Menschwarmers

On January 6, 2024, a record-breaking 13,361 attendees filled an arena in Minnesota to watch their new women's hockey team trounce visitors from Montreal. The game made history as the biggest crowd on record to turn out to watch women's hockey—and it happened less than a week into the start of the newly formed Professional Women's Hockey League. Kaleigh Fratkin was excited to see it happen. She wa...

Hanukkah is a festival of light, hope, gambling with dreidels (maybe a sport?) and remembrance—and so, this week, in the final episode of Menschwarmers for 2023, we remember eight crazy Jewish sports stories from a great year. Our list includes shout-outs for the historic Canadian Open held at the Oakdale Golf & Country Club and Israel's triumphs in baseball and soccer; individual mazel tovs f...

At 24 years old, Lior Berman has already spent years playing NCAA Division I basketball for Auburn University in his home state of Alabama. But it was only this past summer that the walk-on athlete—and the only Jewish player on the team—got promoted to a full scholarship. The 6'4" guard decided to stick around for a fifth year, taking a few classes after graduating with a degree in industrial...

Kevin Youkilis doesn't crave attention. But in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, the Jewish MLB All Star and World Series champion has become especially vocal, taking to social media to talk about resiliance and Jewish pride in the face of antisemitism. It's a mission that began when he started playing for Team Israel Baseball, which made him realize how important representat...

In the early days of the latest war between Hamas and Israel, something unusual happened in the sports world: a lot of Jewish athletes, and their teammates, went public with their support of Israel. Even Israeli athletes like Deni Avdija of the Washington Wizards, who has refrained from speaking about Middle Eastern politics in the past, posted a lengthy message , in Hebrew and English, disclosing...

This is the first in a series of live conversations hosted by The CJN and the Prosserman JCC. To learn more and get tickets, visit thecjn.ca/events . In many ways, Michael Landsberg filled a position in Canadian broadcasting that had never even existed before. A founding face of TSN since 1984, Landsberg anchored SportsDesk , recapping everything in sports with highlights and commentary. He moved...

Join the Menschwarmers for their upcoming live show, in conversation with legendary broadcaster Michael Landsberg, at the Prosserman JCC in Toronto on Sept. 12, 2023. Reserve your seat here. Outside of executive offices, David Thorpe is one of the biggest Jewish names in the NBA—a player development coach who's helped countless athletes, especially young prospects, reach new heights and meet their...

When AJ Edelman tried out for the Israeli Olympic skeleton team at Lake Placid in 2014, he was told, flat-out, he'd never make it. Not only was he 30 pounds underweight, but the Israeli Olympic commitee wouldn't support him, because Israelis didn't care about the obscure winter sport in which an athlete slides down an icy track head-first as fast as 130 kilometres per hour. It wasn't the first tim...

On July 19, Josh Sokol, a 29-year-old Scrabble influencer from Montreal, won the top prize of US$10,000 at the 2023 North American Scrabble Players Association championship in Las Vegas. But, as Sokol explains on this episode of Menschwarmers , he isn't even the first Jewish Montrealer to win this competition—one of his local club colleagues took home the top prize last year. What is it about Mont...

This year, the Washington Capitals' training camp will take place on Sept. 15, 2023. For most players, this won't be a problem. For Andrew Cristall, the Jewish rookie out of B.C., it will cause a slight conflict—Rosh HaShanah. It won't be the first time Cristall has to navigate his game around Jewish holidays, though. Last year, for Yom Kippur, he fasted until the sun went down, with just enough t...

We're deep into summer and the sports world is moving slowly, so we're giving you a comprehensive round-up of Jewish sports stories you need to know. Israel qualified for Olympic soccer with big dreams for its young squad; a second Jewish guy named Amari was drafted into the NBA (well, the first was Amar'e, but still) in Amari Bailey for the Charlotte Hornets; the NHL now has another Canadian Jewi...

This week, the RBC Canadian Open kicks off at the historically Jewish Oakdale Golf & Country Club. And while we have an interview with Mark Sadowski, the club's immediate past president, and general manager Molly Jagroop, the impact of this monumental event happening on Jewish grounds isn't actually the biggest story of the week. It's been overshadowed by the surprise merger (or acquisition, r...

We know Jewish athletes are out there, on rinks and in arenas, breaking the stereotype of Jews as the People of the Book. But we don't hear as often about the people working to break other Jewish stereotypes: namely, that said Jewish athletes are not just fit, but sexy. It's a unique mission adopted by Stacey Agdern, a romance novelist who specializes in the hyper-specific niche of "romance n...

