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Lacrosse is on the rise in Israel, as its men’s national team enters the world championship ranked 7th
(JTA) — Days after Israel’s under-20 soccer team shocked the world with a third-place finish in the FIFA Under-20 World Cup, another one of the country’s national teams is looking for international glory — this time in a sport played by few in Israel.
The 2023 World Lacrosse Men’s Championship begins on Wednesday in San Diego, and Israel is ranked seventh among the 30 teams. They were ranked second in Europe coming into the tournament.
Those rankings might surprise the average Israeli. Today, the Israel Lacrosse Association estimates that between 300 and 400 Israeli children and teens play the sport across the country, and that’s after over a decade of recruitment and youth development. Israel’s national lacrosse team is mostly made up of American-born Jews. The lacrosse association, based out of the Daniel Kraft Family National Lacrosse Center in Ashkelon, was founded by one American in 2010 and is currently run by another American.
But two of the 23 players on the national team are Israeli natives, and the women’s national team has one native Israeli, too — something Israel Lacrosse Executive Director Ian Kadish says is a meaningful increase in how the sport is spreading.
“We are now getting to a really exciting point in our organization where a lot of that leadership and a lot of that energy is coming from native-born Israelis,” Kadish told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Yakov Silberlicht, who is Israel Lacrosse’s director of youth development and the men’s team captain, pointed to another telling statistic: Israel’s under-21 men’s team, which competed in Ireland last summer, featured 19 native Israelis out of 23 players. And the women’s under-21 team, which is preparing for the U21 European Lacrosse Championships in Prague next month, is also almost entirely Israeli.
“That’s what gets me fired up and makes me tick and gets me out of bed every morning, is just opening that door and offering the opportunity to those young [Israeli] men and women to be able to play for our national teams,” said Silberlicht, who is also an American expat.
Even in areas where lacrosse is more prominent, such as Canada and the Northeast United States (which have combined to win every edition of the first 14 men’s world championships), it is still considered a niche sport compared to baseball, football and other major sports. According to a study by the Aspen Institute, 466,000 Americans aged 13-17 played lacrosse in 2019, compared to the more than 2 million who play baseball and the more than 3 million who play basketball.
David Wiseman, who tracks Israeli sports for his popular Facebook page Follow Team Israel, commended Israel Lacrosse for the progress it has made, including the opportunities it has opened up for female athletes.
“The fact that they can get it flourishing in Israel is remarkable,” he told JTA. “They’ve punched above their weight by like 3 million percent.”
Israel has also begun hosting international tournaments, including the 2018 men’s international championship and the 2019 Women’s European Championship. (During the 2018 men’s championship — the biggest-ever contest, with 46 participating teams — Israel offered free tours of Jerusalem to the teams and their delegations.)
Originally from Utica, New York, Silberlicht, 31, has lived in Israel for 10 years now. That was never part of his plan.
Growing up, he said he didn’t know much about Israel or have interest in visiting. But after he graduated from college in 2013, an opportunity to play lacrosse in Israel fell into his lap, and he went for it.
He started off coaching and playing for the national team in the 2014 championship, where Israel finished in seventh. What was initially intended to be a year-long stay turned into six more months and six more months after that, until eventually Silberlicht found himself staying permanently. He served in the Israel Defense Forces in a combat role from 2015 to 2017.
Yakov Silberlicht, in the red shirt, is the director of youth development for Israel Lacrosse. (Courtesy of the Israel Lacrosse Association)
“My Jewish identity wasn’t super strong growing up. I think that that’s partially because something like Israel Lacrosse didn’t exist,” he said. “I didn’t want to go to Sunday school because I wanted to go play sports instead… Had I had something like [Israel Lacrosse] to relate to and to identify with, I think that it could have stuck a little bit more and been more meaningful to me.”
Kadish’s introduction to Israel Lacrosse was similar. Growing up in Salt Lake City, Utah, Kadish, 27, said he “could not have cared less” about Judaism or Israel. But as a college lacrosse player, he participated in a lacrosse-themed Birthright trip — which his organization still runs today.
“I had that transformational moment that how many kids have when they come and visit Israel, where I’m like, ‘Oh, wow, this is way different,’” Kadish recalled.
