(JTA) — Lilia Akhaimova, a Russian Jewish gymnast competing in her first Olympics, had the lowest all-around score on her team during the qualifying round for the finals, in part because of a balance beam fall. But in the finals itself, she shone on the vault, her specialty, earning the top score among the 24…
The cheering from Kibbutz Gezer is going to be so loud that Alon Leichman may hear it as he takes to the mound in Tokyo as a pitcher for Team Israel’s baseball team. That’s because his proud parents – David Leichman and Rabbi Miri Gold – will be shouting and clapping along with other family…
(JTA) — Sid Marantz loves tradition so much that he spent 20 years as a board member of his family’s Los Angeles synagogue. So it’s a big deal that he isn’t in Tokyo this week for the start of the Olympics, the first Summer Games he’s missed since 1984. Marantz usually attends for three weeks:…
(JTA) — Avishag Semberg, a 19-year-old Taekwando fighter, won bronze in the women’s under 49 kg category on Saturday, giving Israel its first medal of the Tokyo Olympics and its first ever in the sport. Semberg was not predicted to medal, but she earned the bronze after defeating Turkey’s Rukiye Yldrm. After the match, she…
(JTA) — An Algerian judoka reportedly pulled out of the Olympics on Thursday after seeing his tournament draw, which would have pitted him against an Israeli opponent in the second round. “We were not lucky with the draw. We got an Israeli opponent and that’s why we had to retire. We made the right decision,”…
(JTA) — This article originally appeared on Alma. There are quite a few athletes who have been called the G.O.A.T., or greatest of all time: quarterback Tom Brady, basketball player Michael Jordan and swimmer Michael Phelps, just to name a few. But gymnast Simone Biles? She might just be the best of the bunch. I…
(JTA) — For the first time ever, the Olympic Games held a moment of silence during the opening ceremony for the 11 Israeli athletes murdered during the Munich Olympics in 1972. There, the Palestinian terrorist group Black September attacked members of the Israeli Olympic team, ultimately killing six coaches and five athletes, as well as…
(JTA) — Before last November, Shlomo Lipetz already had his dream job. After drinking coffee and listening to a morning news podcast — “The Daily,” from the New York Times — he would then take the L train from his Brooklyn apartment and head to his job as vice president for programming at City Winery,…
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