Featured Post

Free The Hostages! Bring Them Home!

(this is a featured post and will stay at the top for the foreseeable future.. scroll down for new posts) -------------------------------...

Jul 2, 2007

basketball in a shul

The Iryat Bet Shemesh recently publicized the upcoming (tonight actually) "Tournament Finals in the Shul Basketball League". The mayor and certain other members of the city municipality would be attending the final game.

I am not sure exactly what the sign said. I did not see the actual sign. I do know that there is no Shul League. There is, however, a tournament that has recently been running of teams based on shuls. It is not a league that operates all the time. Someone put together a torunament and the easiest way to do so is to base teams on shuls. So it is something like an inter-shul tournament.

The games are played in the municipal sports center and a number of shuls fielded teams, though in most situations the shul had nothing to do with the teams, rather somebody in each participating shul put together a team of people whow ere in the shul. No shul Rabbi was involved and no shul gabbai was involved (unless they were among the ones playing for their shul).. The shul aspect of it was just a way of breaking into teams.

Anyways, the local Charedi rag, "Chadash" printed a critical article in this past Friday's edition. They wrote the article without looking into the situation. All they did was see the sign put out by the Irya and print their own article. They did not speak to the organizers of the tournament, nor to any participants.

The Chadash editor writes (with my translation), " What is clear is a the slight to the holiness of shuls and all that the shul as a minor temple is meant to symbolize... We must protest their bringing the secular into the holy, and not only that but they take pride in it in public and publicize it..

The shul, which our ancestors gave their lives to protect its holiness and its standing, it cannot be allowed to bring into it foreign and evil winds. A shul is dedicated for Torah, prayer, and service of Hashem. Basketball and sport have enough of their own fields and locations...."

They clearly did not speak to anybody involved in the league/tournament. It is simply a series of games, with teams broken down based on shul affiliation. Games are not played in the shuls. They are played in one specific basketball court and nobody is harming the standing of any of the shuls involved. Again, no shul is involved. It is just a number of people from shuls playing ball together.

They are, supposedly, journalists. One would think a simple phone call to check the situation would not be beyond the scope of writing the article.

14 comments:

  1. LOL.
    I don't know what they were thinking? That people will dribble in a shul and they were going to throw the ball into the Aron HaKodesh to score? Too funny.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maybe playing volleyball over the mechitza is a possibly. Women vs men. lol.

    ReplyDelete
  3. volleyball over the mechitza... now that's a great idea!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I've seen some people playing "catch" with candybags thrown at a bar mitzvah in shul!

    (I won't mention any names, or mention if I think they might sound like a woman on the phone.)

    ReplyDelete
  5. their article in support of those who attacked the iriyah workers in bet was much more telling...

    ReplyDelete
  6. mike - I did not read that one.. I can't wait for this Friday's edition after todays fighting at the merkaz mischari and in Bet...

    yoni - touche

    ReplyDelete
  7. I can fish it out of our diaper pail, if you'd like.

    I'm tempted to get a birdcage to house all the old issues...

    ReplyDelete
  8. no thanks. I'll pass. just throw the old issues in the trash.. nothing there worth keeping... there is usually nothign there even worth printing in the first place...

    ReplyDelete
  9. It was difficult finding this article amongst their two (yes, more than one) articles detailing failed attempts to tear down the tznius signs. I love Chadash!

    -Zevy

    ReplyDelete
  10. I also liked how the editorial tells us that we can't possibly know why Hashem does things (this was a big chiddush for me) and it was inappropriate of the local residents to think the Tzora fire was due to their lack of Shabbos observance. Fine. At least they came around on that. But then there was an article about a failed car robbery last Friday night and the article says (translating and paraphrasing), "It was clear to all that the car robbery failed because the owner is such a big ba'al chessed." Unfortunately, they did not include Hashem's response to the fact that the people can apparently once again read his mind. Hopefully that'll be in next week's issue.
    Again, I love this magazine. You can't make this stuff up.

    -Zevy

    ReplyDelete
  11. wow! I did not realize there was so much blogging material in this little rag! I will have to read it more thoroughly this week!

    ReplyDelete
  12. I've seen baseball of a sort played in a shul. Oy vey.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Can't say that I am surprised to see that some people got excited about this. Oy vey.

    ReplyDelete
  14. these are the same people who insist the torah cannot possibly mean "an eye for an eye" dafka!

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...