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
Trump Invites Israel’s Netanyahu to White House, Prime Minister’s Office Says
US President Donald Trump talks with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Knesset, Oct. 13, 2025, in Jerusalem. Photo: Evan Vucci/Pool via REUTERS
US President Donald Trump has invited Israel‘s Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House in the “near future,” the prime minister’s office said on Monday, shortly after Trump said Israel should maintain a strong and true dialogue with Syria.
A visit to the White House would mark the Israeli prime minister’s fifth since Trump returned to office in January. The two leaders have publicly projected a close relationship, though US and Israeli sources have said Trump has at times expressed frustration with Netanyahu.
The prime minister’s office said Netanyahu and Trump discussed disarming Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza. Trump in September announced a plan to end the Gaza war and a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been in place since October.
TRUMP PUSHES ISRAEL-SYRIA DIALOGUE
Trump earlier said in a statement that it was very important that Israel maintained a “strong and true dialogue” with neighboring Syria, and that “nothing takes place that will interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous state.”
“Syria and Israel will have a long and prosperous relationship together,” said Trump, whose administration is trying to broker a non-aggression pact between the two states.
Syria does not formally recognize Israel, which following the fall of longtime Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in December moved troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to secure a military position to prevent terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state.
The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria and later annexes by Israel, was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War. However, Israel considered the agreement void after the collapse of Assad’s regime.
Trump has backed Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, while Israel voiced hostility over his past links to Islamist militancy and has lobbied Washington to keep Syria weak.
An Israeli raid in southern Syria on Friday killed 13 Syrians, Syrian state media reported. The Israeli military said it had targeted a Lebanese Islamist terror group there.
The call with Trump also came a day after Netanyahu asked Israel‘s president for a pardon in his long-running corruption trial. Trump has publicly voiced support for pardoning Netanyahu and sent a letter last month urging President Isaac Herzog to consider it.
The prime minister’s readout of the call made no mention of the pardon. Israeli opposition politicians have come out against the request and called on Netanyahu to instead resign.
Uncategorized
Iran’s Water Crisis Deepens as Experts Say Extreme Drought Is Worst in At Least 40 Years
People shop water storage tanks following a drought crisis in Tehran, Iran, Nov. 10, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran’s water crisis has continued to deteriorate, with the country experiencing a severe drought which has prompted calls to evacuate the capital of Tehran, whose metropolitan area is home to approximately 15 million people.
From Sept. 23 to Nov. 28, Iran averaged 3.9 millimeters of rain, a staggering drop of 88.3 percent compared to the longterm average of 33.5 millimeters, according to Iran’s meteorology authorities.
“Nature is now imposing hard limits,” Amir AghaKouchak, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Irvine, told CNN. “For decades, policies have encouraged the expansion of irrigated agriculture in arid regions,” he explained, echoing others who have identified many years of economic, agricultural, and policy decisions which have drained the desert nation’s aquifers.
AghaKouchak described the current drought as the worst for at least 40 years.
Iran’s state-run ISNA news site reported that the country had not seen rain in November’s last week and that the four provinces experiencing the worst conditions were Bushehr, South Khorasan, Qom, and Yazd. ISNA also named Tehran Province as a region with low rain, citing a 97.4 percent drop. Factors named as impacting the drought included drying wetlands, decreases in humidity, fewer clouds, failure to update infrastructure, expansion of agriculture into dry regions, growth in the oil industry, building too many dams, and “intensified land subsidence.”
Iran has reached a state of “water bankruptcy,” according to Kaveh Madani, who served as deputy head of Iran’s Department of Environment. He is currently director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health.
Mohsen Mesgaran, an associate professor of plant sciences at the University of California, Davis, told CNN that “an estimated 30 percent of treated drinking water is lost through old, leaky distribution systems, and there’s very little water recycling.”
Ali Bitollahi, head of the Earthquake Engineering and Risk Department at the Road, Housing, and Urban Development Research Center, labeled the drought “very serious” and called it the “driest autumn in the country.”
Reuters reported that 10 percent of the dams in the country had run dry.
Mohsen Ardakani, the director general of the Tehran Provincial Water and Sanitation Authority, said last month that the main reservoirs supplying the capital city were at 11 percent capacity, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency.
The Latyan Dam outside Tehran is reportedly around 9 percent full, while the Amir Kabir Dam is around 8 percent of its capacity.
Mashhad, Iran’s second largest metropolitan area with 3 million people, had reached 3 percent of its water capacity, according to Hossein Esmailian, head of the city’s water and wastewater utility company.
The Mehr News Agency reported that wheat production in the country dropped 30 percent due to the previous year’s drought.
