JERUSALEM (JTA) — A basketball court built as part of a New Yorker’s bar mitzvah project was dedicated in Beersheba.
The court was dedicated Sunday in the Yud Alef neighborhood, which is mainly home to immigrants from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union. As part of the opening, neighborhood children and visiting children from New York played a game.
Daniel Klosk donated all of his bar mitzvah gifts toward the basketball project for kids his age in Israel, combining his love of basketball and Israel. In addition to the court, basketball lessons will be given by a seasoned coach twice a week to the neighborhood kids for free. New team uniforms already have been purchased.
“I thought it’s important to give the kids in the neighborhood not only a new basketball court, but also the opportunity to enjoy the experience of learning and playing competitively on a real basketball team, with a real basketball coach, and to give them the same kind of opportunity that was given to me,” Klosk said. “I hope that this basketball training will give the kids the inspiration, ability and motivation to successfully overcome their daily challenges.”
Klosk plays for New Renaissance, a nationally ranked AAU team in New York.
The project was undertaken as part of the Give a Mitzvah-Do a Mitzvah program of the UJA-Federation of New York.
