Competitive gymnastics used to be off-limits for most Orthodox Jewish girls above the age of bat mitzvah. Regulation leotards, mixed with male judges and male spectators would compromise the modesty standards for many of these young women. In addition, most competitions are held on Shabbos. All of this has changed now that there is an […]

  We’ve all heard of baseball legends Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax not playing the World Series on Yom Kippur. More recently, LA Dodger Shawn Green sat out on the holiest day of the Jewish year. Despite the famous joke from “Airplane” about the lack of Jewish athletes in history, there are actually hundreds of […]

This past week was a sort of watershed moment for me as an Orthodox Jewish mom. My 12-year-old daughter, who had never shown any particular interest in gymnastics, suddenly HAD to join a local gym, with her bestest girlfriends, like…ASAP. I casually asked if the class was all female, because she is over the age of bat […]