With Israel having a historic showing at the Olympics, while the country is at war, I think we deserve to gloat and laugh a little...

Congratulations to Palestine 🇵🇸 for winning the 100m sprint gold medal at Paris Olympics 🥇
pic.twitter.com/JxmIW6cwoI

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) August 2, 2024

According to Israel Hayom, Israeli bronze medalist from the Tokyo Olympics Sagi Muki has had to send back his medal.

Congratulations to Hailey Kops on qualifying to represent Israel in pair ice skating in the upcoming Winter Olympics 2022 in Beijing.

we all know the old adage in the frum community " you can't do x because it will lead to mixed dancing.

Israeli Olympic Judoko Tohar Butbol is really rolling! At this rate, he might go undefeated, and barely even break a sweat!

We Jews are used to saying Next Year in Jerusalem, but today the announcer at the Olympics qualifier game between Team Israel and Team South Africa said "Next Year in Tokyo" after Israel handily beat the South African team 11-1 to qualify for the Olympics in 2020.

this si the first time in 44 years Israel has qualified for a team sport in the Olympics. In the past 44 years (since 1976 when the Israeli football/soccer team qualified) only individual Israelis have qualified to compete, but not any Israeli teams.

good luck Team Israel

and now if Beatie Deutsch finishes her qualifications and gets to represent Israel in the Olympic marathon of Tokyo 2020, she'll have a minyan to bring along with her!


you can watch the game here:

Rav Eliezer Melamed has issued an interesting psak when questioned about the appropriateness in saying a bracha upon seeing an Olympic athlete, specifically one who won a medal. The bvracha would be the bracha one makes on seeing someone unusually beautiful, unsually successful and unusually strong - the bracha of "shekacha lo baolamo".

Rav Melamed responded that one should make the bracha and the purpose of this bracha is to remind us not idolize these people but we should remember that their special gifts and talents are from God. Rav Melamed says that one would have to actually see the athlete in person, rather than seeing a picture or video of the athlete, and one did not necessarily have to see the actual competition to make the bracha.

Rav Melamed added that one would not make the bracha for seeing just any Olympian athlete, but only for seeing one that actually won a gold medal - the real champions. Whiule that would mean Israelis would not make a bracha upon seeing Yarden Gerbi or Ori Sasson, Rav Melamed added that in each country one could make the bracha on his country's local champions.

Making the bracha on a female athlete would have to be done when she is appropriately dressed, meaning it is unlikely to be able to make it while she is competing, but more likely after the fact.

source: Walla News

If only. If only.

Minister of Sport (and Culture) Miri Regev decided that the honor brought to Israel by our Olympians has been so great that they must be justly rewarded, at a level that was previously not part of the arrangement.

Regev wanted to cancel the tax on their prize monies in order to allow them to keep the entire purse and not share any of it with the government. Realizing that this would entail a lengthy process, and probably one that she could not be sure of its final outcome, she came up with a different plan.

Regev's new plan is to basically give double the prize money. Basically she is saying the government will cover their taxes. We owe them a debt of gratitude, presumably for the glory they brought upon us, and they shouldn't need to pay this tax.
source: Srugim

I don't know who deserves what. These athletes put in years and years of hard work and training, giving up a lot to compete at this level. They brought international glory and pride to the State of Israel. On the other hand, the State of Israel put its gravitas behind these athletes. The State of Israel invested its money and resources into these athletes. Both parties - the athletes and the State of Israel - went into this with a certain agreement and full knowledge of what would happen to the prize money -  some would go to the athletes and some to the State coffers.

It is a very nice gesture on behalf of the State, to forgo its portion of the prize money. If only, if only, the State would allow all of us to bask in our accomplishments and in the pride we each bring to the State with our accomplishments that turn Israel into an international powerhouse. If only, if only, the State would decide to cover the taxes of each and every one of us to show its gratitude for what we each do for the State - teachers, educators, medical professionals, members of the security forces, entrepreneurs, members of the startup nation, and the list goes on and on...

As you all know, the Olympics are underway in Brazil, and like most other countries, Israel has sent a team of athletes to compete on behalf of our national glory.

Until now the Israeli athletes have been disappointing. Even the athletes that were expected to do well, did not. Yesterday Israel won its first medal (bronze) of the 2016 Olympics via the judoku Yarden Gerbi. mazel tov!

Miri Regev, the Minister of Sport and Culture, publicized that she had been davening for Gerbi to win and had moments before Gerbi's victory sent a sms message to a rabbi, Rabbi Netanel Shriki, in which she said how important it is to win the medal and hear the national anthem and that she is praying for a victory.


Regev doesn't explicitly ask him to add his own prayers, but that seems to be implied that she is looking for a blessing or his own prayers as well.

