Jules “Babe” Love has led a life committing sports to the service of Judaism and Israel. His single goal has been to show students that integrity, respect and high academic standards are more valuable than gold medals.
Love attended Bartram High School in Philadelphia and made the varsity basketball team as a point guard his freshman year. Elected co-captain, he earned All Public honorable mention his junior and senior years. The winner of a four year scholarship to Brandeis University, he played on the young school’s very first basketball squad headed by Coach Harry Stein and athletic director Benny Friedman.
In his freshman year, Love scored the first ever Brandeis varsity basket against Dartmouth, and he became its first player to score 20 points in a game. He led the school to its longest winning streak in history with 18 games, a record that stands to this day.
Love’s lifework has taken place both in Israel and the United States. In 1966, he coached with Roy Rubin for the gold medal winning Pan American team in the Maccabi games in Brazil. The next year, as a member of the official delegation for the Maccabi games in Israel, he brought Tal Brody and Mark Spitz into international competition. He has since served as Vice President of the U.S. Committee Sports for Israel and a basketball coach of Hapoel Jerusalem Youth Program.
After a missile attack from Gaza, he brought an Israeli high school basketball team for a vacation to New York and the Pocono Mountains. He brought many Israeli athletes to the U.S. and secured scholarships for them. Love built a basketball court in the Galilee on Moschav Moledet dedicated to the memory of IDF soldier Tomer Ron, a young man who loved basketball and was killed in action in Hebron in 2003.
Founder of the Jerusalem International Basketball Sports Center which provides afterschool programs to keep kids off the streets, Love is also currently raising funds to build a soccer field in Gedera for Ethiopian kids.
Love is presently Executive Director of the Israeli Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation and served as National Field Director for the State of Israel Bonds and Executive Director of The Jerusalem Foundation.
