Israeli Olympic athlete trades his bobsled for the bimah during the High Holidays

It’s not every congregation that has a multi-sport Olympic athlete lead its High Holiday services, but that’s exactly what attendees have come to expect at Congregation Ahavath Achim (The Carnegie Shul).

A.J. Edelman, the captain of Israel’s bobsled team, is readying for a stint in the 2026 Olympics. He previously competed at the 2018 Winter Olympics in the sport of skeleton.

So, how does a Boston-born, Israeli athlete end up leading services at a western Pennsylvania shul?

“I think it was 2017 or ’18,” Edelman said. “I responded to an advertisement online and it kind of went from there.”

Edelman grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, which is part of the Boston metropolitan area, and attended Maimonides School, an Orthodox day school, before studying in Israel at Yeshivat Lev HaTorah.

First bitten by the winter sports bug at age 3, Edelman started playing hockey as a goaltender, something he continued throughout high school and college. He was the first Sabbath-observant player at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and helped the school win two divisional championships in the Northeast Collegiate Hockey Association Division II league.

And while he enjoyed hockey, Edelman had his sights on representing Israel in the Olympics.

“The social change I wanted to effect was only possible by representing Israel, by representing Jews,” he said. “That was critically important to this whole mission, the Jewish component.”

Being Jewish, he said, is central to his identity and he is happy to contribute to the Jewish community, whether it’s as part of the Israeli Olympic team or leading services for a shul in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.

“I think that the Jewish community is so small that it’s critical we support each other, to be proud of who we are and to inspire pride,” he said.

Edelman first learned of skeleton a decade ago on television and thought the sport looked fun.

After being told he was a long shot competitor, he was able to secure a birth on the 2018 Olympic team, finishing 28th overall. In addition to the Olympics, Edelman won four Israeli national titles and medals in international competitions, becoming the most decorated Israeli sliding sport athlete.

It was his desire to again participate in a team sport that drove him to join Israel’s bobsled team.

Competing in two different winter sports in two different Olympics places Edelman in a select group of athletes.

“Once you’ve achieved Olympic-level, starting over from scratch at zero is not really what a lot of people would ever want to do,” he said.

Israel’s bobsled team, he said, has found ways to succeed without some of the usual mechanisms associated with Olympic teams.

“It’s a sad reality that we have no sponsors at the moment,” Edelman said. “We have very little in the way of support.”

Edelman said that he has found a symbiotic relationship between sports and learning to lead religious services.

“There are a lot of elements in my life that are very much ‘observe and then do,’ doing after observation,” he said. “It’s happened that way in aspects of my life with bobsled and skeleton. The prayer services are very much the same thing — being in synagogues for 20 years and paying close attention to exactly what was going on there.”

There’s no secret to leading services, he said. Rather, it has to do with heart and passion, and learning the correct tunes.

And, like readying for an Olympic sport, training is everything.

“It takes extensive practice,” Edelman noted, “but eventually practice makes perfect. Or at least, practice makes better.”

If you aren’t a sports fan and don’t attend the Carnegie Shul, but Edelman’s name still sounds familiar, that might be because of his brother, Alex Edelman, who recently won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special for his HBO Max show “Just For Us.” A.J. Edelman plays a prominent role in some of the stories his brother relates from their youth.

Edelman said he’s proud of his brother, but there’s no mistaking the true stars in the family.

“My mom and dad,” he said. “I think that’s the only way that it can be explained that the kids were able to strike out on their own and find what works for them. That’s entirely my mom and dad. They raised us very well and saw to it that we had the tools to succeed. They’re just amazing parents.”

Without losing focus on his training for the 2026 Olympic games in Italy, Edelman is excited to spend the High Holidays at the Carnegie Shul.

“Carnegie is home to me,” he said. “I feel very blessed that I have a home to come back to every year. It’s a constant for me. I’ve lived a life on the move. There’s not much constant.

“Carnegie is the one place I look forward to every year, going back to such a beautiful community,” he continued. “It’s a real opportunity to spend the most meaningful days of the year spiritually with people who really mean so much to me. It’s a unique and special blessing.” PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.