For the 33rd year, the TCS New York City Marathon, to be held on November 6, will feature morning services at the Fort Wadsworth staging ground for the many Jewish runners expected to compete in the 46th edition of this world-famous road race.
The International Minyan for New York City Marathoners, inaugurated in 1983, is a project of JRunners, a Brooklyn-based organization dedicated to encouraging physical health for Jewish men and women through athletic competition. 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 are urged to select a service that will allow them at least 45 minutes after completion to get to their race start marshaling corral.
Runners are encouraged this year to use tefillin, siddurim and tallitot provided by the minyan organizers, and secure arrangements will once again be available for minyanaires to check their personal religious articles (sorry, no clothing or other personal items) with the organizers for pickup at a convenient location close to the finish line in Manhattan. Those checking religious articles are urged to proceed directly to the pickup point—the columned portico of Cong. Shearith Israel (the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue), facing Central Park West at the corner of West 70th Street—after crossing the finish line. Family members or friends may pick up these articles during the afternoon, while runners are on the race course, by coming to the barricade at Columbus Avenue and West 70th Street and calling minyan director Peter Berkowsky at 973-477-7908.
