Shmuel Birnham’s road from Vancouver rabbi to official Jewish clergyman of the 2010 Winter Olympics began, in all places, at an interfaith service with the Dalai Lama.

During the Tibetan leader’s 2004 visit to Vancouver, Hong Chian, a local Buddhist doctor, invited Birnham to be one of the Jewish representatives at the service. When the Olympics rolled around, Chian, who serves on the multifaith committee for the Olympics, called on Birnham again — this time to head up the team of Jewish clergy providing spiritual support to visiting athletes.

It has made Birnham the semi-official rabbinic leader of the 2010 Winter Games.

Shmuel Birnham, as the leader of a team of rabbis providing support services to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, is the semi-official rabbi of the Games. Brad Stringer

As head of a team of rabbis serving the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Birnham is helping to arrange services at both Olympic Villages — the Whistler mountain resort and in Vancouver itself. It also provides counseling to athletes who, having trained for much of their lives for a brief shot at Olympic glory, may find themselves facing crises for which spiritual guidance would be helpful.

Rabbis and cantors will be on call for the duration of the Olympics for that purpose.

“I ran track at Dickinson College,” said Birnham, who heads the Conservative Cong. Har El in West Vancouver. “Even at that measly low level, I have a sense of what goes on. I cannot imagine the pressure of a once-in-a-lifetime chance.”

Birnham is among a number of members of the city’s 30,000-strong Jewish community gearing up to support the thousands of athletes and Jewish tourists expected to descend on Vancouver, the most Jewishly active city ever to host the Winter Olympics. The Olympics start Feb. 12.

Synagogues are organizing Shabbat dinners for visitors. Several events will introduce the community to the three participating Israeli athletes.

A local Jewish woman who competed in the 1972 Munich Olympics will be among the last torch-bearers carrying the Olympic flame on its way to B.C. Stadium for the opening ceremonies.

Karen James, who chairs women’s philanthropy for the local Jewish federation, will carry the flame about 1,000 feet on the afternoon of Feb. 12, beginning near Rodney’s Oyster House on Hamilton Street in downtown Vancouver.

“It’s very thrilling,” said James, who swam the 200 individual medley in Munich and placed “17th or 18th.” She can’t remember exactly.

At the 1972 Games, James was returning to the Olympic Village after hours when, rather than walk around to the main gate, she and her friends took a shortcut over a fence. Some dark figures nearby decided to climb with them.

The next morning, James said, she awoke to the sound of helicopters and remembers watching Israeli athletes and coaches taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists being led out to a bus. Eleven Israelis died later in a failed rescue attempt at a nearby airport.

On Feb. 14, James will light a candle in their memory at a ceremony in Vancouver.

Since then, she said, she has had mixed feelings about the Olympics. “I always sort of sit with that ambiguity.”

To keep the Vancouver Games secure, officials plan to deploy a force of about 15,000, according to USA Today, at a cost of nearly $1 billion.

As part of the Jewish community’s observance of the Olympics, the Vancouver Holocaust Centre will run an exhibit for the duration of the Winter Games highlighting Canada’s dilemma over whether to participate in the so-called Nazi Olympics — the 1936 Games in Berlin. It was in Berlin that many features of the modern Olympics were introduced, including the idea of a torch relay, according to the center’s executive director, Frieda Miller.

“We were very careful not to make a direct link between those games and the contemporary games,” Miller told JTA. “It’s not a polemic. We do not pass judgment. We present the dilemmas and the situation as is and let people make their own analogies.”

The history of Jewish Vancouver dates to 1872, with the arrival of the city’s first Jewish settler, Louis Gold. Vancouver’s second mayor, David Oppenheimer, was a German-born Jew who generally is considered the city’s founding father. The first synagogue was built in 1916. Today there are 12, in addition to six day schools, three Chabad centers, and a community kollel, or subsidized religious study program for adults.

The local federation has prepared a dossier with details of the city’s Jewish history to help guide visitors to the Jewish opportunities available in Vancouver.

Like the athletes themselves, Vancouver’s Jews are experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to showcase their city and community to the world.

“I am looking forward to whatever is going to happen,” Birnham said. “I am looking forward to this very rare moment, and this very rare honor, and this very rare responsibility.”

JTA

Israel’s 2008 Summer Olympics team, shown with President Shimon Peres, had 43 members, but Israel is sending only three athletes to the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. Miriam Alster/Flash90/JTA

JERUSALEM – Two weeks before the European Figure Skating Championships in Tallinn, Estonia, in mid-January, Israeli skater Tamar Katz was sick in bed and going crazy.

