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For nearly a year, 15-year-old soccer player Shira Sima hasn’t worried about defenders outflanking her on the pitch. Instead, she’s worried about Hezbollah rockets raining down on her home. 

Shira plays on the girls team for the Hapoel Mateh Asher Regional Council, which covers about 30 Israeli communities along the Lebanese border and west of the Galilee. The outbreak of the multi-front war since the Oct. 7 massacre, including the near-constant barrage of attacks from Hezbollah over the past 11 months, means that the 15-year-old and her teammates have been forced to duck into shelters many, many times. It also led to the complete suspension of practices and matches.

But this month, the team got a much-needed respite when they visited the Bay Area for friendlies against local players. A phalanx of volunteers from Oakland’s Temple Sinai coordinated the visit, including hosting the young athletes in congregants’ homes.

The team, which is made up of Jewish, Muslim and Christian players, visited sites like the Golden Gate Bridge, shopped excitedly at stores, spent quality time together and enjoyed the hospitality of an East Bay Jewish community eager to pitch in.

“To play soccer with my friends in a place we’ve never been? It’s a dream come true,” Shira said.

The September 5-10 visit was organized through Project 24, an Israeli nonprofit created after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Named for the 24 kibbutzim rampaged last fall, the nonprofit “creates innovative projects focused on real-life needs, healing, and empowering communities in Israel,” according to its website.

Temple Sinai members and clergy met with Project 24’s leaders during a solidarity trip to Israel in April. They came away impressed and determined to partner with the organization in some way. That’s when P24 leaders pitched the idea of bringing the girls soccer team to America.

“It was profound for all of us,” said congregant and Alameda resident Sherry Sherman of that trip to Israel. “P24 is wonderful, and all about healing. I’m a psychologist by profession, and I’ve never seen such a masterful paradigm. We were all of a sudden sitting in the middle of hope.”

Sherman and other volunteers from her Reform synagogue began planning the visit. They recruited families to house the 22 players, coach Kfir Azran and four other adult chaperones. They found people to feed and drive the group and designed an itinerary to keep the girls happy and engaged.

“When [P24] said they were hoping to bring an interfaith girls soccer team here, we thought that was a perfect match for us,” Temple Sinai Senior Rabbi Jacqueline Mates-Muchin said. “These are kids and families already thinking about the future and what it means to build community and have a team that embraces differences.”

The cost of the visit was covered by an anonymous donation and Mates-Muchin’s discretionary fund.

Congregant Emily Margalit of Walnut Creek opened the doors of her home to four of the teens. She and her husband are empty-nesters and were glad to have all that youthful energy around once again.

“My husband is from a kibbutz,” she said. “He’s been in charge of going to the soccer games and making the girls an Israeli breakfast every morning.”

On the Israeli side, Kinneret Onyemaechi served as lead organizer and head chaperone. She noted that the team had been active for more than two years and, until last October, had been practicing three times a week. The Oct. 7 attack, which spurred the Israel-Hamas war and the continuing attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon, put a stop to that.

“A couple of the girls were evacuated from their homes,” she said. “A lot of the girls at school were going from alarm to alarm and going inside shelters. It was so good for them to have an opportunity to get away from everything that’s going on.”

Shira felt the same way.

“It’s so bad,” Shira said of the multi-front war. “So many soldiers died. When we play soccer, we’re afraid there will be rockets.”

Those fears hit home in late July when a Hezbollah rocket killed 12 Druze children on the Majdal Shams soccer field in the Golan Heights. 

In the Bay Area, the girls were able to get away from everything. They ate at McDonald’s and shopped at Target — both high on their to-do list. They walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, visited San Francisco’s Ferry Building, saw a show at Club Fugazi and strolled around North Beach.

But the emphasis of the visit was soccer. The girls played two games against an equally matched girls team in Alameda. They also attended a professional women’s soccer match at the San Jose stadium of Bay FC. That team projected a welcome notice to the girls on its scoreboard at one point. The girls also toured the COPA soccer training center, a state-of-the-art facility in Walnut Creek.

When the Bay Area trip was over, the girls and their chaperones headed off to Chicago for a week of soccer and fun in the Windy City. As they departed, their hosts reflected on the impact of the visit.

“For every single person involved, this experience changed everybody’s lives,” Sherman said. “It opened people’s hearts and created a different community in our synagogue.”

Though the interfaith aspect of their team impressed the American adults around them, the girls themselves took it all in stride. 

“We don’t care about religion,” Shira said. “I have so many Muslim friends on the team. All we care about is to play and be together.”