(August 28) - This year's Olympic Games to be held in Sydney will force Israel to confront some particularly complicated ideological and halachic questions related to the juxtaposition of Jewish sports, identity, and politics in the modern world.
While these issues are certainly not a matter of life and death, they do clearly reflect the growing uneasy coexistence of traditional Jewish observanceand values in the modern Jewish political entity.
Let us begin from the end. The closing ceremony of the games will take place on October 1, which happens to be the second day of Rosh Hashana.
Should the Israeli delegation participate in what is the ceremonial finale of the Olympics?
Time-honored official Israeli policy dictates abstention only from sporting events conducted on Yom Kippur and on the memorial days for the victims of the Holocaust and the fallen soldiers of the IDF. No such policy exists vis-a-vis Rosh Hashana.
Does the fact that this is merely a ceremony make a difference? Perhaps, but the symbolic significance of the participation of the Israeli national team marching behind the state flag on the second most holy day of the Jewish calendar undoubtedly further complicates the situation.
To make things even more problematic, it turns out that the finals in both kayaking and pole-vaulting are also scheduled for Rosh Hashana. If this had been the case 15 years ago, it would not have mattered since no Israelis participated in those events.
This time, however, not only will a few Israelis be competing, our representatives actually have a reasonable chance of winning an Olympic medal.
In fact, kayaker Michael Kalganov and pole-vaulter Alex Averbukh are probably our most promising candidates for medals (with the exception of Amit Inbar in sailing).
Even if we assume that their participation is a personal rather than national matter, what will be the impact of the playing of 'Hatikva' in the Olympic stadium (or elsewhere) on the Jewish New Year?
This brings us to the significance of such images abroad. Until Joseph Lieberman's choice as US Democratic vice-presidential candidate, it was safe to say that the observance by Jews of Halacha was totally irrelevant for non-Jews. Now, all of a sudden that issue is unclear for the first time in recent history.
Even more important, how will Diaspora Jews, many of whom will be making one of their rare visits to a synagogue, feel to know that their Israeli counterparts, official representatives of the Jewish state, will be at that time frolicking on the playing fields of Sydney?
And if all this is not complicated enough, there is an additional twist to this 'only-in-Israel' story. It is entirely possible that some of our Olympic representatives are not halachicly Jewish. Is it fair, for example, to expect them to forgo an opportunity to compete because of Rosh Hashana? Would it be reasonable to expect them to give up a chance to fulfill their dreams due to religious prohibitions which in theory do not even apply to them?
That is precisely what we would be demanding if the events were scheduled to take place on Yom Kippur. In fact, Israel lost an excellent opportunity to win what would have been at that point its first-ever Olympic medal when sailors Amir and Sela refrained from competition on Yom Kippur in the Seoul Olympics of 1988.
I think it is quite obvious that no one would dream of creating two different policies for Jewish and non-Jewish Israeli athletes. To differentiate between team members according to their halachic status would create a scandal, the likes of which would not soon be forgotten.
So perhaps under the current circumstances, the best policy would be to allow each athlete to decide whether to compete in his or her events, but for Israel to refrain from participating in the closing ceremonies. While such a decision will not please everyone, it will at least accurately reflect the complexities of Jewish life in today's Israel - a secular democracy with a non-Orthodox majority and a significant observant minority.
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