He extended his stay, founded a youth lacrosse team and began playing on the national team. Years later, he splits his time between the United States and Israel, and he runs the Israel Lacrosse Association. He too plays for the national team.
Kadish said he values the opportunity to “allow kids to form their own unique relationship with Judaism, with Israel, through their passion of sport.”
Much of the organization’s recruitment happens through grassroots efforts, including school visits, service trips and relentless outreach. Kadish acknowledged that they have to “work hard as hell” to overcome the predominance of soccer and basketball in Israel.
But 13 years into Israel Lacrosse’s existence, Kadish said it’s the progress that has been made in the organization’s youth engagement that he is most proud of — more so than a No. 2 ranking in Europe and the hosting of international competitions in Israel.
“When you’re on a lacrosse field in Israel with all these kids running around just being kids, you’re like, ‘okay, this is what matters, this is why I do this,’” Kadish said. “When I see a young Israeli kid who I physically put the stick in his or her hand for the first time at the school visit, and now that player is on the sideline, coaching other kids in Hebrew — you see this full-circle moment.”
In other international arenas — namely baseball — Israeli teams have attempted to recruit the most talented American Jews they can find to compete on behalf of Israel, regardless of the players’ past connections to Israel. In lacrosse, Kadish said they try to avoid that tactic. While much of the team is American-born, Kadish said he seeks people who have spent time living in Israel and are committed to the organization’s work.
“What is at the core of our mission? What is Israel lacrosse about? It’s about developing the sport of lacrosse in Israel,” he said. “And it’s about engaging the Jewish Diaspora. If you haven’t helped us, if you haven’t been a part of those things, I’m not sure you deserve the right to play on Team Israel.”
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The post Lacrosse is on the rise in Israel, as its men’s national team enters the world championship ranked 7th appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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YiddishPOP can bring more diversity to American Jewish education
Every Sunday morning, a group of families in Stockholm, Sweden, meets in a local school to create handicrafts, do gymnastics — and learn Yiddish.
Katka Mazurczak, the instructor of this grassroots group called The Yiddish Club, told me that the families seem to really enjoy the weekly Yiddish immersion. One of the resources she uses is YiddishPOP, a free online animated and game-based learning tool that features short episodes about a young teenager named Nomi, her robot sidekick Moby and her friends.
I’ve known about YiddishPOP for years and often share its videos with my grandchildren. The episodes cover topics that are familiar and easy for children to relate to. In one, a friend of Nomi’s finally scores a basket. In another, Nomi and Moby laugh as they look at their comical reflections in funhouse mirrors.
Each story is accompanied by a video clip presenting the new vocabulary and grammar, interactive games and a multiple choice quiz.
“Children love YiddishPOP,” said Mazurczak, who also uses the program when teaching kids in more formal school settings like the Stockholm Jewish Hillel School, known as Hillelskolan. “It has captivating graphics, clear speech and the movie goes at a good pace. Some episodes are really funny and kids laugh out loud.”
Part of the appeal of YiddishPOP, particularly for beginners, lies in Moby’s slapstick antics. I too find myself laughing during those scenes.
In a time when seeking diversity has become a main focus in schools across America, Jewish educators might want to consider introducing young students to the multi-faceted language and culture of Ashkenazic Jewry, using a contemporary language learning tool like YiddishPOP.
Teaching the Yiddish language through animation and interactive games helps it come alive for children, depicting it as a natural, even cool way to express Jewish identity, rather than stereotypically sending the language to the dustbin of history.
One school that has tried out YiddishPOP is the Krieger Schechter Day School in Baltimore, MD. When the school piloted the program with its third-grade class last year, the director of the lower school, Toby Kaplowitz, was impressed.
“Though students had just four sessions, they were truly engaged and walked away with both a sense of the language and an appreciation for its connection to their Jewish learning,” Kaplowitz wrote in an email. Krieger plans to continue using YiddishPOP with these same students, as they transition to fourth grade.
