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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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Northwestern University Demands Dismissal of CAIR Lawsuit Targeting Antisemitism Prevention
People walk on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, US, April 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Vincent Alban
Northwestern University on Wednesday submitted a motion to dismiss a lawsuit, filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which aims to cancel an antisemitism prevention course.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CAIR — an organization that has been scrutinized by US authorities over alleged ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas — sued Northwestern University over the matter last month, arguing that the course in question violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and that it serves as a “pretense” for censoring “expressions of Palestinian identity, culture, and advocacy for self-determination.”
In its filing, Northwestern University argued that CAIR’s claims are political, not legal, and preclude adjudication in a court of law.
“Plaintiffs fail to allege facts showing intentional race, ethnicity, or national origin discrimination,” a copy of the motion obtained by The Algemeiner said. “Plaintiff’s allegations, even accepted as true, describe ideological disagreement, not actionable discrimination.”
Filed on behalf of the Northwestern Graduate Workers for Palestine (GW4P) group, the suit arrived in federal dockets with a request for a temporary restraining order to halt the course, which the university mandated as a prerequisite for fall registration, and the rescission of disciplinary measures imposed on nine students who refused to complete it.
The suit primarily takes aim at Northwestern’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and its application to the training course, which, at its conclusion, calls on students to pledge not to be antisemitic.
Used by governments and other entities across the world, the IHRA definition describes antisemitism as a “certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere.
Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
“Plaintiff, GW4P lacks standing to sue,” Northwestern argued in Wednesday’s motion. “The complaint does not allege facts establishing organizational or associational standing, and the allegations center on ideological alignment rather than protected characteristics.”
Several lawsuits have challenged universities’ quelling riotous anti-Zionist activity on other grounds, such as Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) unsuccessful lawsuit against Columbia University last year, but none have argued that allowing antisemitism to thrive is inclusive of Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian identities and that fighting it is discriminatory.
However, CAIR argued that the IHRA definition is anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian, discriminating against both cultures while being hostile to CAIR’s vision of Palestinian self-determination.
“Northwestern requires students to complete a training course elaborating on that definition and requires them to attest that they to abide by conduct policies that incorporate that discriminatory definition,” CAIR’s complaint said. “The training course and attestations discriminate against Arab students whose racial and national origin identities are fundamentally incompatible with this definition.”
This is the latest CAIR activity in a long line of initiatives that have prompted a storm of controversy, as previously reported by The Algemeiner. In September, for example, US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) exposed materials which CAIR distributes in its local activism — notably its “American Jews and Political Power” course — to spread its beliefs. Some of it attempts to revise the history of Sharia law, which severely restricts the rights of women and is opposed to other core features of liberal societies.
Additionally, since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CAIR’s chapter in Philadelphia has lobbied the state government to enact anti-Israel policies and accused Gov. Josh Shapiro of ignoring the plight of Palestinians. In a 2023 speech following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, said he was “happy to see” Palestinians “breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land.”
CAIR has extensive links to jihadist groups which suppress freedom and promote hate, according to some experts.
“CAIR itself has a long history of terrorist ties in particular to the Muslim Brotherhood, illustrated by the fact that in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terrorism financing trial, CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator, and evidence showed direct financial interactions between CAIR and the now-defunct Hamas-linked charity,” Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East expert and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), told The Algemeiner last month. “This tactic of trying to turn antisemitism on its head in order to deflect from the nefarious activities of groups who have actual ties to terrorism is part of a larger strategy we see employed by Palestinian groups on campus such as the SJP. All of the above validates why the State Department is considering designating CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in August that the United States was actively working to designate the Muslim Brotherhood, a key ideological backer of Hamas that has been linked to CAIR, as a foreign terrorist organization.
On Sunday, US President Donald Trump told Just the News that an official designation is forthcoming, a comment confirmed by the White House the following day.
Last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the state-level designation of the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as terrorist organizations.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Former Hamas Hostages Visit Rebbe’s Ohel, Grave of Chabad Leader, in New York
Four former Hamas hostages visited the Rebbe’s Ohel on Nov. 22, 2025. Photo: Provided
Four freed Israeli hostages visited the Rebbe’s Ohel, the resting place of Chabad-Lubavitch leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in Queens, New York, on Saturday night together with their families.