The government has explored using cloud seeding to provoke rain but has seen limited results.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has stated that water rationing will begin this month if rain does not return. On Nov. 6, he said that “even if we do ration and it still does not rain, then we will have no water at all. They [citizens] have to evacuate Tehran.”
About two weeks later, Pezeshkian said that the country “has no choice” but to relocate its capital, warning that severe ecological strain has made Tehran impossible to sustain.
“The truth is, we have no choice left — relocating the capital is now a necessity,” he said during a televised national address, asserting that the deepening crisis has “rendered the city uninhabitable.”
However, Mesgaran noted that “most households simply can’t afford such a move,” asking, “Where would people even go?”
Amid the water crisis, the Iranian regime has spent significant resources on bolstering its military and nuclear programs, spending an estimated billions of dollars on support for its terrorist proxies abroad.
According to the US Treasury Department, for example, Iran has provided more than $100 million per month to Hezbollah so far this year alone, with $1 billion representing only a portion of Tehran’s overall support for the Lebanese terrorist group.
Uncategorized
Northwestern University Agrees to $75 Million Settlement With Trump Admin Over Antisemitism Complaints
Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, US, April 9, 2025. Photo: Vincent Alban via Reuters Connect.
Northwestern University has agreed to pay $75 million and abolish a controversial agreement it reached with a pro-Hamas student group in exchange for the US federal government’s releasing $790 million in grants it impounded in April over accusations of antisemitism and reverse discrimination.
“Today’s settlement marks another victory in the Trump administration’s fight to ensure that American educational institutions protect Jewish students and put merit first,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on Friday. “Institutions that accept federal funds are obligated to follow civil rights law — we are grateful to Northwestern for negotiating this historic deal.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Northwestern struggled to correct an impression that it had coddled pro-Hamas protesters and acceded to their demands for a boycott of Israel in exchange for an end to their May 2024 encampment, in which they illegally occupied the Deering Meadow section of campus.
Part of the deal, infamously known as the “Deering Meadow Agreement,” to end the encampment stipulated establishing a scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contacting potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, creating a segregated dormitory hall to be occupied exclusively by students of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim descent, and forming a new advisory committee in which anti-Zionists students and faculty may wield an outsized voice.
“As part of this agreement with the federal government, the university has terminated the Deering Meadow Agreement and will reverse all policies that have been implemented or are being implemented in adherence to it,” the university said in a statement, noting that it also halted plans for the segregated dormitory. “The university remains committed to fostering inclusive spaces and will continue to support student belonging and engagement through existing campus facilities and organizations, while partnering with alumni to explore off-campus, privately owned locations that could further support community connection and programming.”
On Friday, the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern (CAAN), whose activism contributed to the federal government’s sanctioning the university, said it “welcomes the fact that the Resolution Agreement nullifies the discriminatory Deering Meadow Agreement, a document that represented one of the lowest points in Northwestern’s history.”
It added, “That agreement granted preferential treatment based on national origin, empowered groups involved in harassment, bypassed required governance safeguards, and signaled an institutional surrender rather than leadership. Its elimination is an essential step toward reinstating civil rights compliance and restoring the university’s credibility.”
Northwestern previously touted its progress on addressing the campus antisemitism crisis in April, saying that it had addressed alleged failures highlighted by lawmakers and Jewish civil rights activists.
“The university administration took this criticism to heart and spent much of last summer revising our rules and policies to make our university safe for all of our students, regardless of their religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, or political viewpoint,” the statement said. “Among the updated policies is our Demonstration Policy, which includes new requirements and guidance on how, when, and where members of the community may protest or otherwise engage in expressive activity.”
The university added that it also adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.
“This included a live training for all new students in September and a 17-minute training module for all enrolled students, produced in collaboration with the Jewish United Fund,” it continued. “Antisemitism trainings will continue as a permanent part of our broader training in civil rights and Title IX.”
Other initiatives rolled out by the university include an Advisory Council to the President on Jewish Life, dinners for Jewish students hosted by administrative officials, and educational events which raise awareness of rising antisemitism in the US and around the world. Additionally, Northwestern said that it imposed disciplinary sanctions against several students and one staff member whose conduct violated the new “Demonstration and/or Display Policies” which regulate peaceful assembly on the campus.
“Over the past two years, Northwestern has implemented numerous measures to strengthen our campus environment: new training requirements, expanded reporting systems and greater support for Jewish students. All of those measures predated this agreement,” the university said on Friday. “Incidents have significantly declined as a result. As part of the agreement, we will continue strengthening those measures, including a new campus climate survey for Jewish students.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.