Meet Rabbi Shira Rosenblum, the Elite U.S. Archer at the Maccabiah Who Doesn't Shoot on Saturdays
When she first entered college, Shira Rosenblum had no intention of taking up archery. Instead, she tried out for Brandeis’s a cappella group. She didn’t get in. Next, she applied to be a Research Assistant. She was rejected. The following year, she heard that the campus archery club was meeting in her building. Having dabbled in the sport as a kid, she decided to drop by. The coach told her that there were no tryouts and anyone could just walk on to the team. This proved appealing. “I thought: great, no tryouts, they can’t tell me I can’t come, and I just started going,” Rosenblum recalled. She convinced the director of the team to ensure that she never had to shoot on Shabbat for practices or tournaments, put in 12 hours a week, and began competing.
Fast-forward to 2017 and Rosenblum, now an ordained Conservative rabbi, is serving as the entire U.S. archery team in Israel’s Maccabiah, the annual Jewish Olympics which began on July 6.