Next up after Super Bowl: Key football event in Israel

Days before Super Bowl XLVIII in northern New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, a New York City room filled with players, coaches, and supporters of the Israel Football League (IFL)—a group spanning several generations of Israeli sportsmen—looked forward to an upcoming signature event for American-style football in the Jewish state.

The Jan. 29 event marked the announcement that Jerusalem will host the 2014 International Federation of American Football Flag Football World Championships from Aug. 13-15. Thirty teams, comprised of 500 athletes from some 20 countries, are slated to participate in the largest world-championship sports competition ever to be held in Israel. The Olympic-style event will face political challenges—already, Saudi Arabia has withdrawn from the competition. A Turkish team is scheduled to participate.

American football in Israel began in 1989 with flag football games started by American olim (immigrants) looking for a taste of their homeland on the sports field. Within ten years, 35 IFL teams were in place. Israeli flag football league teams have had reasonable success in competition against international teams. At the moment, the Israeli men’s team is ranked fifth in the world, and the women’s team is ranked sixth.

“The partnership between the United States and Israel is unbreakable, and is intensified through sports,” said Rabbi Michel Miller, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.

In 2005, pioneers who wanted to play American tackle football founded the IFL introduced the game to Israel. In 2007, when players began using regulated protective-tackle equipment, only four teams—the Big Blue Jerusalem Lions, Real Housing Haifa Underdogs, Dancing Camel Hasharon Pioneers, and Mike’s Place Tel Aviv Sabres— competed.

Eli Groner, now Israel’s Minister for Economics in North America, was the quarterback of the Big Blue Jerusalem Lions. Recalling the feelings of making aliyah at 15, he said football was “a place to call home, a place where people can get integrated into Israeli society. The league is a great absorption center, a real story of integration.”

The IFL counts the family of Robert Kraft, owner of the National Football League’s New England Patriots, among its major sponsors. The Krafts endowed the Kraft Family Stadium in Jerusalem, the league’s first permanent home.

Football and Israel are “two of [Robert Kraft’s] major loves,” and the IFL gives him an opportunity to have both, said AFI President Steve Leibowitz.

Betzalel Friedman, commissioner of the IFL, grew up in Indianapolis and became involved with football after he completed his service in the Israel Defense Forces. During the last six years, he has witnessed a 300-percent growth in participation in American football in Israel.

“Jews, Muslims, Christians—everyone is a team player,” Friedman said.

Leibowitz anticipates that $400,000 in funding is needed to ready an Israeli team for competition in the European Federation of American Football in 2016. While Israeli teams play a 60-yard, nine-on-one football game (as opposed to the 100-yeard, 11-on-11 American version), the IFL “must expand to a 100-yard field in order to be competitive in international play,” he said.

Leibowitz looks forward to establishing football centers in every Israeli city, similar in concept to the successful tennis throughout the country. He anticipates that within a decade, 10,000 players will be involved in American football in Israel.

“What started as a part of bringing a piece of the U.S. to Israel has become much more than that,” Eli Groner said.