Religion & Beliefs

Jews and Muslims Agree: No Basketball on Shabbos

By Tamar Fox / March 7, 2008

The Herzl/Rocky Mountain Hebrew Academy boys basketball team in Denver qualified for the regional championship, but won’t be able to play because the game was scheduled to take place on Shabbat. The Colorado High School Activities Association governs the league the boys play in, and has refused to move the game to a time when the team could play without breaking Shabbat, claiming that rearranging the schedule on the regional level would be too complicated. The communications coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Amina Rubin, has come out with a statement supporting the Jewish team: “In a nation as religiously diverse as America, it is important that we all make the extra effort to accommodate the beliefs and practices of others. Student athletes should not be forced to choose between their faith and participation in sports." Several news sites chose to lead with the revolutionary idea that Muslims might support Jews in anything.

But there are some gaps in this story, like: Why is RMHA suddenly making a stink now that they’re in the finals. Why not push for a policy of no championship games on Saturdays? Why hasn’t this been an issue before now? And if, as the CHSAA claims, moving the game to late Saturday night would affect fifteen other teams and could mean more missed school time for kids on those teams, does the RMHA really have the right to demand religious accommodations? On the other hand, incidents of anti-Semitism in Colorado are on the rise, so maybe it’s a good thing to have the Jewish community standing up for themselves.

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  • By Soccer 3/10/08 at 7:01 p.m. UTC

    Which is that no matter what day of the week they play on, UCLA will be this years NCAA champions, hands down!

  • By Efrem "Ef" Epstein 3/9/08 at 4:30 p.m. UTC

    The NCAA regularly works tournament seeding and brackets around Brigham Young University (BYU), by putting them in the Thursday-Saturday bracket so they don't have to play on Sunday.   I believe the tournament committee even has the discretion to alter a team's seed one notch in either direction for scheduling purposes.  

    Are these situations equal?  I'm not sure.   But it does seem like where there's a will, there's a way and my guess is they would have put in the extra effort for a Mormon High School who wouldn't play on Sunday.

  • By zbird 3/9/08 at 10:12 a.m. UTC

    Rescheduling one game (this particular championship) to accommodate one of the two teams that happen to be competing in it sounds totally reasonable.   And it is completely ridiculous to say it would be "too complicated" to reschedule. Sports leagues always reschedule games for weather (especially in a state like Colorado where you occasionally get 5 feet of snow in one day). 

     But saying there can be no games at all on Shabbos is ridiculous.  Then pretty soon a Christian church will not want to play on Sunday, Muslims won't play on Friday, some other religion will ban Tuesday…  There's only so many days in the week.   

    –Z

  • By Ali Eteraz 3/8/08 at 12:42 p.m. UTC

    Wasn't Lieberman nearly Vice President while observing Shabbos? I don't particularly see why creating exemptions for those that observe it is necessary. Isn't there a principle of darura (arabic for necessity) in Orthodox Jurisprudence as there is in Islamic? A rabbi should just say "necessity requires that these boys kick ass on shabbos — one time exception!" Why do we like to pretend that religions aren't flexible?

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