Last year, YiddishPOP began distributing $500 microgrants to help teachers and parents bring the Yiddish program to schools. Dana Yudovich Katz, a teacher at Kehillah High — a supplemental program for students in grades 8–12, run by the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston — was the first recipient. She added YiddishPOP to a course she had initiated with the teens called TAM: A Taste of Yiddish Language and Culture. Tam is Yiddish for “flavor.”
Most of the students came away from using YiddishPOP with a positive feeling towards the language. As one student in Yudovich Katz’s class told her: “The film was good at using the words in a way I could understand because it was just slow enough.”
The YiddishPOP team is now working on teacher materials that will make it easier for people without a background in Yiddish or language teaching to use YiddishPOP. Teachers and school administrators who’d like to apply for a YiddishPOP microgrant can do so here until July 31.
The post YiddishPOP can bring more diversity to American Jewish education appeared first on The Forward.
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UK Jewish leaders demand answers after Muslim police group paper calls Zionism a form of hatred
(JTA) — British Jewish groups say they are alarmed about revelations that a fraternal society for Muslim police officers published a policy paper that described Zionism as a form of anti-Muslim hatred and called the Israeli army a “Zionist terrorist group.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews called the paper posted by the National Association of Muslim Police “disturbing” in its presentation of Jewish identity, history and the nature of antisemitism.
“If this is being circulated among officers, it poses a direct challenge to the integrity of policing and it should be withdrawn immediately,” the group said.
NAMP has distanced itself from the report and, in a statement, rejected any allegation that the group “supports Hamas.”
The 39-page paper titled “From Past Prejudices to Present Policies: Confronting anti-Muslim hatred and Promoting Human Rights,” was written by NAMP’s then-vice president, Khaldoun Kabbani, and published in July 2025. It says “Zionism represents one of the manifestations of anti-Muslim hatred”; likens the war in Gaza to the Holocaust; and disputes facts about Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, including that Israeli children were killed.
The Spectator, a right-wing British newspaper, drew attention to the report in a piece published on Friday that said the report illuminated “the disturbing truth about the National Association of Muslim Police.” The group has a formal affiliation with 16 of 43 police departments in the U.K. and says it represents more than 20,000 officers.
Kabbani, a forensics officer, was briefly the chair of the Scottish Muslim Police Association but planned to move abroad after retiring earlier this year, according to a post by the group on LinkedIn.
The revelation of the NAMP report comes at a time of heightened tension over policing in the U.K., amid both a surge in anti-Jewish crimes and a renewed uproar over a December murder that has fueled allegations of “two-tier policing” that treats some victims differently from others. The Spectator referenced the victim, Henry Nowak, in the column about NAMP.
The NAMP report has spurred distress for many British Jews who are on edge amid a string of violent incidents targeting Jewish communities. The Campaign Against Antisemitism, a watchdog group, said its polling shows that 83% of British Jews do not think the police are doing enough to protect them — and that the report suggested their concerns were well founded.
“The people responsible for publishing this extremist screed on the official police.uk web domain are unfit to be police officers and must be immediately investigated by their respective forces’ professional standards departments and dismissed,” Steven Silverman, CAM’s director of investigations and enforcement, said in a statement.
“British Jews have long suffered two-tier policing that sees antisemitic crime go unpunished,” he said, adding that CAM would press the British government “ensure a clear message is being sent. This cannot pass with the document being quietly deleted.”
The report was removed from NAMP’s website over the weekend. The group distanced itself from the report in a statement published on Tuesday, saying that it had removed the report “immediately” after learning about its existence and emphasizing that the author was “no longer associated” with NAMP.
“We understand that the publication of this document has affected several communities, and we regret any concern, discomfort, or misunderstanding it may have caused,” the group said.
It added, “NAMP categorically does not ‘defend’ Hamas or any other proscribed organisation. We condemn all forms of terrorism and extremism.”
The document is “deeply troubling,” a spokesperson for the Jewish Leadership Council, which coordinates British Jewish groups, said in a statement.