Sure enough, Gerbi won her match shortly after, and won her gold medal.
source: Kikar

I think Miri Regev should be fired. Regev was derelict in her duties. Why did she not care enough about all the other athletes under her responsibility and pray for them as well? Why did she not send messages to the rabbi on behalf of each one of them? Israel would have a few more medals, and maybe even a silver or gold, if she would just take her responsibility seriously!

just kidding.

.

If life were only as simple as the Olympics.

In the Olympics there have already been a couple of incidents in which an uncomfortable situation, or worse, between Israeli representatives and representatives of Israel's neighboring countries was averted.

The Lebanese team refused to allow the Israeli team to ride on the same bus to the opening ceremony.

A Syrian boxer refused to compete against an Israeli boxer at the World Boxing Championships and gave up his potential spot in the Olympics because of it, as these championship matches were qualifiers for the Olympics.

A judoka athlete from Saudi Arabia forfeit her match supposedly to avoid meeting the Israeli judoka Gili Cohen in the next round.

If we could only have avoided conflicts in real life so easily, so many thousands of lives would have been saved. Instead of having all those wars, the Arab countries and representatives could have taken this new approach already back then and just walked away from facing us all those times... Maybe Hamas can take lessons from the Olympics and help us all avoid an unnecessary summer war (whether this year or next or the summer after)...

Next Friday, August 5, will be the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Rio De Janeiro.

Minister of Sport and Culture Miri Regev has announced that she will be skipping the opening ceremonies due to being a representative of Israel, the "sole Jewish State on the planet" and it being inappropriate to desecrate Shabbos in that role. Attempts to house her close to the event failed when security said they could not guarantee her safety with those arrangements.

Kol Hakavod to Miri Regev for taking this stance. Regev is traditional, but not religious and not normally Shabbos observant. I am sure it was not an easy decision to make. How often do you get to represent your country on an international stage as big as the Olympics? Regev chose to represent Israel in a different capacity -as one who is sensitive to Jewish culture, specifically Shabbos observance, despite everyone's, including her own, personal decision whether to observe or not.

I am assuming she is not stopping the entire Israeli Olympic team from participating but made the decision for herself alone. If the decision included the entire team, I am sure we would hear sharp criticism of her in the news.

If Regev were religious this would be more expected and less noteworthy. Being that she isn't, that makes the decision even more difficult to have arrived at and more praiseworthy.

Quote of the Day

I think that we need to deal less with medals and if we are going to achieve medals, and deal more with investing more in sport. The Olympics is just one symptom of the fact that the State of Israel is sick in both body and soul, and it is because there is no investment in sport... It is more important for the State to invest in kollels and torah learning than for learning sport. At the end of the day, this harms us, in our health, in our security and also in the Olympics.

  -- sports analyst Uriel Daskal

Daskal said this on the radio when asked to explain why Israel did so poorly in the Olympics, not even achieving a single medal. According to Daskal, the little part of the budget that is directed to the haredi parties for yeshivot and kollels is what caused the Olympic athletes to fail. In a sense he is right, as every agura directed to anything other than sport means less potentially invested in sport, meaning the athletes will do that much worse. So just like the haredim are responsible for the athletes' poor showing, so too is the school system, the defense system, the roads authority, the sciences, and every other office and institution that gets a budget from the government, taking away potential shekels from sport.

It is outrageous that he could blame the failure of the athletes on the haredim. Maybe he should have blamed the haredim because they did not pray enough for the athletes success. or maybe he should have blamed the haredim for nuclear war, for Greece and Spain  being in horrible financial situations, for the shooting in the theater in the US, for the boy in Tel Aviv who got killed at a basketball game from a freak accident, and for the devastation of the Carmel fire. Ridiculous.

While that is what Daskal said on the radio, in his own article about the athletes failure, he does not mention the haredim, and while he does say too little is invested in sport, and sport is clearly low on Israel's list of priorities, he does go on to explain how the money that is invested is not used efficiently.

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I did not see any major purpose in requesting a moment of silence for the victims of the 1972 Olympics Munich Massacre. However, once the request has been made, and been turned into a big issue, I felt like it was more important to support it than to ignore it. Especially because those refusing were doing so for clearly anti-semitic reasons.

Here is a great article on Fox News written by the son of one of the victims of the Munich Massacre. Guri Weinberg writes about his repeated requests for a moment of silence through many Olympics, always being met with refusal. Weinberg writes about why the IOC will never memorialize the victims of '72.

The article is well worth a read, though his revelation of it being due to anti-semitism is only surprising in the style of anti-semitism, not in the nature of it.
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Picture of The Day

The Lebanese Judo team didnt want to practice near the Israelis, so the IOC placed a mechitza between them, Clearly the Israelis were on the men's side and the Lebanese on the womens side...
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