Though she had qualified already in international competition for the 2010 Winter Olympics, the tougher standards of Israel’s Olympic Committee required that Katz finish in the top 14 in Europe to punch her ticket to the Winter Games in Vancouver. Katz said that while she felt weak before leaving for Estonia, she felt good when she took the ice.

But Katz made a mistake in her performance, missing her triple lutz-double loop combination, the highest scoring element in her program. She finished 21st — half a point away from qualifying for the finals, where her free-skate routine might have propelled her into the top 14.

As a result, Israel is not sending Katz to Vancouver.

Stories like Katz’s are “heartbreaking,” acknowledges Efraim Zinger, secretary general of Israel’s Olympic Committee. But he adds, “In the end, you either did it or not.”

About 15 years ago, Israel began applying demanding new standards to limit its Olympics delegation to athletes with a legitimate shot at a medal. Consequently, only three Israeli athletes will be competing this month in Vancouver — downhill skier Mikail Renzhin, and the brother-and-sister ice-dancing duo of Alexandra and Roman Zaretsky.

It is Israel’s smallest delegation to the Winter Games since 1998, when the nation also sent three athletes. Israel sent five athletes to each of the last two Winter Games — in Turin, Italy, in 2006 and Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2002. Israel’s first-ever appearance in the Winter Games was in 1994 in Lillehammer, France, when one Israeli athlete participated.

The policy of the Israeli Olympic Committee has proven controversial here.

“I think the Israel Olympic Committee should not be harder on the athletes than the International Olympics Committee,” Shlomo Glickstein, professional director of the Israel Tennis Association, told JTA. “It’s tough enough to get into the Olympics.”

In the lead-up to the Summer Games in Beijing two years ago, Israeli tennis star Dudi Sela was ranked 71st in the world — well within the top 100 required to qualify for the Olympics. But because Sela fell short of Israel’s own Olympic Committee standards — he needed to be among the top 50 in his sport to qualify — he was forced to stay home.

Zinger argues that while some Israeli athletes are left behind, the policy — which applies to the Summer Games, too — has enabled Israel to invest the lion’s share of its resources into the athletes the committee thinks have a chance at winning medals.

Until the late 1980s, Israel was sending teams “just to participate,” Zinger said. Now, he says, “We decided that we are going to win.”

Glickstein says the notion that the policy is about saving money is absurd, maintaining that it takes just a few thousand extra dollars to send an athlete to the Olympics — most of which is paid by sponsors.

Rather, Glickstein says of committee members, “They don’t want to be ashamed.”

Israel picked up its first two medals in the 1992 Summer Games, a silver and a bronze in judo, and has won five since, including a gold in sailing in 2004. All the medals have come in the Summer Games.

Israeli figure skater Tamar Katz qualified for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, but did not meet the tougher standards of the Olympic Committee of Israel in order to participate. Mark Goldfarb

Katz is angry about being left behind.

“No country wants to take away a slot. They are usually happy to send their athletes,” she told JTA. “It is an honor for me to represent my country. I thought it would be the same for my country as well. I was shocked. I did everything to make it to the Olympics.”

A Facebook group called “Tamar Katz should be allowed to compete at the 2010 Olympics” had garnered more than 1,500 members by the beginning of February and generated hundreds of e-mails to the Israel Olympic Committee.

Born in the United States to Israeli parents, Katz lived in both Israel and the United States as a child. In Israel, she lived in the northern city of Metullah, near the country’s only ice skating rink. In the United States she lives and trains in Rockland County, N.Y., about 25 miles from New York City, and receives a stipend from the Israel Skating Federation.

Israel supports about 80 top-caliber athletes in several sports. The support includes training, expenses to attend international competitions, hiring coaches, and providing full medical coverage and treatments not covered by regular Israeli national health care, as well as stipends and performance-based incentives.

Many athletes argue that merely appearing in the Olympics, even without winning anything, is a good way for younger athletes to gain experience for the next Olympics. But Zinger says Israeli athletes can get the same experience from appearing in other international competitions.

Katz disagrees, saying Olympics exposure helps with the judges.

“If they want me to medal in 2014, they should have sent me now,” she said.

In December, the committee decided on the goals and targets for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. They include winning medals, improving the success rate of female athletes, and attaining a medal in a sport that Israel has yet to master — namely, gymnastics.

As for the games that begin Feb. 12 in Vancouver, Zinger says that while the committee and Israelis in general would be thrilled to hear the national anthem “Hatikvah” sounded at a medal ceremony, they know that “Israel is not really a winter sport country.”

JTA