HOOP DREAMS FOR ORTHODOX BASKETBALL TEAM IN TEXAS-REVERSAL BY TEXAS COURT

Posted By on March 2nd, 2012

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4197453,00.html
Rescheduled game for US Jewish basketball team

Dallas federal court intervenes, arrangements made to avoid the Sabbath if Beren Academy makes it to finals. School ‘regrets that it took a lawsuit filed by parents to bring about this decision’

An Orthodox Jewish high school basketball team in Texas will not have to forfeit its playoff game after league officials agreed, under legal pressure, on Thursday to move up the game time to avoid a conflict with the Jewish Sabbath.

Before Thursday’s abrupt reversal, the school, Robert M. Beren Academy in Houston, was going to have the team forfeit the game rather than play, as originally scheduled, after sundown on Friday night, at the start of the weekly Jewish Sabbath.
Officials from the athletic league, the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools, or TAPPS, had initially refused to move the game to accommodate the team, which has a 23-5 record and won its quarterfinal game by 23 points to earn a berth in the semifinals.
But that changed on Thursday when a federal court in Dallas intervened after the parents of some of the team’s members sued.
“We have been issued a temporary restraining order,” said Edd Burleson, the league’s executive director. “We are currently trying to make arrangements to play that game tomorrow. I have been assured that we will be able to play it on Friday prior to the beginning of the Sabbath, and we will play the finals game after 8 pm on Saturday.”
“Arrangements have been made to avoid the Sabbath if Beren Academy wins and makes it to the finals,” Burleson said.
The school said in a statement it was grateful for the change but that it was not the instigator of the legal action.
“We are thankful to TAPPS for ultimately making the right decision,” the school’s statement said. “The school administration and board was not involved in any legal action, and we regret that it took a lawsuit filed by parents to bring about this decision.”
Until the court order, Burleson and the league had resisted the school’s requests to move the game.

“We have certain things that we do, not necessarily based on religion, but when TAPPS was founded, there were no schools in it that celebrated their Sabbath on anything but on Sunday,” Burleson had said earlier.

The vast majority of schools that are members of TAPPS are Christian institutions, and the organization does not play tournament games on Sundays, the Christian Sabbath. In fact, the league accommodated one Christian school’s Saturday Sabbath previously, Beren’s top administrator said.
“There was a precedent two years ago,” Head of School Rabbi Harry Sinoff said. “A Seventh Day Adventist team, which is also a Saturday Sabbath observant faith, and TAPPS made an exception for them.”
Members of the Beren basketball team play wearing yarmulkes, the school calendar lists months and years according to Hebrew tradition, and the school’s mission statement stresses “a commitment to the Torah and its ethical and moral precepts to the Jewish people.”
The school – situated on a 52-acre campus with an enrollment of 275 ranging from nursery school through high school – is dedicated to Jewish traditions. A key tenet of the faith is to observe the Sabbath.

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Religious Conflict Could End Robert M. Beren Academy Basketball Team State Title shot –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmFBk4vFcaw&feature=player_embedded
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HOUSTON – The Robert M. Beren Academies Varsity Basketball team has advanced to the state finals but given game time and their religious beliefs, they’re forced to call a time-out.
‘Team Star’ was originally scheduled to play Friday Evening during the Jewish Sabbath.
As Rabbi Harry Sinoff put it, “When personal excellence clashes with sacred mission, sacred mission always trumps it.”

Sinoff asked the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools to reschedule the playoff times, but TAPPS denied the request, saying they had previously advised all school administrators of possible Friday night games beforehand.
Isaac Buchine, a senior on the team, called it disappointing and said, “it hurts a little bit.”
Especially since the players have worked so hard after earning the regional championship.

“It’s definitely not one thing that makes us good; it’s a combination of many things,” said Isaac Mirwis, also a senior.

Coach Chris Cole agreed. They’ve had great energy and determination to get this far but admits this was always a possibility and the bottom line is religion does takes precedence over a game of basketball.

–http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/153250

Texas Schools Tell Jews Play on Sabbath or Forfeit

Freedom of religion in Texas – for Christians: No school basketball games on Sunday but Saturday game goes on despite Jewish protest.
By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

First Publish: 2/28/2012, 6:29 PM
Basketball -- never on (Christian) Sabbath

Basketball — never on (Christian) Sabbath
Israel news photo: Flash 90

Freedom of religion in Texas – for Christians: No school basketball games on Sunday but Saturday game goes on despite Jewish protest.

Texas schools do not allow sports competition on the Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, but they have ruled against a Jewish school scheduled to play a semi-finals championship game in Dallas on the Jewish Sabbath.

Houston’s orthodox Beren Academy chose to forfeit the game instead of violating the Jewish Sabbath by playing what was supposed to be its first-ever game in the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (TAPPS) state tournament.

Beren asked TAPPS to reschedule the game from Friday night, after the Jewish Sabbath begins, and allow it to play earlier in the day, but officials ruled angst the school.

The league is made up of mostly religious institutions, noted an opinion writer in the Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise. The writer commented, “Unfortunately, religious freedom is a one-way street here in Texas.

Beren previously was able to reschedule two of its playoff games, to Saturday night, after the Jewish Sabbath ends, and to noon Friday, before it begins, but its appeal to change the starting time of the semi-finals was rejected.

TAPPS does not allow sports to be played on Sundays, the day Christians traditionally go to church.

For Jews, the Sabbath is different. “Orthodox Jews take Saturday off, observing the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. And by “taking off,” they do nothing. No electricity, no opening, no closing, no nothing,” noted the Enterprise.

“The sacred mission will trump excellence in the secular world,” Rabbi Harry Sinoff, Beren’s head of school, told The New York Times Monday.

TAPPS argued that it told Beren officials years ago that their joining the organized games could make it problematic for them to play on the Jewish Sabbath.


 

Reuters

 

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