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Texas Schools Tell Jews Play on Sabbath or Forfeit

"Bring me my chariot of fire,"

In Texas, the Sabbath Trumps the Semifinals

The Robert M. Beren Academy, an Orthodox Jewish day school in Houston, won its regional championship to advance to the boys basketball state semifinals this weekend in Dallas. But the team will not make the trip.

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Michael Stravato for The New York Times

Beren Academy's basketball team had hoped to travel to Dallas early and play its semifinal game before sundown on Friday.

The Beren Academy players observe the Sabbath and do not play from sundown on Fridays to sundown on Saturdays. Their semifinal game is scheduled for 9 p.m. Friday.

“The sacred mission will trump excellence in the secular world,” Rabbi Harry Sinoff, Beren’s head of school, said Monday in a telephone interview.

The school filed an appeal to change the time of the game with the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools, or Tapps, the group that organizes the tournament. On Monday morning, representatives of the school were notified that the association’s nine-member executive board had rejected the appeal.

“When Beren’s joined years ago, we advised them that the Sabbath would present them with a problem with the finals,” Edd Burleson, the director of the association, said. “In the past, Tapps has held firmly to their rules because if schedules are changed for these schools, it’s hard for other schools.

“If we solve one problem, we create another problem.”

Membership in the association is voluntary, Burleson said.

“If the schools are just going to arrange their own schedule, why do we even set a tournament?” Burleson said. “Over a period of time, our state tournament, which is a highlight of our association, deteriorates to nothing. That’s the whole point of having an organization.”

Conflicts between religious beliefs and scheduling are becoming more commonplace because of the nation’s changing demographics, said Sarah Barringer Gordon, a professor of law and history at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Some associations are rethinking who their constituencies are,” Gordon said. “As pluralism works its way through American sports, we’re going to see more and more situations like this one.”

Several of Beren Academy’s opponents this season agreed to change the time of their games to avoid conflicts with the Sabbath, the school’s boys basketball coach, Chris Cole, said.

Cole, the team’s coach for 10 years, said many of the players on this season’s team, which is 23-5, had been playing together since grade school.

“We have a pretty mature group of guys,” Cole said. “They knew this could happen down the road.”

Beren Academy has an enrollment of 274, with students from 18 months to 18 years old. The upper-level school has 71 students.

This would have been Beren Academy’s first trip to the state semifinals. (The tournament is separate from the larger one run by the University Interscholastic League for the state’s public schools.) Zachary Yoshor, a 16-year-old junior on the basketball team, said this season’s success was a result of the players’ working together for so long.

“Our record has never been this good,” Yoshor said. “We’ve been able to win against teams that we’ve never beaten before. I’m appreciative that we’ve been able to play this far.”

The appeal request proposed that the team drive from Houston to Dallas on Thursday night, spend the night and play the semifinal game earlier on Friday, school officials said. Beren Academy’s opponent would have been Covenant School, from Dallas. Our Lady of the Hills, the team from Kerrville that Beren Academy defeated in the regional final, will replace Beren Academy in the state semifinal game.

“There isn’t any more for us to do,” Sinoff said. “We want to be in this year, but if not this year, next year.”

Mark Buchine, whose 17-year-old son, Isaac, plays for Beren Academy, said he still planned to head to Dallas with hopes of a resolution that would allow him to see his son play this weekend.

“It’s disappointing,” Buchine said. “I think the kids will be disappointed, too, but the team has this attitude of when there are bad calls, you just move on.” source:

Basketball -- never on (Christian) Sabbath

Israel news photo: Flash 90

Texas Schools Tell Jews Play on Sabbath or Forfeit

Freedom of religion in Texas – for Christians: No school basketball games on Sunday but Saturday game goes on despite Jewish protest.

Freedom of religion in Texas – for Christians: No school basketball games on Sunday but Saturday game goes on despite Jewish protest.

Texas schools do not allow sports competition on the Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, but they have ruled against a Jewish school scheduled to play a semi-finals championship game in Dallas on the Jewish Sabbath.

Houston’s orthodox Beren Academy chose to forfeit the game instead of violating the Jewish Sabbath by playing what was supposed to be its first-ever game in the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (TAPPS) state tournament.

