guide to the jewplexed

In the Heart of Texas Who Rules, the League or Shabbat?


There's a men's Orthodox Jewish high school basketball team in Houston, Texas that's showing the country how to score a slam dunk for religious commitment.

This season, the Beren Academy Stars (whose school has fewer than seventy students in their upper division) went 23-5 in their regular schedule, and had already advanced in the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (TAPPS) state 2A playoffs, when they ran into a scheduling conflict. Their semifinal game was scheduled for a Friday evening March 2; a time when the team's players observe Shabbat and are unable to play.

According to a story on JTA:

"The quarterfinals game against Our Lady of the Hills Catholic High School of Kerrville on Feb. 24 had been played earlier than scheduled to accommodate Beren, and the other three semifinalists in the 2A category -- schools with enrollments of 55 to 120 students -- reportedly were willing to follow suit.

"Just as TAPPS doesn't schedule games on Sunday in deference to Christian teams, we expected that as a bballJewish team, there would be grounds for a scheduling change," Beren's head of school, Rabbi Harry Sinoff, told JTA."

Beren asked the league for a time change, but their appeal was unanimously denied forcing the school to withdraw from the playoffs, and allowing another team to play in its place.

After the decision, TAPPS director Edd Burleson, explained to The New York Times that changing the scheduling for Beren would create problems for other teams.

"When Beren's joined years ago, we advised them that the Sabbath would present them with a problem with the finals," Burleson 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."

But, according to reports, the league had allowed scheduling changes for other teams. In more than one instance, a game time had been changed for a soccer team from a Seventh Day Adventist school that also could not play on the Sabbath. Why then couldn't the schedule also be changed for a Jewish team?

Since the denial, attention to the story grew; finally ESPN picked it up, and Mayor Annise D. Parker of Houston asked TAPPS to reconsider its decision. Perhaps feeling the pressure, on the Wednesday before the scheduled game, TAPPS revisited the decision, and for a second time unanimously rejected Beren's request. In an unyielding statement,TAPPS rehashed their position, but missing from it was an explanation as to why, upon admitting a Jewish school, they did not simply adjust the league rules to avoid the potential problem.

The TAPPS decision severely proscribed one of the benefits of competing in a small school division: the cultural and religious awareness that can result from it. During competition on the field or court, a player sees what they have in common with their opponent, and soon discovers that in terms of the skills of the game, religious background favors no one.

As a reporter, I have covered the emergence of Jewish high school football, and both coaching staff and players have told me that many of the players against whom they compete may have never even met a Jew, let alone faced them on the playing field. It doesn't show up in the box score, but these encounters are a learning experience that engenders religious tolerance--for both sides.

Yes, you need to abide by the rules, but what about the rules of Shabbat? Or does the league only recognize the Christian day of rest? Did TAPPS really expect a Jewish team not to honor their players' fine play, or expect the team to back down from their religious commitment?

The scheduling rules, obviously created before Jewish teams came on the scene, needed to be challenged. Some one had to seek redress, and it's too bad the outcome was not different. We're talking technical foul here. No Orthodox team has ever won a Texas state championship, and without a rule change how could this ever happen?


BREAKING NEWS***

TAPPS, on Thursday, after being served a temporary restraining order filed on behalf of the Beren team captain, teammates and parents, reversed its decision and Beren Academy is now back in the semi-final game which was originally scheduled for Friday evening and has now been shifted to Friday afternoon. http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/03/01/3091916/orthodox-ballers-sue-texas-school-school-district

In this other playoff game, between league rules and the Jewish day of rest, score one for Shabbat.

On Thursday afternoon in the TAPPS semi-final game, the Beren Academy Stars defeated the Dallas Covenant Mavericks, 58-46. On Saturday night at 6 PM PST, Beren will play in the championship game.
(The game can be watched online.)


Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate. In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."