Sidelines: Jewish Basketball Showcase gains momentum in the suburbs and beyond

It’s the third year of the Chicagoland Jewish Basketball Showcase. That’s outstanding.

The game will be held Sunday at Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Skokie, where it’s been the past two years. Proceeds support Hadassah Medical Organization hospitals in Israel.

When organizer Mike Kamin of Lake Zurich started this exhibition in 2024 a second or third year was not a given.

“My hope was it could go forward and get some momentum. I wouldn’t say it surprised me,” said Kamin, whose older son, Jared, played in the 2024 senior all-star game his last year at Lake Zurich High School.

“I think it’s a pretty cool event and it’s a unique event, so why wouldn’t it go forward, barring I don’t get financial support from sponsors. I didn’t want to go into debt thousands of dollars throwing this event,” Mike Kamin said.

Support has come, from organizations and individuals.

“That is really meaningful. I’m very humbled by that,” said Kamin, who also this year started a website for the game, chicagojewishbasketball.com, which adds legitimacy.

He recruits players for the game by scouring newspaper articles, high school rosters, AAU teams and through referrals. Illinois High School Association referees volunteer their time.

Most of this year’s roster comes from the North Shore, but former Stevenson player Atticus Richmond is flying in from Boston where he attends The Newman School before he goes on to play at Columbia University.

Wheeling assistant Andrew Braverman and York assistant J.J. Pearl will serve as coaches for the game between “Team Jerusalem” and “Team Tel Aviv.”

Kamin even found a Tuscola player, Logan Kurtz, who’ll make the three-hour drive.

In an age Kamin says it can be hard to be Jewish — in 2024 the Anti-Defamation League described an 893% increase in antisemitic incidents over the prior decade — the Chicagoland Jewish Basketball Showcase is a little antidote for bad news.

“This is something that’s not going to get you depressed,” Kamin said.

“People are looking for something to take pride in, and this gives them an excuse to come out and celebrate.”

Fighting the good fight

Another anniversary occurs Monday when the Josh Burks Foundation High School Council makes its second presentation to Barrington High School freshmen.

The organization sprang forth in the summer of 2024, started by twin brothers Josh and Nick Peipert of Barrington’s Class of 2025.

It was influenced by the Josh Burks Foundation, established in February 2024 by Law and Cyndi Burks of Lake Barrington. Its purpose is to spread awareness of the risks involved with opioid use.

In December 2022 the Burks’ 20-year-old son, Josh, died of fentanyl poisoning while at home, after taking a counterfeit pill laced with more than four times the lethal dose of fentanyl.

Once a 265-pound defensive end for the Broncos, Class of 2021, he died within 90 seconds. The man who provided Burks the fake pill was sentenced March 30 to 12 years in prison for drug-induced homicide, according to the Illinois attorney general’s office.

With the Peipert boys off at college, younger sister Sydney Peipert has taken over as director of the Josh Burks Foundation High School Council along with fellow junior Morgan Giordano. Others joined after last year’s freshman presentation.

Teams of students and individual presenters — including Cyndi Burks, council sponsor Wendy Sanchez, Burks Foundation board member Michael Peipert, and Broncos college football prospect Lamar Osterhues — will address groups of freshmen during their physical education periods.

“The presentation will inform a lot of students that might not know a lot about fentanyl and pills,” Osterhues said. “It’s increased a lot over the years, and a lot of teenagers in high school don’t know how powerful it is.”

“And we talk about Josh Burks and his life,” Sydney Peipert said, “and how he was a high school student just like all the freshmen we’re talking to, so it can relate to their lives.”

The Burks Foundation and the high school council have enjoyed a productive start.

Highlights include an Instagram page, volunteers passing out flyers at Broncos football games, participating in the Barrington Fourth of July parade, and a golf fundraiser last August that raised more than $25,000 for the foundation.

A second golf outing will be held Aug. 3 at the Makray Memorial Golf Club in Barrington.

“It was a fun day,” Sydney Peipert said of last year’s golf outing. The Burks can use those.

doberhelman@dailyherald.com