Segev Kalfon, Matan Angrest, Nimrod Cohen, and Bar Kuperstein prayed at the gravesite and expressed gratitude for their return home as well as the support they received from the Chabad movement during their 738 days in the captivity of Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
As is customary at the Ohel, the freed hostages and their families gave charity, lit candles, and wrote personal notes for blessings that they left by the Rebbe’s mausoleum. They also recited Psalm 100, giving thanks for their return from captivity after being abducted from Israel during the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Until now, our families prayed here for us to come home,” said Angrest, 22. “Today, I came only to say thank you.”
“I was here exactly two years ago and many times throughout the last two difficult years, we went to pray at the Ohel, and every time we would come back strengthened to continue our efforts,” shared Kalfon’s father. “Now, that we were successful, we came to the Rebbe to say thank you and reflect on the power of all the mitzvot that were done in their merit.”
The former hostages also prayed for the return of the remaining captives, all deceased, still held in the Gaza Strip.
Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky hosted the visit on behalf of Chabad World Headquarters, and the evening was arranged by Rabbi Mendy Naftalin in coordination with both Yaron Cohen from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office and Yael Goren-Hezkiya, head of the Government Policy and Foreign Relations Division in the Kidnapped, Missing, and Returnees administration in Israel.
Naftalin noted that the gathering at the Ohel on Saturday night symbolized a full circle moment after two years of praying for the return of the hostages. “Here, we cried, we prayed, and we strengthened each other,” he said. “To be able to return with you all is so moving; we are closing the circle.”
“We are only here because of our forefathers, who gave us this strength to withstand all challenges,” added Rabbi Simon Jacobson, the publisher of The Algemeiner who joined the group on Saturday night. “The Ohel connects us to our roots. You all are living proof of that resilience and eternality of the Jewish people.”
The four ex-hostages were released from captivity in October during the first stage of US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Angrest, an IDF soldier, was kidnapped near the Nahal Oz military base and faced injuries and severe torture during his captivity. His captors agreed to give him Jewish prayer books and tefillin, small leather boxes with straps traditionally wrapped on one’s head and arm at the start of weekday morning prayers.
“I prayed three times a day, morning, afternoon, and night,” he said. “It protected me; it gave me hope.”
Kuperstein was an IDF soldier on leave working as an usher at the Nova music festival when he was kidnapped. During his time in Gaza, his mother lent his tefillin to thousands around the world and urged Jews to wear it in his merit. Bar said he recited the Jewish prayer Shema Yisrael often in captivity and prayed using Hebrew prayers that he had memorized.
Several former Hamas hostages – including Omer Shem Tov, Agam Berger, Sasha Troufanov, Eli Sharabi, Noa Argaman, and Edan Alexander – have visited the Ohel in recent months. In November 2023, 170 relatives of hostages chartered a flight from Israel to New York to pray at the Rebbe’s Ohel. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Netanyahu’s wife Sara, and other Israeli public figures also prayed at the Ohel during the Israel-Hamas war.
Trump visited the Ohel last year on the first anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. He was joined by a group that included Alexander’s family members. In a letter marking the anniversary of the Rebbe’s passing, Trump wrote: “When Edan Alexander was returned earlier this year, the entire country felt the power of the Ohel and the Rebbe’s enduring example.”
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Trump Set to Blacklist Muslim Brotherhood as Terror Group, in Move Hailed by Netanyahu
US President Donald Trump points a finger as he delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, July 31, 2025. Photo: Kent Nishimura via Reuters Connect
The White House confirmed on Tuesday that US President Donald Trump plans to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, in a move hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said the Islamist group “endangers stability.”
“TRUMP VOWS TO DESIGNATE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” the White House’s social media account on X posted, above a screenshot of a New York Post headline with the same wording.
TRUMP VOWS TO DESIGNATE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. pic.twitter.com/Zwt61sRRuI
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 24, 2025
The post came after Trump, in an interview with the Just the News outlet published on Sunday, was cited as saying that the “final documents are being drawn” to enact the designation.
