AG rules Shabbat soccer games must go on

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein rules that there will be no change in the country’s policy of allowing soccer matches in Israel’s national league to take place on Shabbat.

“In Israel, professional soccer has always been played on Shabbat,” he writes in a response to Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev, who sought his legal opinion after a Labor Court judge said that organizing or participating in soccer matches on Saturdays — the Jewish day of rest — was technically illegal.

“I find it hard to fathom the idea of criminal sanctions over game play on Shabbat after decades in which this hasn’t been done,” Weinstein adds.