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American Football Kicks Off Another Season in Israel
Jacob Gurvis | JTA
T he year was 1999, and Jonathan Hauser
was working as a concierge at the
famous King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

At the time, Hauser was playing for the
Jerusalem Lions fl ag football team, a part of the
American Football in Israel organization. The
league was 10 years old at the time but lacked
adequate playing fi elds. One day, he spotted a
face he knew from TV in the hotel lobby: New
England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

Hauser told Kraft about American Football
in Israel — which Kraft, despite being a regular
Israel visitor, did not know existed — and
connected him with Steve Leibowitz, a veteran
journalist who moved to Israel in 1974 and had
been leading the development of the sport in
Israel. Just a year later, Kraft inaugurated the small
Kraft Family Stadium in Jerusalem with a fi eld
only 80 yards long (instead of the regulation
100-yard length in the NFL). The AFI, which
started with touch football and later expanded
to fl ag football and adult tackle football, had
found a fi eld.

16 FEBRUARY 9, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
The AFI kicked off its season on Jan. 18 in
Bet Shemesh with a matchup between the
Bet Shemesh Rebels and the Jerusalem Lions,
in front of a sold-out crowd of 400. Around
2,000 players, coaches and referees are now
involved in the league throughout the country.

The adult tackle league features eight teams
from diff erent cities who compete in an eight-
game regular season, followed by playoff s
that culminate in the Israel Bowl championship
game in the spring. Other programs for men,
women and children of all ages are off ered in
cities across Israel.

“The dream of building football in the country
is due to the partnership and friendship and
help of Robert Kraft, without any question, and
his family,” said Leibowitz, a New York City
native and longtime Giants fan.

Leibowitz had the dream since the 1980s,
when he and a group of journalists put together
a sports club to watch American football by
pirating the signal from the Armed Forces
Network. That inspired them to start the league.

In 2017, Kraft donated $6 million to open the
Kraft Family Sports Campus in Jerusalem, which
Leibowitz said is home to the only regulation-
size American football fi eld in the Middle East,
plus facilities for soccer, basketball and more.

“My late, darling wife Myra always used to tell
me that until I start building football in Israel, I
would not win anything with [the] Patriots,” Kraft
said at the 2017 dedication. “That happened
in late 1999, and we won our fi rst Super Bowl
in 2001. Now we have fi ve championships,
and I can’t ignore the connection between our
continuing to support development in Israel
and our great accomplishments.”
‘Should’ve called a timeout’
Players from AFI have gone on to play college
ball in the United States, most notably Yonatan
Marmour, who in 2021 became the fi rst Israeli
to play Division I football. Bet Shemesh coach
Charlie Cohen, a yeshivah teacher and salesman
who moved to Israel from Massachusetts in
2000, added that some athletes play in Israel
during a gap year before trying to make the
jump to Division II.

In the early years of football in Israel, Leibowitz
noted that the players were mostly American
immigrants or children of immigrants. But now,
he says there is mostly “Hebrew in the huddle”:
Nearly every team outside of Jerusalem is
entirely Hebrew-speaking.

Football player graphic: Yevheniia Matrosova/iStock/Getty Images Plus; Football fi eld background: efk s/iStock/Getty Images Plus
‘HEBREW in the Huddle’



A Tel Aviv Pion
eer player hurd
les Israeli fototball images: Doron Dotan; Robert Kraft: Courtesy American Football in Israel
g steam in Israel.

Am erican football is gainin
Some cities do have
Arab players, as well
as immigrants from
Ethiopia and Russia.

Leibowitz remarks
that he is especially
proud of one notable
AFI alum: American-born
Ron Dermer, Israel’s new
minister of strategic aff airs
and a former Israeli ambassador
to the United States. Leibowitz called
Dermer, who played fl ag football, a “celebrity”
in Israel’s football community.

Leibowitz, who serves as president of AFI,
acknowledged that the sport will never surpass
the popularity of soccer or basketball in Israel.

But the strides the league has made are
undeniable, and the AFI hopes to build three
more football stadiums, with plans in motion for
regulation-size fi elds in Haifa, outside Tel Aviv
and in Beersheva.

In another sign of development on the world
stage, Israel also hosted the 2019 European
Flag Football Championship and the 2021 Flag
Football World Championship. In July, said
Leibowitz, the AFI has been invited to bring
a national team of top players to play in Fez,
Morocco. He said it’s the fi rst time an Israeli
team will play a Moroccan team in Morocco,
likely in any sport.

And with the 2028 Olympics in the not-too-
distant future, Leibowitz noted that the AFI is
working on a squad that could very well qualify
for the soon-to-be-announced fl ag-football
competition. an opponent in
an American fo
otball in Israel ga
me. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft at the Kraft Family
Sports Campus in Jerusalem
He added that the league
honors the late Myra Kraft,
who was also very involved
in the sport’s development,
by stitching her initials onto
the Israeli players’ jerseys
when they play abroad.

For Cohen, football is at the
center of his Jewish practice —
and helped inspire him to become
a rabbi.

“Without sports, there is no Jewish identity
for me,” he said.

‘I fell in love with the sport’
Cohen, 53, said he was kicked out of Hebrew
school as a child and had all but walked away from
his Judaism when he was coaching Pop Warner
football in Sharon, Massachusetts. His winless
team squared off against a powerhouse squad
from nearby North Attleboro and won, 13-12.

“That was a really watershed moment for me,”
said Cohen. “I took that to heart, as a person,
and as a Jew.”
He explained: “Here it is, you’re a football
coach, and you’re demanding that your team
has character. Your team shows up for each
other. If you have a loss, come fi ght for your
guys, don’t quit. … I said to myself, if I were to
demand my little peewee football team turns it
around, well, I’m going to turn it around, too.”
He re-engaged with Judaism and ultimately
immigrated to Israel, where he became a rabbi.

Cohen began as Bet Shemesh’s off ensive line
coach, then became head coach last season,
leading the Rebels to the semifi nals, where
they lost by four points.

And no, he’s not over the loss: “We had the
ball with two minutes to go. Should’ve called a
timeout and calmed them down. You live and
you learn.”
One of Cohen’s players is 22-year-old yeshivah
student Aviad Ohayon, who said he tried football
for the fi rst time in high school in Kfar Saba,
at the behest of a friend. He didn’t know what
football was at the time.

“The information that I had about football
was like a bunch of guys with helmets fi ghting
with a strange ball in the shape of an egg,” said
Ohayon, not inaccurately. “He really wanted me
to come, so I was like, OK, why not? I came to
one practice, and you can say I fell in love with
the sport.”
Playing running back, linebacker and kicker,
Ohayon noted that he has played basketball,
soccer and karate in the past, but football was
special. “I really loved sports, but something with
football, the training and all the practices,
was very diff erent to me,” he said. “The spirit,
the brotherhood — everything was way more
unique than I saw in the other sports.”
Leibowitz, now 71 years old, calls himself the
“grandfather” of the sport in Israel.

“The craziness was sticking with it all these
years, for over 30 years, and making it into a life
ambition to establish the sport in Israel, because
I think it’s a good sport. I think it has a place in
this country,” he stated. “I think we’ve proven
that. And together with that we’ve created a
community. So at this point, I can’t even leave if
I wanted to.” ■
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