Members of the University of Arizona’s basketball team lead a clinic in Jerusalem, Aug. 13, 2023. Photo: Josh Hasten.
Temperatures were scorching outside in Jerusalem on Sunday—and the competition was heating up indoors at a local gym as well, with some of the top college basketball players in the United States, representing the University of Arizona, leading young Israeli hoopsters in a clinic of drills and games.
The start of the Jerusalem Marathon on March 17, 2023. Credit: Sportphotography.
In its 12th year—its “bat mitzvah,” so to speak—the Jerusalem Winner Marathon on March 17 drew more than 40,000 runners and participants from 72 countries.
Enes Kanter Freedom walks to the Western Wall in Israel, there to help train kids at a youth basketball camp in Israel, August 2022. Photo by Josh Hasten. Credit: Bnai Zion.
“If you could change anything in this world, what would it be?” asked NBA star Enes Kanter Freedom, while seated among 30 Jewish, Christian and Muslim, children during a break in the action at a youth basketball camp he was helping to run this week at the YMCA in Jerusalem.
Hailey Kops in competition. Credit: KrPhotogs Photography LLC.
In a true “Cinderella story,” 19-year-old Hailey Kops, a religiously observant athlete from West Orange, N.J., is preparing to take on the world’s finest ice skaters while proudly representing Israel at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Maccabi Ma’ale Adumim basketball team, June 2021. Credit: Courtesy.
For the first time in Israeli professional basketball history, a team from over the so-called “Green Line” has secured a spot in Israel’s second-highest tier league—known as Liga Leumit, or the National League—by finishing the “tier three” league standings as No. 1.
Geerz is a therapeutic, mountain-biking program in Israel with a curriculum designed to help kids struggling with behavior problems, ADD/ADHD, anger management, family dysfunction, adolescent eating disorders, and other psychological and physical issues. Credit: Courtesy.
The Geerz program works with 350 teens in nine cities and one youth village throughout the country, using the bicycle as a tool used to teach life skills, and to get kids outside and away from their immediate environments.
Baseball Team Israel celebrates after qualifying for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Photo by Margo Sugarman.
“We are about to build a field and complex in Beit Shemesh, which will become Israel’s national baseball stadium. My focus is to bring awareness that we are building baseball here,” said Jordan Alter, the new president of the Israel Association of Baseball.
A member of the Israeli team goes for the flag. Photo by Shannon Nuszen.
Over the course of three days, it was a flag-football fan’s dream as 21 teams and more than 400 players, dressed in their country’s colors, took over a Jerusalem field from morning till evening.
This past weekend 21 teams from all over Europe arrived in Jerusalem to compete for the 2019 Flag Football European Championship. Denmark took the gold for the men while Spain won the women’s crown. On today’s Israel Uncensored with Josh Hasten, American Football in Israel (AFI) president Steve Leibowitz says that the biggest winner in the competition is the city of Jerusalem, hosting the largest ever delegation (over 400 players) for a specific sport in an internationally recognized tournament. While the Israeli men’s team finished fourth and the women finished sixth, Israel already has its sights on the 2020 world championship in Copenhagen.
Opening ceremonies of the European Lacrosse Federation (ELF) Women’s European Lacrosse Championship in Jerusalem, July 15, 2019. Photo by Josh Hasten.
As evening approached, and the heat of another scorching summer day in Jerusalem broke, more than 300 young women from 16 different countries across Europe proudly marched into the fan-filled stadium at the Kraft Family Sports Campus in a sea of their country’s colors on Monday, getting ready for opening ceremonies.