Beren  asked TAPPS to reschedule the game from Friday night, after the Jewish Sabbath begins,  and allow it to play earlier in the day, but officials ruled angst theschool.

The league is made up of mostly religious institutions, noted an opinion writer in theBeaumont (Texas) Enterprise. The writer commented, “Unfortunately, religious freedom is a one-way street here in Texas.

Beren previously was able to reschedule two of its playoff games, to Saturday night, after the Jewish Sabbath ends, and to noon Friday, before it begins, but its appeal to change the starting time of the semi-finals was rejected.

TAPPS does not allow sports to be played on Sundays, the day Christians traditionally go to church. 

For Jews, the Sabbath is different. “Orthodox Jews take Saturday off, observing the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. And by “taking off,” they do nothing. No electricity, no opening, no closing, no nothing,” noted the Enterprise.

“The sacred mission will trump excellence in the secular world,” Rabbi Harry Sinoff, Beren’s head of school, told The New York Times Monday.

TAPPS argued that it told Beren officials years ago that their joining the organized games could make it problematic for them to play on the Jewish Sabbath. source:

Orthodox Jewish High School Team Forfeits Playoff Game Instead Of Playing On Sabbath

I’ve heard of a lot reasons for a forfeit, but I’ve never heard of a religious reason derailing a state playoff basketball team.    Beren Academy, which is an Orthodox Jewish high school, has decided to forfeit instead of playing its state semifinal game because it falls on the Sabbath.

The school is coming off its best season in history and attempts to get the game time changed have failed so far.

Personally, I think the state should bend the rules here.  Change the game time.  These kids shouldn’t be punished because of their religion.  They just had an amazing season and it’s now over because you won’t change.

If you support Beren Academy, sign this petition to get the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (TAPPS) to change their mind.

Double Standard- Occupy Wall Street: Does anyone care about the anti-Semitism?

Double Standard- Occupy Wall Street: Does anyone care about the anti-Semitism?

A growing number of Israelis and foreign Jewish groups are expressing concern over the anti-Semitic flavor of some of the “Occupy Wall St.” economic protests in the US. . . .
In Los Angeles, California, protester Patricia McAllister, who identified herself as an employee of the Los Angeles Unified School District (we can only hope she is not an educator), had this to say:
“I think that the Zionist Jews, who are running these big banks and our Federal Reserve, which is not run by the federal government… they need to be run out of this country.”
On the American Nazi Party website, leader Rocky Suhayda voiced support for “Occupy Wall St.” and asked, “Who hold the wealth and power in this country? The Judeo-Capitalists. Who is therefore the #1 enemy who makes this filth happen? The Judeo-Capitalists.”
One of [the] people reportedly responsible for organizing the “Occupy Wall St.” protests, Adbusters editor Kalle Lasn, has a history of perpetuating conspiracy theories that say the Jews control America’s foreign policies.
Back in New York, another protester insisted that “a small ethnic group constitutes almost all of the hedge fund managers and bankers on Wall St. They are all Jewish. There is a conspiracy in this country where Jews control the media, finances… They have pooled their money together in order to take control of America.”
This does not mean all or even most of the OWS protesters are anti-Semitic, but the prominent liberal leaders who have shown sympathy for their cause have failed to speak out, as have the other elements within the group. Israel Today reports: “More than the few Occupy Wall St. anti-Semites themselves, it is the lack of a clear and firm repudiation of their hateful rhetoric by the mainstream American media and political leaders that has a growing number of Israelis and Jews on edge.”

You will recall that reports of alleged anti-black comments (never verified) from Tea Party groups brought howls from Democrats and the media. But not this time, when Jews are the object of the vilification (documented on film) and it’s the left who is protesting and engaging in behavior that would have earned the Tea Partyers condemnation had they engaged in the same conduct.

The lefty mob is still trying to decide whether to make “demands,” so perhaps they are otherwise occupied. But for respectable politicians and media outlets, where is the outrage?

UPDATE (5:30 p.m.): The Anti-Defamation League has called on “organizers, participants and supporters of these rallies to condemn such bigoted statements clearly and forcefully.”

Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Doug Chandler 
Jewish Week Correspondent
Just as his organization once called on leaders of the Tea Party movement to condemn “manifestations of anti-Semitism and racism” at their rallies, says Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman, it’s now urging “organizers, participants and supporters” of the Occupy Wall Street protests to take similar steps.
At the same time, Foxman adds, the ADL has seen “no evidence” that anti-Semitic views are representative of the Occupy Wall Street movement, as a whole, or that they’re “gaining traction” among other participants. And he criticizes the Emergency Committee for Israel, a right-wing Israel advocacy group, for creating TV ads that, in his words, “exaggerate” or “politicize” the matter.
The manifestations refer to a small number of anti-Semitic signs and comments that have appeared at the protests, including a handmade placard claiming that “Zionists control Wall Street” and one man’s hateful tirade, captured on video, against an elderly Jewish visitor to Zuccotti Park, site of the New York protest.
The man responsible for the sign has come to the protest on a near-daily basis, but has refused to share his name, JTA reports. He has also carried a sign denouncing “Jewish bankers” and called President Barack Obama a “Jewish puppet.” But organizers and activists have tried to provide a counterpoint, holding their own signs deriding him.
The ADL issued a statement on the matter after weeks of monitoring Occupy Wall Street and related protests around the country. Oren Segal, director of the organization’s Center on Extremism, said any economic crisis provides “a breeding ground for anti-Semites to voice their conspiracy theories” and that, therefore, the ADL is “always concerned” that they could find wider acceptance.
Referring to Occupy Wall Street protests, though, Segal said, “I really don’t see any endemic anti-Semitism at these rallies at all. Anybody can show up at these things,” including the “fringe individuals” noticed by the ADL, but “no one is coalescing around their message.”
In a phone interview with The Jewish Week, Foxman said much the same.
Similar concern prompted the ADL to urge leaders of the Tea Party movement during its beginnings to condemn “manifestations” of anti-Semitism and racism at their events, Foxman said, adding that “they’ve done so.” He suggested that he expects organizers and participants at the Occupy Wall Street protests to do the same.
Meanwhile, the conservative Emergency Committee for Israel has purchased TV time in New York and Washington for an ad referring to the anti-Semitic signs and comments at Occupy Wall Street.
The ad, scheduled to run on cable news channels, shows video footage of Obama, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi and former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer praising the protest. What follows is footage of three anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist signs and the anti-Semitic tirade, along with the question, “Why are our leaders turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attacks?” Informed of the ad, Foxman said he wishes the Emergency Committee for Israel “wouldn’t politicize” or “exaggerate” the subject. “I don’t know what it has to do with Israel’s emergency,” he said. “Why make it part of the political football debate?”
Objections also came from Daniel Sieradski, the Jewish activist who’s organized a Jewish presence at Occupy Wall Street, who called the committee’s ad part of an effort to malign all the protesters and called evidence of any widespread anti-Semitism “shoddy.”
Lying about anti-Semitism or overstating its presence dilutes “the meaning and efficacy of the term, undermining our ability to effectively combat” it, Sieradski said.
William Kristol, president of the Emergency Committee and editor-in-chief of the Weekly Standard, was in Afghanistan and couldn’t be reached for comment. But the committee’s new executive director, Noah Pollak, defended the ad in a phone interview with The Jewish Week.
“We’re not calling all the Occupy Wall Street protesters anti-Semitic,” Pollak said, “and we’re not calling the movement, as a whole, anti-Semitic.” Instead, he said, the committee is simply saying that “it behooves these political leaders to warn the Occupy Wall Street protesters against allowing hate rhetoric to be a feature of the protests.”
Pollak also attacked the very message of the protest, suggesting that signs and comments against “people who work on Wall Street and the alleged 1 percent” — a reference to the richest Americans — also constituted hate.
Sieradski, meanwhile, told the JTA that protesters are printing pamphlets explaining how to confront the anti-Semites. Although he and other Jewish protesters haven’t encountered many anti-Semites, he said, “we’re still worried about it. It is in every part of our lives, and we need to stay vigilant.” SOURCE: