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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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The post Why your synagogue, and mine, needs a pickleball court appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Lula’s reelection puts the brakes on Latin America’s pro-Israel shift
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES – Brazilians reelected Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva as president, defeating the center-right senator Flavio Bolsonaro, putting the breaks on a regional shift toward closer ties with Israel.
The current president, a left-wing leader of Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party), obtained 51.79% of the valid votes, while Bolsonaro received 48.21%.
Bolsonaro, of the Liberal Party, had pledged a close diplomatic partnership with Israel and cultivated ties with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while Lula has become a critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Bolsonaro said he did not accept the election results, although it is not clear how he could challenge them.
In January 2024, Lula’s government endorsed South Africa’s decision to bring a genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice. A month later, Lula compared Palestinian suffering in Gaza to Hitler’s murder of the Jews, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Brazil and Israel. Brazil’s Jewish umbrella organization, CONIB, publicly condemned the comparison as a distortion that offended the memory of Holocaust victims and their descendants.
The remarks were also criticized by the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires. Sen. Bolsonaro promised a big shift toward Israel when he spoke on June 28, 2026, in Buenos Aires in a meeting with Jewish leaders. “In 2027, Brazil will not only once again have an ambassador to Israel, but will also take the step of moving its embassy to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem,” he said.
That night he also lauded the 120,000 Jews in Brazil, saying, “They are men and women who rank among the brightest in Brazilian medicine, industry, science, culture and business.”
After Bolsonaro finished ahead of Lula in the first round on Oct. 4, Netanyahu sent a message the following day on X: “Congratulations @FlavioBolsonaro on yesterday’s vote and good luck in the final. I look forward to restoring the extraordinary friendship between Israel and Brazil. Best wishes for your great victory, my friend.”
Since 2023, several Latin American countries have strengthened ties with Israel, in some cases reversing policies adopted by their predecessors, among them:
Argentine President Javier Milei elected in 2023, who makes support for Israel central to his foreign policy and meets with families of hostages Hamas abducted in its deadly Oct. 7, 2023, raid on Israel, which launched the current war;
Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz Pereira, elected in 2025, who restored diplomatic relations with Israel severed by his predecessor;
President Nasry Asfura of Honduras, elected in 2025, who immediately formally recognized Israel’s new ambassador, a process his predecessor left in limbo;
Chilean President José Antonio Kast, elected in 2025, who is rebuilding ties with Israel diminished by his predecessor;
and Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella, elected in May, who restored diplomatic ties with Israel severed by his predecessor, sent his foreign minister to inaugurate an embassy in Jerusalem and pulled out of the ICJ genocide case against Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Lula’s reelection puts the brakes on Latin America’s pro-Israel shift appeared first on The Forward.
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In anti-Muslim speech, Trump says Jews who support El-Sayed should be ‘ashamed’
(JTA) — President Donald Trump disparaged Jewish voters who support Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, at a rally in Port Huron on Sunday.
“Any Jewish person that supports this guy should be ashamed of themselves,” Trump told some 4,000 supporters in the city north of Detroit, where he stumped for Republican nominee Mike Rogers. “You should never speak to them again.”
Hundreds of Michigan Jews have pledged to vote for El-Sayed, who polls indicate is narrowly leading Rogers in a race key to determining control of the Senate. Another subset of Jews has pressured El-Sayed, a staunch critic of Israel, to defend “Jewish safety — including for Zionist Jews” and “Jewish sovereignty in Israel.” Still others have urged their community members to reject El-Sayed outright and back Rogers.
El-Sayed opposes U.S. military aid to Israel, saying the country has committed genocide in Gaza and is “not an ally.” Those positions divided the Democratic party during his primary campaign against pro-Israel U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, whom he narrowly bested in August. A former public health official, El-Sayed has also emphasized affordability in healthcare, housing and education. He has made a concentrated push to reach undecided Jewish voters in the homestretch before the Nov. 3 midterm election, hiring a Jewish outreach director last week.
Trump has in the past accused Jews who vote for Democrats of being “disloyal to Jewish people” and “disloyal to Israel.”
He said at the Port Huron rally that he is “polling at 99% in Israel,” which will hold national elections on Tuesday.
Trump did not cite evidence for the claim, which is unsupported by publicly available surveys. While he has historically scored high popularity among Israelis, a poll by the Jewish People Policy Institute in June found the Israeli public’s trust in him was declining. The poll said that 12% of Israelis reported having a great deal of trust in Trump, down from 21% in May, while the share of Israelis with complete distrust in him rose from 32% to 37%.
Trump joined his comments about Jews and Israel to anti-Muslim rhetoric about El-Sayed, who would become the first Muslim in the Senate if he is elected.
Trump baselessly called El-Sayed a “jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member” who was “on the side of the terrorists,” adding that he would “have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate.”
He threatened that “if Abdul and the Democrats win, they will open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadists to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas.”
Trump claimed that El-Sayed’s half sister, Eman Abdelhadi, celebrated the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. On the first anniversary of the attack, Abdelhadi posted a video that said, “no matter how great the brutality, the oppression, the intensity of what we’re going through, the horizon of justice is just around the corner,” according to The New York Times. She did not directly mention or celebrate the violence.