“This document appears to falsely associate an ideology held by the majority of Jewish people as a threat to Muslims. It also engages in deeply troubling Holocaust inversion and denial of some of the worst atrocities carried out by Hamas on October 7th,” the spokesperson said. “At a time of rising antisemitism including violent attacks on British Jews, this document further threatens community cohesion and police forces should be clear in distancing themselves from it.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said it plans to speak with the “relevant” government and police departments to discover the paper’s provenance, how it’s being used and “how to ensure that the valued relationships of trust between British Jews and the police are not being undermined.”
The Metropolitan Police of London, the largest police department in the U.K. and a formal NAMP affiliate, declined to comment on the report. The department has recently stepped up policing in Jewish communities in an effort to stem antisemitic violence.
The post UK Jewish leaders demand answers after Muslim police group paper calls Zionism a form of hatred appeared first on The Forward.
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Jacob Reses, Vance’s Jewish chief of staff, to leave administration
(JTA) — Jacob Reses, the Jewish chief of staff to Vice President JD Vance, is leaving the administration at the end of the summer, a source confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Thursday.
Reses, who’s been in his role since Vance and President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, is perhaps the closest Jewish official in Vance’s orbit. He has had a close relationship with the vice president since Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign in Ohio.
A source familiar with the matter confirmed NBC News’ initial report that Reses informed Vance of his decision months ago, after his wife became pregnant. Vance said in a statement on Thursday that he will “miss him dearly, but he won’t be far, and I plan to keep his counsel close until our paths cross again.” Reses’ plans for his next role are currently unknown.
Vance has recently drawn the ire of some Jewish Republicans who say that he has refused to confront antisemitism on the right, including from former Fox news host Tucker Carlson. (Carlson’s son is also a Vance staffer.) A New York Magazine profile published in March suggested that Reses was on board with Vance’s approach, and revealed that Reses used his private X account to amplify voices calling on Jews to embrace, rather than resist, the Christian nationalist current surging within the GOP.
Reses has been “by my side for my whole career in public life,” Vance said in a statement.
“I can’t imagine having been on this life-changing journey without him,” Vance said. “From day one of my time as a Senator-elect, I could not have asked for a more loyal and discerning advisor and friend as my chief of staff.”
The personal bond between the two men was on display in January, when Vance took part in Reses’ wedding to Rachel Altman at a synagogue in Rockville, Maryland, delivering a Jewish prayer under the chuppah. Chabad of Princeton University, Reses’ alma mater, posted a photo of the couple with the vice president, celebrating the occasion as an expression of Jewish pride.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DTrUKXEDOQE/?img_index=3
That closeness, and Reses’ reported alignment with Vance’s stance on right-wing antisemitism, have not spared Reses from becoming a target of antisemites. In one instance, a white-nationalist website ran an article about him headlined, “Another Nail in the Coffin — Jew Runs J. D. Vance.”
A Jewish Telegraphic Agency profile published in 2024, when Vance was selected as Trump’s running mate, traced Reses’ Jewish identity and his journey from a Democratic-leaning Jewish teenager in southern New Jersey, whose grandfather escaped the Holocaust in Lithuania, to one of the most influential conservatives in Washington. His trajectory included internships for Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, a political conversion at Princeton and stints at the Heritage Foundation and in the office of Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley.
On Thursday, Republican leaders and Trump administration officials sang Reses’ praises in statements shared with JTA.
“Jacob Reses has been an invaluable, loyal, and trusted hand to Vice President Vance and President Trump,” said Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition. “As a proud Jewish American, whose own family story carries the weight of our people’s history, Jacob brought both conviction and clarity to one of the most consequential roles in Washington.” Brooks added that the RJC has “no doubt he will continue to play a critical role moving forward.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who’s seen as a possible challenger to Vance for the 2028 presidential nomination, said that Reses served Vance and the entire administration “with distinction,” and that he “understands the moment we’re in and he spent every day fighting to deliver results for the President.”
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, said he was proud to have Reses “by my side in negotiating some of the toughest deals for the President.”
“Don’t let Jacob fool you — beneath his kind exterior he’s a killer,” Witkoff said. “It’s been a delight to get to know him through the Vice President, and our foreign adventures from Israel to Pakistan have been historic.”
He added, “We haven’t seen the last of him.”
The post Jacob Reses, Vance’s Jewish chief of staff, to leave administration appeared first on The Forward.
