Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Deportation of Africans Kills School’s Hoops Dream

More than 30 pupils of Bialik-Rogozin High School were recently deported to South Sudan, among them five young women who played in the school’s basketball team. The five were the heart and soul of the team, which now consists of only seven players, and its future is uncertain.

Rotem Ginosar, a social studies teacher who established the school team, gave his five students a basketball before he bid them farewell. “I talked with the girls who were deported to Juba, the South Sudanese capital. One of the things they told me after ‘everything’s fine, there’s no electricity here, and its dangerous to go outside’ was ‘we found a basketball court here in Juba, between the shacks, but only boys play there.’ Basketball became a really important part of their identity,” says Ginosar.

Ginosar established the girls team and coached them following the request of several pupils a year and a half ago. ‘There were several girls in 11th grade who wanted to play basketball,” recalls recent Bialik-Rogozin graduate Demet, the daughter of a Turkish migrant worker. “We talked to Rotem and began playing. In the beginning we were a small group, only five girls, but then more girls joined in.”

“At the start they played an hour a week after school,” Ginosar recalls, “but then more girls wanted to play. We started holding tournaments in the breaks. I wanted all the boys to come and watch the girls play.”

For more, go to Haaretz.com

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.