The starting five were warming up on the court, dribbling, passing and throwing hoops in Jerusalem’s Malha Arena. Home team Hapoel Lev Jerusalem was playing archrivals Elitzur Ramla. Shooting guard Alyssa Baron’s three-pointers flew through the hoop, as Shir Tirosh, the shortest player at 5’5”, practiced her alley-oop offensive play from under the basket. The tallest of the team is agile, swift Anja Fuchs-Robetin at 6’1”. Completing the starting squad were Tiffany Mitchell and Emily Engstler.

That game on February 14 marked the first time the Israeli Women’s Basketball Premier League professional team wore their new uniforms: white with red trim and bearing the logo of Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America (there is also a set with the colors in reverse). In January 2025, HWZOA became a sponsor of the club as well as its fast-expanding network of community teams for girls and amateur leagues for women in Jerusalem

Although Jerusalem is Israel’s largest city with over a million inhabitants, Hapoel Lev Jerusalem is just two years old. In that short time, the team won the 2024 Israeli Basketball State Cup, and this year came in second.

Many of the players are in their late 20s through early 30s, a mix of Israelis and foreign players from America and Austria. There are also some as young as 18; several are Israel Defense Forces soldiers given exceptional athlete status by the IDF and balance their limited duties in the army with their larger commitment as athletes.

There are Premier League women’s teams throughout Israel, including in Ashdod, Ramla, Ramat Gan, Holon, Ramat Hasharon, Rishon LeZion and Haifa. However, thanks to the success of Hapoel Lev Jerusalem—with the support of Hadassah—Jerusalem in 2025 has become something of a basketball hub for women and girls.

As part of the Hapoel Lev Jerusalem network of teams, some 600 girls play in youth and neighborhood leagues. The girls come from all sectors of Israeli society: Jews and Arabs, religious and secular as well as special needs youngsters. At youth league practices, players show up in all kinds of attire—shorts, long skirts, hijabs.

“Hapoel Lev Jerusalem promotes the values that we in Hadassah share,” said Hadassah National President Carol Ann Schwartz, who came to cheer on the team on February 14 after a long day of meetings in Jerusalem. “As we have seen in our own lives in the United States, giving equal opportunity in the sports arena leads to gender equality and the advancement of women in society as a whole. We’re proud to have our logo on the court and to be supporting so many girls in a beneficial sport.”

The Jerusalem club came into being because of the fortuitous meeting of the minds and hearts—lev means heart in Hebrew—of two Israeli women: Netta Abugov, now chairwoman of Hapoel Lev Jerusalem, and American-born basketball player and coach Rebecca Ross, the team’s general manager. Hapoel translates to the worker, referencing the team’s connection to a sports association established by the Histadrut Labor Federation in the 1920s.

Abugov, 46, grew up in Holon playing volleyball and windsurfing. Tall and effervescent, she thrives on challenges. The child of immigrants from Iraq and Egypt, she earned her doctorate in linguistics exploring the colloquial Yiddish spoken today by ultra-Orthodox Jews.

The interest of the two oldest of her four children—son Imry and daughter Tenne—led her to basketball. Tenne (whose name means “basket,” like the kind used to carry first fruits on Shavuot) joined a boys team because no team for girls existed where they used to live in Kfar Oranim. The then-10-year-old and a female teammate were repeatedly benched when they competed against teams from religious boys’ schools.

Abugov’s complaints about the benching went unheeded, but her outraged social media posts about them went viral. Determined to provide basketball opportunities for girls, she joined the volunteer administration of a team in Israel’s northwest where Imry was playing. As a sponsor and later as the club chairwoman, she nurtured the local women’s team until they did well enough to be promoted to the Premier League. “Unhappily, the local municipal council refused to advance the funds needed to sponsor a Premier League team,” recalled Abugov. “We hit a glass ceiling.”

Also disappointed was Ross, one of the top players on Abugov’s team. She had immigrated with her family when she was 8. “I hardly spoke a word of Hebrew, and I had no friends,” she said. “All I had was a love of sports. I played with the boys—whatever the sport—when they let me in.”

A relatively petite 5’5”, the 35-year-old has played basketball for different Israeli clubs and has coached girls teams, and she shared Abugov’s dreams about creating a Premier League team in Israel’s capital.

Ross said she also had particularly wanted to create basketball opportunities for girls on the autism spectrum. And indeed, three of the Hapoel Lev Jerusalem junior basketball teams play at Shalva, the Israel Association for the Care and Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities.

HWZOA came into the story when Suzanne Patt Benvenisti, a Texas-born basketball fan who serves as the executive director of Hadassah Offices in Israel, met Abugov and Ross in 2022 and recognized that the team’s goals synchronized with those of HWZOA.

“I knew that participation in sports can be a significant driver in the lives of girls and young women in particular,” Patt Benvenisti said. “The events of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war took a heavy toll on Israeli society and for many girls and women. Sports are a safe haven, where they could build resilience and restore their peace of mind. Supporting the team, and particularly the youth clubs, is a great way to reach many sectors in Israel.”

She brought the sponsorship idea to Schwartz and Hadassah’s national board, which enthusiastically approved it.

“Multiple studies have shown that involvement in sports activity is effective in reducing stress, depressive symptoms, general and social anxiety, and loneliness at a time of national stress and trauma,” said Schwartz, who added that “it’s imperative to reach out to girls and women.”

