not be a Palestinian state,” in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio.
The only emergency brake on annexation Israelis have at this moment is sitting in the White House.
Although President Donald Trump flirted with Israeli annexation early in his second-term, he has consistently opposed such moves over the last few months. Asked on Tuesday about the Israeli security cabinet’s recent decisions, Trump spoke bluntly: “I am against annexation.”
He has powerful incentives to back up that statement.
Since returning to office last year, Trump has branded himself a peacemaker who will reshape the Middle East. He aims to expand the Abraham Accords, the trademark foreign policy achievement of his first term; curb a nuclear Iran; and create peace between Israel and the Palestinians. He will not tolerate any Israeli behavior that threatens those efforts — and these West Bank moves could upend them.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and five other Muslim countries condemned Israel’s new laws as accelerating “illegal annexation and the displacement of the Palestinian people” — a complaint Saudi Arabia previously lodged against Israel as its reason for refusing normalization, something Trump desperately wants.
Additionally, Trump’s peace plan for Gaza hinges on creating stability in the embattled Strip and the West Bank. Most importantly, it involves a commitment to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which these moves in the West Bank may make all but impossible to realize.
All this, as American views of Israel are only growing more antagonistic, with real-world policy changes like conditioning military aid receiving more serious consideration than previously thought possible. Israel also faces domestic consequences over this decision. It has long defended itself against accusations of apartheid by saying that it cannot grant citizenship to the millions of Palestinians in the West Bank because the Jewish state cannot afford to lose its Jewish majority. Until trusted Palestinian partners for peace emerged, the narrative went, Israel would maintain control of the territory.
This is not maintaining control of the territory; this is laying claim to it, an action that demands Israel must treat the Palestinians who live there as full citizens. It is unlikely to do so. Which means Israel’s democracy is closer than ever to crumbling. If it insists on burying the two-state solution and annexing the West Bank without giving citizenship to millions of Palestinians, any defense it had against the argument of apartheid will be gone.
What might the Israeli government hope to gain with these moves, given how extraordinarily costly they could be — and seeing that annexation is widely unpopular in Israeli society, with only about a third of Israelis supporting it?
The answer: Netanyahu is going all-in for his far-right allies. It’s not about what Israel hopes to gain; it’s about what he does.
Smotrich, Katz, and others whose radical messianic conceptions dominate their politics have for years fantasized about expanding Israel’s borders without international or domestic law interfering. Throughout the Israel-Hamas War, far-right leaders routinely spoke enthusiastically about annexing the Gaza Strip.
If Netanyahu were putting Israelis before his own political interests, he would have squashed calls for annexation long before now. But doing so would threaten his political career. Smotrich and other far-right ministers put expanding Israeli control over the West Bank as a dealbreaker when they first entered his coalition; if they leave it, his last hope at retaining power will go with them.
When it comes to choosing between power or his country, Netanyahu has shown he will always choose power. Let’s hope Trump continues to stand in his way.
The post Can Trump save Israel from itself? appeared first on The Forward.