“It will be done in the strongest and most powerful terms,” he said.
Trump’s comments followed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announcing last week a state-level designation of the Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as terrorist organizations.
The interview also came several months after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other Republican co-sponsors introduced a bill seeking to classify the Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). Lawmakers in the US House also reintroduced earlier this year the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, which would direct the State Department to classify both the organization and its affiliates as terrorist entities.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in August that a federal designation was “in the works,” noting that the legal process requires examining each of the Brotherhood’s regional branches individually.
If finalized, the designation would mark a significant shift in US counterterrorism policy, criminalizing support for the Islamist group and potentially triggering sanctions on its global affiliates.
As of this writing, the White House has not yet confirmed the report beyond its social media post.
The Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational movement active in some 70 countries that preaches a vision of society governed by Sharia law, has made recent headlines over allegations of theft and corruption. Several Arab governments, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, have banned the Brotherhood or designated it a terrorist organization. The Hamas terror group has long been affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, drawing both ideological inspiration and even personnel from its ranks.
Counterterrorism experts argue that targeting the Muslim Brotherhood’s sprawling network is an overdue step to combat the roots of Islamist extremism. The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), a research center that has long sounded alarms about the Brotherhood, welcomed Trump’s reported commitment to the designation, saying the group has functioned as an “intellectual incubator” for jihadist movements, spreading doctrines that inspire terrorist organizations even if the Brotherhood’s official chapters claim to disavow violence.
Charles Asher Small, ISGAP’s executive director, told The Algemeiner that the Brotherhood has learned to exploit the freedoms of open societies, the values of pluralism, and rights discourse “as instruments to weaken the very system that protects them.”
Trump’s statements on Sunday “reflect a growing recognition of the scale and seriousness” of the threat of the Brotherhood, Small said, and formalizing it as a terrorist designation would mark “an essential first step” to confront the group’s presence in the United States.
But he warned that the designation should not be treated “as an end in itself.” Real progress will require “sustained, evidence-based policy, rigorous scrutiny of affiliated organizations and funding networks, and long-term investment in strengthening democratic resilience against ideological infiltration already underway.”
A report released by ISGAP last week found that Qatar has funneled roughly $20 billion into American schools and universities over five decades as part of a coordinated, 100-year project to embed Muslim Brotherhood ideologies in the US.
The 200-page report, unveiled last week in Washington, DC to members of Congress, chronicles a 50-year effort by Brotherhood-linked groups to embed themselves in American academia, civil society, and government agencies, exposing what ISGAP calls the Brotherhood’s “civilization jihad” strategy, while maintaining an agenda fundamentally at odds with liberal democratic values.
“This is not a conventional political movement. It is a transnational ideological network that has learned to mimic the language of democracy while steadily corroding its foundations,” Small told The Algemeiner.
Dalia Ziada, co-author of the report, also welcomed Trump’s comments but cautioned against complacency.
“The Muslim Brotherhood is not just a Middle Eastern movement but an ideological export that has adapted itself to Western institutions, language, and freedoms in order to hollow them out from within,” Ziada told The Algemeiner. She added that she has “seen how its networks operate, how they marginalize moderate Muslim voices, and how state actors like Qatar amplify this project through money, media, and education.”
A US designation would be “a crucial signal of clarity,” she said, but “it must be followed by rigorous policy, real oversight of affiliated organizations, and sustained investment in protecting democratic culture.”
Netanyahu on Sunday applauded Trump’s decision “to outlaw and designate the Muslim Brotherhood … as a terrorist organization.”
“This is an organization that endangers stability throughout the Middle East and beyond,” he said, noting that Israel has already outlawed part of the movement and is working to “complete this action” soon.
The announcement could complicate matters for the Israeli Arab Ra’am party, which was part of the previous coalition led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid and is aligned with the Southern Islamic Movement — a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate seen as more moderate than its northern counterpart, which was outlawed in 2015. Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas responded to Netanyahu’s comments on Monday, saying that his party is “evaluating the legal situation.”