Sponsoring Hapoel Lev Jerusalem was also a good fit because the Hadassah Medical Organization has a longstanding connection with the popular local men’s club, Hapoel Bank Yahav Jerusalem, commonly referred to as Hapoel Jerusalem. For the last 28 years, Hapoel Jerusalem team members have visited the pediatric departments at Hadassah’s hospitals during Hanukkah, when the celebrity players interact with the sick children and distribute gifts.

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“As teens, my friends and I played basketball and became enthusiastic fans of Hapoel Jerusalem,” said Dr. Meir (Iri) Liebergall, the retired head of orthopedics at HMO who now heads orthopedics at the Gandel Rehabilitation Center at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus. “A number of us grew up to become orthopedists, and we began volunteering our services to the team. Later, the connection was formalized so that a Hadassah orthopedist is always at the games dealing with injuries. We follow up when needed at the hospital.”

As part of the HWZOA sponsorship, an HMO medical team now provides services to Hapoel Lev Jerusalem, too. (Both teams are part of the Hapoel Jerusalem Basketball Club, which began as a men’s club in 1943.) Dr. Yahav Levy, an orthopedic surgeon at Hadassah with a subspecialty in sports medicine, is often the one who attends the women’s games, while players and coaches can consult Hadassah doctors about injuries any time.

Recently, Tiffany Mitchell, the starting guard on the women’s team, needed help with pain in her knee. Mitchell splits her playing time between Hapoel Lev Jerusalem and her position on the Las Vegas Aces of the Women’s National Basketball Association in the United States, so Dr. Levy had to coordinate care with her medical team in America. After consulting her orthopedist in the United States, Dr. Levy said, they came up with a plan that included platelet-rich plasma injections to the knee, which stimulates healing and reduces pain and swelling. After rehabilitation, Dr. Levy said, “she went back to play with significant relief.”

As HWZOA is sponsoring the junior female teams as well, Dr. Levy also had a consultation with a teenager who wanted to play in a season final despite an injury to her shoulder. “When I looked at her X-rays, I saw that she had a non-displaced clavicle fracture, and there was no way I was going to let her on the court. At the minimum, she’d need eight weeks of rest and a sling.”

“Sometimes we have a conflict between the long-range well-being of the players as patients and their commitment to the game for their own careers and for their teams,” he said. “We understand that and must take all of it into considerations, while involving the players themselves as well as the teams.”

Sometimes the courtside doctors have to deal with nonorthopedic injuries. “Once I had a player who fell flat on his face and broke his teeth. I had to call in dentists,” Dr. Levy recalled. “Fortunately, we have those, too, at Hadassah.” 

Even before the sponsorship agreement was formalized, the women’s premier team visited wounded soldiers at the Gandel center. Later, during Hanukkah, players met with adolescent female psychiatry patients at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem. The teens sought the players’ autographs but also asked them questions, mostly about the emotional side of professional basketball—for instance, “How do you cope with losing a game?”

“When we lose, I have a bad evening and feel awful,” Tirosh, a guard, answered. “I make sure I have something to eat so I don’t go to bed hungry. When I wake up in the morning, I tell myself it’s a new day and that I can’t dwell on yesterday’s losses.”

With a twinkle in her eye, she also admitted that if a tough opponent has four fouls and runs into her, she might “slightly exaggerate“ the injury. “Nothing theatrical,” Tirosh said. “Just what’s accepted in professional sporting events.“

The players talked candidly about their own struggles when they were younger, from overcoming teasing due to their laser-focus on playing basketball to feeling ambivalent about missing class trips and having limited time to relax and hang out at the mall because of the constant need to practice.

Yarden Dana, a 27-year-old forward guard from Rehovot, told the teenagers about the loneliness she felt when she left her family to study in a high school that had a strong basketball program.

Mitchell, 30, grew up in North Carolina and was a top draft in the WNBA. As part of her professional basketball career, she played with teams in six countries, including Australia and Rwanda, before being recruited by Hapoel Lev Jerusalem.

Mitchell stressed the need for mental preparation as well as physical training. “When I have a disappointing game, I go back to the gym and know that practice will make me better next time,” she said. “I have trained so much that when I miss, I trust myself to be able to get the shot in the basket the next time.“

The teens then challenged the players to an indoor basketball arcade game. The kids gave the professionals such a run for their money that the squad asked their coach to get them an arcade game, too, for practice.

“The collaboration with national Hadassah and HMO is a significant milestone both for Hapoel Lev Jerusalem and Israel because of the shared values, social activism and contributions to society,” Abugov said after that encounter.

Back at Malha Arena during that February game, the team took the lead in the first two quarters. At the half-time break, girls from Hapoel Lev Jerusalem youth teams filed onto the court. Wearing their Hadassah jerseys, the 10-year-old junior players dribbled, passed and took aim at the basket.

After the break, the team retained its dominance on the court, and the match ended in a big win, with Hapoel Lev Jerusalem besting Elitzur Ramla 107-99.

For Hadassah and Hapoel Lev Jerusalem, the new cooperation is a slam dunk. 

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Barbara Sofer, an award-winning journalist and author, is Israel director of public relations for Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America.