(Courtesy of IMNYCM) For the 37th year, the TCS New York City Marathon, to be held on November 7, will feature morning services at the Fort Wadsworth staging ground for the many Jewish runners expected to compete in the 50th jubilee edition of this world-famous road race. The International Minyan for New York City Marathoners, inaugurated in 1983, is the longest established religious service of any kind, at any major sporting event anywhere in the world.
The minyan venue is a tent on Drum Road (designated on the Fort Wadsworth site map), a short walk from inside the main gate. All NYRR COVID-19 protocols will be observed.
Full Shacharit services will commence at approximately 7 a.m., and at appropriate intervals thereafter, to accommodate the hundreds of expected participants from around the world who are assigned to the several wave starts of the race. Each service should take about a half hour, and runners should join a minyan that will allow them at least 45 minutes after completion to get to their designated marshaling corral.
Please Note: The minyan facilitators no longer transport personal religious articles to Manhattan. There will be no facilities for checking these items at the race. Minyan organizers will have an ample supply of tefillin, tallitim and siddurim for use during all services. Participants are urged to use these items instead of bringing their own.
The tzedakah collection this year will go to Operation Benjamin, a project that identifies Jewish soldiers who were buried in U.S. military cemeteries around the world mistakenly under an incorrect religious headstone. Working with the American Battle Monuments Commission, Operation Benjamin arranges dignified ceremonies for the aggrieved families, sometimes generations after the burial, where the incorrect marker is replaced with a Star of David.
For more information on the minyan, contact Yisroel Davidsohn at [email protected] or 646-529-1351, or Peter Berkowsky at [email protected] or 973-992-6775 (home) or 973-477-7908 (cell).
