Harold Grinspoon: Visualizing Jewish ‘Voices’

By Tom Teicholz
Published on December 20, 2012

Here’s a challenge: Let’s say you had $1.1 million to give away on a program to inspire people working in Jewish organizations as well as the people who find themselves in their public spaces.

Israeli law making it tougher for athletes to shine, report claims

Published on August 16, 2012

Israel’s sports law significantly reduces the chances for its athletes to excel, a new study concluded.

August 2, 2012

By Shmuel Rosner
Published on August 2, 2012

All eyes on Bob Costas

Published on July 27, 2012

Palestinian Olympic participation brings conflict to the fore

Published on July 19, 2012

A portrait of the two most prominent Palestinian leaders -- current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and former President Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004 -- hangs in the conference room of the Palestinian Olympic Committee headquarters.

America’s Jewish Olympians head to London with Jewish pride

Published on July 17, 2012

Jason Lezak -- no newcomer to Olympic glory -- recognizes the difficulty in returning to the medal stand at the London Games.

Racism scandal dogs Australia’s only Jewish Olympic athlete

Published on July 17, 2012

The only Jewish athlete on Australia's Olympic team unwittingly has been drawn into a racism scandal on the eve of the London Games.

Italian lawmakers join Olympics moment of silence push

Published on July 13, 2012

Some 140 Italian members of the Parliament of Italy have added their voices to calls for a minute of silence during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London to honor the Israeli athletes murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Israel’s Olympians heading to London thinking medals, remembering slain countrymen

Published on July 9, 2012

Israelis and their Summer Olympics athletes are eyeing the upcoming London Games with excitement and disappointment.

Spirit of Sportsmanship Boycotts Israel

By Franklin Foer
Published on August 26, 2004

The Olympic Games are, of course, more than just games. As Bob Costas and the event's organizers constantly remind the world, they are a festival of humanity, a great coming together, the one moment when the planet gathers in a friendly spirit of healthy competition. Dogging your viewing of pummel-horse routines and synchronized diving, there is ample talk of the "Olympic movement," a phrase intended to highlight these aspirations.

Last week, however, as the Athens games got under way, an Iranian judo champion exposed the hollowness of this rhetoric. Rather than compete against an Israeli, Arash Miresmaeili quit the Olympics entirely. As he told the Iranian government's official news service: "I refuse to fight my Israeli opponent to sympathize with the suffering of the people of Palestine, and I do not feel upset at all."

World Briefs

By JTA Staff
Published on January 16, 2003

World Briefs

Starting Over

By Peter Ephross
Published on September 14, 2000

Millions of immigrants have flocked to the United States looking for streets paved with gold. Lenny Krayzelburg, who came to Los Angeles from Odessa, Ukraine, in 1988 is searching for gold as well - but in a pool at Sydney's Olympic Games.

Olympic Moments

By George Eisen
Published on September 14, 2000

That Jews have been prominent in the history of ancient and modern sport, and specifically the Olympic Games, should not come as a surprise. We tend to forget that one of the sparks that ignited the Maccabbees' revolt was - as the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius recorded some 2,000 years ago - that some high priests in Jerusalem's Holy Temple neglected their holy duties and instead, exercised in the nude, Greek style. Josephus also recorded that Herod the Great [Herod The Wicked, to some], King of Judea, saved the ancient Olympic Games from bankruptcy by endowing them with gifts and revenues upon which "he was generally declared in their inscriptions to be one of the perpetual managers of those games."

Careless Construction

By Naomi Segal
Published on April 20, 2000

An Israeli court has convicted five people in the collapse of a bridge at the Maccabiah Games in 1997 that left four Australian athletes dead and scores of others injured.