Looking for a fun night out that won’t put you into overdraft? Try one of Israel’s women’s basketball games.
In the past two seasons, my husband and I have become regular attendees at the home games of our local women’s Premier League team Hapoel Lev Jerusalem. Even though an average game of the men’s Hapoel Jerusalem team draws 6,500 fans, and playoffs can attract up to 11,000 fans in the Jerusalem Payis Arena, the bleachers in the women’s games in the Malha Arena are sparsely occupied.
We cheer our team together with only a hundred or two hundred Jerusalemites in an auditorium that has 2,000 seats. What a shame more spectators don’t come.
From the beginning, we surprised ourselves how involved we got, shouting and cheering and singing with the rest of fans. The play on the court is exhilarating and professional. Have I mentioned that admission in the regular season is free?
We started attending Hapoel Lev Jerusalem games last season after Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, became a sponsor of the local Premier League team and its expanding network of girls’ and teens’ basketball clubs. With the high stress level borne by Israeli children, playing basketball is an excellent outlet for physical and emotional health. More than 600 elementary and high school girls take part in Jerusalem’s neighborhood basketball teams.
The players come from all sectors of Israeli society: Jews and Arabs, extremely religious and secular, as well as special-needs youngsters. In the junior teams, you can see girls playing in shorts, others in long skirts, and still others in long pants and hijabs as they dribble, shoot baskets, and block opponents. Basketball for girls is no longer out of bounds for recreation; and for rising stars, it’s perhaps even a career.
It’s about time.
Israeli women have won Olympic medals in judo, artistic gymnastics, and sailing, but we are behind in women’s basketball achievement.
Here’s what you might not know: Women’s basketball was invented by a Jewish woman!
The game of basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts. Naismith was coaching disruptive youth at the YMCA Training School and was challenged to find an indoor game for them in the frigid New England winters. He supposedly asked the janitor to pin up two boxes on poles, but the janitor brought peach baskets instead. “Basketball” was born.
Thirty-two kilometers away from Springfield in Northampton, Massachusetts, a Jewish woman was teaching physical education at the prestigious all-women’s Smith College. The teacher heard about the new basketball game and decided to try out this new game with her students.
Senda Valvrojenski from Vilnius
Senda Berenson Abbott was born Senda Valvrojenski in the Vilnius Governorate of what was then the Russian Empire (today Lithuania). Her parents had moved the family to the United States when she was seven. Finding the name Valvrojenski awkward in Boston, they changed the family name to Berenson.
To make basketball more appropriate for her Smithies, she tweaked the game to make it less aggressive and more modest. For example, women were only allowed to dribble three times. She authored a women’s rulebook that would be used for women’s basketball until the 1960s. Today, the rules for women’s basketball and men’s basketball are almost identical, with the exception of women using a smaller ball. (The Smith team’s mascot and nickname was changed in May 2025 from “Pioneers” to “Smith Bears” to honor Berenson.)
Women’s basketball in the US received an assist from revolutionary legislation: Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
After several failed attempts at women’s professional leagues in the US, the Women’s National Basketball Association was founded in 1996. An average of 1.5 million viewers tune in to watch WNBA games.
Israel has yet to experience that boom. In our ancient capital city of Jerusalem, our Premier League team – Hapoel Lev Jerusalem women’s basketball team – is only six years old.
The fortuitous meeting of two Israeli women gave birth to Hapoel Lev Jerusalem.
Dr. Netta Abugov, mother of four, grew up in Holon, playing volleyball and windsurfing. The two older children of her four led her to the basketball dome. Son Imry easily found team opportunities, but daughter Tenne (her name means “basket,” like the kind used to carry first fruits on Shavuot) had to join a boys’ team to play because no girls’ teams existed where they were then living, in Kfar Oranim. Ten-year old Tenne and another girl player were regularly benched whenever they competed against teams from religious boys’ schools.
Abugov was determined to change the reality for her daughter and all other girls. She got the ball rolling in the basketball world by joining the volunteer administration of a basketball team in Israel’s northwest, where Imry was playing. Abugov used her position as a sponsor and later club chairwoman to nurture the local women’s team. When the team did so well that it was promoted to the Premier League, the local municipal council refused to allocate the funds to sponsor it.
Brainstorming in Basel Square
One of the disappointed top players was American-Israeli Rebecca Ross, who, when growing up, also played basketball with the boys “when they let her in.” Ross persevered, and even though she’s a petite 165-cm.-tall woman, she played on teams in Israel and the US. In parallel, she always coached girls’ basketball. She particularly wanted to create basketball opportunities for girls on the autism spectrum, and she shared Abugov’s hoop dreams of creating a Premier League team for women in Israel’s capital.
Abugov and Ross got together in Tel Aviv’s Basel Square to brainstorm. If Theodor Herzl said “In Basel we created the Jewish state,” Abugov and Ross, sitting on a bench in Basel Square in Tel Aviv, created Hapoel Lev Jerusalem.
Today, among the 600 girls and women who take part in Hapoel Lev Jerusalem basketball teams, three teams play at Shalva, Israel Association for the Care and Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities.
There are also women’s teams in Ashdod, Ramle, Ramat Gan, Holon, Ramat Hasharon, Rishon Lezion, Petah Tikva, Haifa, and Kfar Saba.
The starting five at any Hapoel Lev Jerusalem game are skilled professional hoopsters, a mix of Israelis and foreign hires. Most of the basketball players are in their 20s, although center Ziomora Morrison, from Chile, is 36. Among the younger players are IDF soldiers designated as talented athletes and allowed to continue playing.
At every game, girls around age nine from the Jerusalem kids’ clubs are invited to shoot hoops during the halftime intermission. On Monday, January 20, the team is honoring seniors. So if you’re over 65, you might get a chance to throw a three.
At the end of last season, Hapoel Lev Jerusalem made it to the semifinals. My husband and I found ourselves dressed in the team’s red colors, passengers on our first-ever fan bus from Jerusalem to Rishon Lezion. Our team wasn’t going to face their fierce orange-and-white competitors, Hapoel Rishon Lezion, without us.■
The writer is the Israel director of public relations at Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Her latest book is A Daughter of Many Mothers, with Holocaust survivor Rena Quint, who is celebrating her 90th birthday.