Three minutes into the U.S. women’s rugby team opener against Japan at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Sarah Levy scored the points that turned the tide for the U.S. team, which won 36-7. The United States women’s rugby sevens team went on to win bronze in a nail-biting upset over Australia on July 30, and Sarah Levy secured her place in the long yet little-known legacy of Jewish rugby players.
The 28-year-old, who made her Olympic debut at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, is the first and only Jewish woman on the U.S. team and one of thirteen Jewish athletes representing the United States at this year’s competition.
The Cornwall RFU team that won the silver medal at the 1908 Summer Olympics for Great Britain. Bert Solomon is in the middle row, second from left. (Photo credit: Unknown author via Wikimedia)
Levy’s accomplishment is a continuation of a history of Jewish contributions to rugby that stretches back over a century. In 1908, when rugby first appeared in the Olympics, the silver-medal winning Great Britain team was captained by Jewish player Barney Solomon, whose younger brother Bert Solomon was also on the team. The legacy continued in the 1920 Olympic games when Samuel Goodman, another Jewish rugby player, coached the U.S. rugby union team to a gold medal. The team repeated this success four years later, in the first Olympic rugby competition to feature more than two teams.
South Africa holds a notable place in Jewish rugby history, with ten Jewish players having represented the country. This group is sometimes known as the “Springbok Minyan,” after the name of the South African team. The first of these players was Morris Zimmerman, who made his international rugby union debut in late 1931.
His cousin, Louis Babrow, became the third Jewish Springbok player in 1937
The 1924 gold-medal-winning US rugby team, managed by Samuel Goodman. (Photo credit: Unknown author via Wikimedia)
and is well known for his decision to participate in a Yom Kippur match against the New Zealand All Blacks the same year. Babrow reportedly contemplated sitting out the match due to the significance of the day but eventually chose to take the field, explaining to a teammate that the eight-hour time difference meant that “when we are playing our holy day will not yet have dawned in South Africa.” Babrow is Sarah Levy’s great-grandfather.
Aaron “Okey” Geffin is one of the most celebrated Jewish rugby players. Born to a Russian family in Johannesburg in 1921, Geffin was captured during World War II while fighting the Germans in Libya. He trained extensively during his three years as a prisoner of war in Germany and Italy during World War II, and made a notable debut with South Africa in a 1949 match against New Zealand, setting a world record by scoring all five of his penalty attempts. The match was part of a four-match series between the two teams, which South Africa swept. Geffin was responsible for 35 of the 47 points scored by the Springboks in the series, another world record. Geffin is considered the greatest Jewish rugby player of all time, and has been inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
Leo Camron with his granddaughter. (Photo credit: Jared Kirschenbaum via Wikimedia/ CC BY-SA 4.0)
The sport was soon brought to Israel by South African Leo Camron, nee Caminsky. After serving in the South African army during World War II and Machal—a group of overseas volunteers who fought in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948—Camron organized a rugby match between South Africa and a team of IDF parachutists in 1952.
The sport gained popularity among IDF soldiers, and Camron continued to organize matches. But the sport’s momentum in Israel waned when Camron was unable to get rugby incorporated into the IDF’s athletic programs. However, in 1996 Israel was accepted into the European Rugby Federation and currently sits at 64th in the men’s World Rugby Rankings.
Born in South Africa in 1995, Sarah Levy briefly moved to Israel before settling down in San Diego when she was three years old. Active in her local Jewish community, she attended a Jewish preschool, spent summers at a JCC summer camp, had a bat mitzvah in Israel, and played soccer at the 2010 and 2012 Maccabi games.
Levy began playing rugby in 2014 as a freshman at Northeastern, quickly excelling and becoming captain of the rugby sevens program, a shorter, faster variation of the game played with seven players per team and two seven-minute halves, during her sophomore year. She reached the international stage in 2018, when she played in a rugby union match against England, and joined the Barbarians, a prestigious, invite-only rugby union squad once represented by her great-grandfather, in 2021, scoring three tries in a victory over the Springboks.
Sarah Levy’s Olympic role—as well as that of US rugby assistant coach, former Olympian Zach Test—has reinvigorated interest in the little-known, but nevertheless epic—impact of Jewish players on the sport.
Sarah Levy (in visor) and other members of the U.S. women’s rugby team in Paris on July 25, 2024. (Photo credit: Erin Scott via Flickr)
Top image: The Olympic rugby match between Australasia and Great Britain at White City Stadium in London on October 26, 1908. (Credit: Unknown author via Wikimedia)