Jonah Fialkow's name isn't very well known—but his social handle, @JewishJonah , definitely is. With nearly 20,000 followers on TikTok, Fialkow has risen the ranks of the most recognizable food vendors in North American sports stadiums. His "Day in the Life of a Wrigley Field Vendor" videos, in which he narrates a prosaic itinerary to lo-fi piano jazz, are soothing and insightful, especi...

You don't often see athletes converting to Judaism. When they do, they aren't often All Stars. And when they are—well, we get excited. This week, the Menschwarmers firmly hop aboard the Sacramento Kings bandwagon. Not because they've won their first playoff game in 17 years, nor because their coach and star point guard won big NBA awards. It's because Domantas Sabonis, their 26-year-old All-Star c...

Craving more Jewish sports stories before Passover? We're pleased to present this recent episode of The CJN Daily about the the King David Lions, a Jewish high school basketball team in B.C. that recently won their first-ever provincial championship, defeating the reigning champs, Christian Unity. Hear more Canadian Jewish stories at thecjn.ca/daily . Credits Menschwarmers is hosted by James Hirsh...

In 1988, Paul Shindman founded an unlikely organization in the Middle East: the Israel Ice Hockey and Figure Skating Association. The Canadian expat became the country's first "hockey madrich ", overseeing the development, recruitment and growth of the sport in Israel. Shindman joins the Menschwarmers to tell his story, describe how quickly Israeli kids laced up on the ice, and showcase...

Spencer Horwitz hasn't suited up for the Toronto Blue Jays yet. Actually, he hasn't even been to Toronto yet. But the 25-year-old first baseman and outfielder is already making waves on an international stage: just days ago, as a rookie member of Team Israel's roster at the World Baseball Classic, where the Holy Land is the unanimous underdog in a group of Latin American powerhouse teams, Horwitz...

Next week, Israel is heading back to the World Baseball Classic, five years after their meteoric rise in the 2017 competition created a lasting impact that changed the way international fans saw Jewish athletes. Israeli baseball is now a thing, with the small country fielding a competitive team in the Olympics and beyond. So in anticipation of the WBC, the Menschwarmers couldn't help but put toget...

For perhaps the first time in history, two Jewish golfers recently won big competitions in a single week: Canadian Ben Silverman won on the Korn Ferry Tour and rising star Max Homa earned his sixth victory on the PGA Tour. To commemorate the Jewish success stories, we invited Dan Rapaport, a golf reporter and podcaster with Barstool Sports, to hang out and chat about how the status of Jews in golf...

As we wrap up this year (and the third season of Menschwarmers ), we're taking a look back at some of the most impactful stories, biggest successes and most unfortunate fizzle-outs that Jewish athletes went through in 2022. While Israel didn't perform particularly well at the Winter Olympics and the few Jews in the NFL are flailing, we've had lots of victories to celebrate—including Alex Bregman's...

Sheldon Plener didn't set out to become a sports lawyer. But that's where his legal journey took him: first, by helping to negotiate the expansion of an NBA team into Toronto in the mid-1990s; then as a key figure in the Ottawa Senators organization, where he's currently the chairman and governor, after former owner Eugene Melnyk died this past spring. Now, the partner at Cassels Brock & Black...

As the World Cup launches in Qatar, a country not historically known for its friendliness toward Jews and Israelis, Menschwarmers hosts Gabe and James wanted to look at the implications for Jewish fans. It's one thing to scope out Jewish players and talk about Israeli-Qatari relations, but we wanted to dive deeper, so we're bringing you a summary of the rise and fall of Chuck Blazer, a FIFA admini...

The biggest sports story of the past week has revolved around an antisemitic documentary that NBA star Kyrie Irving posted to social media. The film, Hebrews to Negroes , peddles antisemitic conspirary theories, repeats fake Hitler quotes and espouses Black Hebrew Israelite ideology that claims Black people are the real Jews. After all the controversy, on Nov. 2, 2022, Irving and his team, the Bro...

Even if Canadian sports fans didn't know that their government recently lifted its ban on single-game sports betting, they would have noticed the ads: everywhere, on every game, following you across the internet. No doubt Jewish sports fans have taken part in the new craze, inundated at every opportunity with incentives to guess the outcomes of games and how players will perform. But what does Jew...