TORONTO (JTA) — A midget league hockey team in a Montreal suburb will forfeit a key game because it conflicts with the first night of Passover.
At least 10 of the 15 players on the Dollard-des-Ormeaux Midget B Civics are Jewish and unwilling to miss the first seder, the Montreal Gazette reported.
"The kids are very disappointed," said team manager Eva-Lynn Gross, who appealed to the municipality and the Lac St. Louis hockey league. "They should work around stuff like this," she told the Gazette.
Games cannot be rescheduled during regional match-ups, Lac St. Louis league executive director Sylvain McSween told the newspaper.
"There are 700 hockey matches in less than three weeks, and we can’t have any changes," he said. "One special case leads to another and another. There’s nothing we can do."
Organizers would not allow the team to switch places with another squad that had offered its spot so the Civics’ game would not conflict with the first seder, which falls on Monday night.
Meanwhile, the Toronto Star reported that the opening of the Toronto International Film Festival falls on Sept. 9, coinciding with the first day of Rosh Hashanah. In addition, the festival wraps up on Sept. 18, which is Yom Kippur.
The Star’s arts columnist, Martin Knelman, wrote that the "obvious choice" for the opening night gala would normally be the Jewish-themed "Barney’s Version," based on Mordecai Richler’s final novel.
The film’s producer is Robert Lantos, "who has filled TIFF’s opening night gala slot nine times over the years," Knelman noted. "But there is no way Lantos, who takes his Jewish roots seriously, would allow this definitively Jewish movie to have its premiere on a Jewish holy day."
