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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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NELLA MARGRITHE ESKIN NOVEMBER 14, 1946 – AUGUST 27, 2025
It is with great sorrow that the Eskin family reports the passing of Nella Margrithe Eskin, beloved wife and devoted partner of Michael Eskin, on August 27, 2025.
Nella, the only child of the late Kasiel and Rosa Kessler, Holocaust survivors, was born in a displaced persons camp in Fohrenwald, Germany, in 1946. The family first moved to Baltimore as refugees in 1949 before settling in Chicago, where Nella graduated from Roosevelt University with Bachelor of Science degree.
In 1969, she met Michael, and three months later they were married in Chicago in March 1970. They shared a wonderful marriage of over 55 years, during which they raised a family of four boys and created a home that was always full of song, food, guests and Yiddishkeit. Sadly, their eldest son, Katriel, passed away in 2015. Nella is survived by her other three sons, Josh, Ezra and Daniel, and their families as well as Katriel’s wife and family. She was a devoted wife, mother, and grandmother to her husband, sons, and ten grandchildren, and a loving daughter to her mother, Rosa, who passed away in 2020.
A lifelong scholar, she earned an MBA from the University of Manitoba in 1995. Nella was a very pious and learned woman who was also a wonderful artist, music lover, gardener and cook. She passed her love of music, art, storytelling and learning to her children, teaching each of them piano and instilling in them an enduring appreciation for the arts that continues to this day. She was an incredibly warm woman and made every gathering feel special, every guest feel valued, and every meal feel like a celebration of love and friendship.
She will be sorely missed by her husband, children, grandchildren, relatives in the UK, USA, Australia, and Israel, and many dear friends. Her kindness, curiosity, and love will live on in the many lives she touched. May her memory be
a blessing.
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VIDEO: Moishele Alfonso on the new book of I. L. Peretz stories for students
לכּבֿוד דער פּובליקאַציע פֿונעם ביכל „אויפֿן װעג: זיבן דערציילונגען פֿון י.־ל. פּרץ“ — אַ זאַמלונג ספּעציעל געמאַכט פֿאַר סטודענטן — קען מען איצט זען אַן אינטערוויו מיטן ייִדיש־לערער משהלע אַלפֿאָנסאָ, וואָס האָט פֿאַרקירצט און באַאַרבעט די דערציילונגען.
אין דעם אינטערוויו דערציילט אַלפֿאָנסאָ וועגן דעם פּראָצעס פֿון שאַפֿן דאָס ביכל, און לייענט געקליבענע אויסצוגן דערפֿון. דער אינטערוויו, געפֿירט פֿון אלי בענעדיקט, איז געשטיצט געוואָרן פֿון דער ייִדיש־ליגע, וואָס האָט אויך אַרויסגעגעבן דאָס לייענביכל.
דאָס נאָוואַטאָרישע ביכל גיט דעם לייענער אַ צוטריט צו קלאַסישע ייִדיש־דערציילונגען דורך אַ זײַט־בײַ־זײַטיקן גלאָסאַר, שמועס־פֿראַגעס און קלאַנג־רעקאָרדירונגען פֿון די מעשׂיות.
משהלע אַלפֿאָנסאָ איז אַ ייִדיש־לערער בײַם ייִדישן ביכער־צענטער זינט 2019. אין 2022 האָט ער, דורכן פֿאַרלאַג „אָלניאַנסקי־טעקסט“, טראַנסקריבירט און אַרויסגעגעבן יצחק באַשעוויסעס בוך „שׂונאים: די געשיכטע פֿון אַ ליבע“. דער ראָמאַן איז אַרויס אין המשכים אינעם פֿאָרווערטס אין 1966, און ס’איז דאָס ערשטע מאָל וואָס שׂונאים איז אַרויס אין בוכפֿאָרעם אויף ייִדיש.
דאָס ביכל קען מען באַשטעלן דאָ.
The post VIDEO: Moishele Alfonso on the new book of I. L. Peretz stories for students appeared first on The Forward.
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VIDEO: Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Light One Candle” — in Yiddish
If, like me, you enjoy listening to old recordings of the iconic folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, you may want to check this out: a new Yiddish version of their Hanukkah song “Light One Candle,” sung by another talented trio — Rabbi Avram, Elisha and Sarah Mlotek. (A transliteration of the lyrics appears beneath the video below.)
The three siblings are the grown children of Zalmen Mlotek, musician and director of the Yiddish National Theater Folksbiene, and his wife, Debbie Mlotek. Rabbi Avram is a writer, Elisha is a filmmaker and Sarah is studying music at a conservatory in Israel — and just became a mom.
Their singing is backed up by C. Joseph Lanzbom on guitar and Elisha on percussion.
The original song, which was written by Peter Yarrow, became an anthem for the Soviet Jewry movement in the 1980s, symbolizing their struggle for freedom. It was translated into Yiddish by the theater producer Moishe Rosenfeld and Avram Mlotek.
“‘Light One Candle’ was one of our Bubbe’s favorite songs every time we got together for a Hanukkah sing-along,” Avram said. Their Bubbe was the renowned scholar of Yiddish song, Chana Mlotek. For many years, she and her husband, the Yiddish cultural activist Yosl Mlotek, ran a column about Yiddish songs and poetry in the Forward.
Although Hanukkah is still a month away, Bubby Chana’s grandchildren had a meaningful reason for publishing it now: This week marks her yortzeit.
TRANSLITERATION
Eyn likht shaynt far di heldishe kinder
A dank vos dos likht geyt nit oys
Eyn likht shaynt far di payn un di laydn
Di sakone’z geven azoy groys
Eyn likht flakert far korbones un laydn
Az yoysher un frayhayt zol zayn
Eyn likhtl flakert far khokhme un visn
Far frayhayt un sholem zol zayn.
Lesht nit di likhtlekh oys!
Zey flakern shoyn doyres-lang
Lesht nit di likhtlekh oys!
Balaykhtn durkh undzer gezang!
Eyn likht flakert tsu gebn undz koyekh
Az eybik mir’n blaybn getray
Eyn likht flakert far mentshn vos laydn
Oykh mir zenen nisht geven fray
Eyn likhtl flakert far zise khaloymes
Tseteyln zol undz nisht der kas
Un eyn likhtl flakert tsu haltn tsuzamen
Mit sholem un mer nisht kayn has
Lesht nit di likhtlekh oys!
Zey flakern shoyn doyres-lang
Lesht nit di likhtlekh oys!
Balaykhtn durkh undzer gezang!
Vos iz di mayse vos iz azoy tayer
Vos lebt eybik in undzer flam?
Vos iz di shvue tsu fargangene doyres
Az es lebt undzer folk, undzer am?
Mir kumen, mir geyen, mir hofn, mir gloybn
Az yoysher vet vern der klal
Dos iz der viln, dos iz di shvue
A shenere velt iberal!
Lesht nit di likhtlekh oys!
Zey flakern shoyn doyres-lang
Lesht nit di likhtlekh oys!
Balaykhtn durkh undzer gezang!
The post VIDEO: Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Light One Candle” — in Yiddish appeared first on The Forward.