And I’m sure that goes double for the Christian sporting organizations

According to this piece in the JTA, Maccabi Australia has abandoned a controversial plan to ban non-Jews from competing on its sports teams.

The board of Australian Jewry’s largest member organization decided last month to enforce its constitutional right by Dec. 31, 2010, ensuring it would be an exclusively Jewish club.

Australia’s Equal Opportunity Act allows clubs to discriminate in order to preserve a minority culture. But a backlash from within the Jewish community [emphasis added] prompted the board to recant.

In a May 28 statement, MAI president Harry Procel said, “After consulting with our constituents and the wider community we have reviewed our position and determined that no current members of the organization will be required to leave at any time based on religion, gender or ethnicity.”

I played for a time in a local JCC-sponsored synagogue basketball league. Ostensibly, you actually had to be a member of the individual shul to be eligible. There were several athletes who were not dues-paying members of said institutions, which caused no small displeasure from someof the teams who were playing strictly by the rules. (The synagogue softball league seems to have a more by=the-book mentality; I tried to join a team in my neighborhood but was politely refused despite my not insubstantial skills because I wasn’t a member of that particular HOW.)

This is an issue that obviously has the potential for a lot of controversy. On the one hand, Maccabi is a Jewish entity; goodness knows there are probably plently of CYOs that would not be so welcoming to non-Christians. Why should Jewish organizations — which have suffered long histories of discrimination — be expected to behave differently? On the other hand, as MAI argues, it’s precisely because of past antipathies that Jews whould be more empathetic.

Discuss.

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Kaplan’s Korner on Jews and Sports © 2009 New Jersey Jewish News

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