Trump also said that El-Sayed’s mother had “worked for an organization that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.” A Times investigation reported that El-Sayed’s mother worked as a nurse in Missouri for a Muslim aid group that was later designated by the U.S. government as a supporter of terrorist groups. She was never accused of wrongdoing.
El-Sayed’s campaign has said that he “disagrees” with his sister on “a number of political positions and the rhetoric she’s chosen to use, including on foreign policy.” He was raised by his father and stepmother and has said that he had little relationship with his biological mother while growing up.
Former President Barack Obama campaigned with El-Sayed in Detroit on Saturday, saying the candidate was “fighting for change, real change, that will get money out of politics and put money in your pocket.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post In anti-Muslim speech, Trump says Jews who support El-Sayed should be ‘ashamed’ appeared first on The Forward.
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CAIR Connecticut urges Greenwich schools to stop using Eisner Camp over Israel ties
(JTA) — GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. – Greenwich Public Schools in Connecticut said it would proceed with a planned fall trip for sixth graders at a Jewish camp in Massachusetts as planned this week, despite pressure from a Muslim advocacy organization over the camp’s Israeli symbols and Israel-related programming.
CAIR Connecticut, the state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, objected to the trip, saying that programming at Eisner Camp in Great Barrington “incorporates connections to Israel,” the chapter’s board chair Farhan Memon wrote in a letter to Greenwich Superintendent of Schools Toni Jones dated Oct. 13.
The four-day Greenwich Schools field trip was organized by the Outdoor Classroom project, which works with seven locations in New England, including Eisner. Four of the camps are affiliated with Christian organizations, and two have no religious affiliation. With its clients, Outdoor Classroom coordinates nature-related learning programs for kids.
Memon wrote that some parents in Greenwich had viewed a video and photos of previous school events at Eisner and “identified Israeli flags and yellow ribbons prominently displayed in spaces used during school visits.”
“At the very least, spaces used by Greenwich students on any school trip should be free of national and political displays,” Memon wrote.
Eisner director Paul Isserles said in a statement shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “We welcome Outdoor Classroom to use our camp facilities. Throughout the year many outside organizations rent our facilities for various programs. URJ Eisner Camp is proud to have an Israeli flag displayed for our camp programs.”
When it comes to visiting groups, “Frankly, we are not regularly asked to do anything to remove those symbols or to cover them,” said Union for Reform Judaism president Rabbi Rick Jacobs in a telephone interview with JTA. “Because to be honest, we wouldn’t.”
Answering Memon’s letter on Oct. 14, Jones wrote in an email that her school district “acknowledges that individuals and families have vastly different views regarding global events” and that it intends to “provide an inclusive and safe educational environment for all Greenwich Public School students, including when they are on field trips under our care.”
She added that she had “made it clear to a few families that we will not take a political or religious stand.” JTA has seen both the CAIR letter and the email response.
CAIR Connecticut did not respond to JTA’s query.
CAIR’s national website says the organization promotes interfaith dialogue and “condemns all acts of violence against civilians by any individual, group or state.”
The Reform movement founded the 600-acre camp in 1958 as the Joseph Eisner Camp Institute for Living Judaism. It is located in the Berkshire Hills south of the town center of Great Barrington.
It is one of more than a dozen of the movement’s overnight camps in the North America. Many of those camps are rented throughout the year by groups that have nothing to do with Judaism, URJ’s Rabbi Jacobs said. “If a group rents the camp, they come up with their own agenda,” he said.
He added, “There are flags and other symbols of Judaism and of Israel in our camps, and we’re proud of that.”
Some parents had raised concerns about the venue as early as March. CAIR urged the district to stop using the camp in the Oct. 14 letter.
Removing decorations from the camp would not be enough, he said, noting that parents were upset after seeing promotional material about Eisner bringing Jewish campers to visit Israeli army bases under the Gadna, an Israeli military youth program.
A July 2019 post on Eisner Camp’s website says a group of participants in its Israel trip chose Gadna, stayed at an army base, practiced drills and learned to shoot at a target.
“URJ Eisner Camp participants who go to Israel have not participated in Gadna since 2023,” camp director Isserles said in a statement provided to JTA. “Our Israel programming at camp and in Israel is focused on Jewish identity, community, education, and connection to Israel.”
What CAIR is saying is that “A Jewish institution can be an unfit place for public-school children because it is visibly Jewish and identifies openly with Israel,” wrote blogger and Eisner alumnus Rabbi Jeff Salkin in his “Unfiltered” Substack on Oct. 19.
“A Jewish institution should not have to hide its Jewish identity to count as a fit place for other people’s children. You would not ask a church camp to remove a cross, or a Muslim camp to take down a crescent. A standard that demands such hiding makes Jewish identity itself the problem,” Salkin wrote.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post CAIR Connecticut urges Greenwich schools to stop using Eisner Camp over Israel ties appeared first on The Forward.
