{"id":152445,"date":"2025-08-18T16:49:20","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T16:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportsrabbi.com\/?p=152445"},"modified":"2025-08-18T16:55:33","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T16:55:33","slug":"first-division-test-berman-and-freund-ready-for-maccabi-rishon-lezion-foray-into-the-premier-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportsrabbi.com\/en\/first-division-test-berman-and-freund-ready-for-maccabi-rishon-lezion-foray-into-the-premier-league\/","title":{"rendered":"First division test: Berman and Freund ready for Maccabi Rishon Le\u2019Zion foray into the Premier League"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maccabi Rishon Le\u2019Zion are back in the top league and two of their naturalized Israeli players landed in Israel on Tuesday as Lior Berman and Josh Freund will begin training camp this week. <\/p>\n

The two were met by The Sports Rabbi in the arrivals area of Ben Gurion airlift as both players spoke about the upcoming season.
\n\"\"
\n\u201cI\u2019m glad to be back in the Holy Land and ready to be here,\u201d Berman who played with Hapoel Ashkelon in the Leumit League last season began. \u201cI\u2019m very excited to play first division as it\u2019s great basketball and I\u2019m looking forward for the challenge. I\u2019m also looking forward to being a part of Maccabi Rishon Le\u2019Zion, I\u2019m looking forward to it a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berman played against Rishon in the Leumit semifinals last season so he knows a bit about his new team, \u201cWe had a good battle and it feels good to be joining them going up to the top league, so I\u2019m looking to try and contribute for them now. I\u2019m excited.\u201d
\n\"\"
\nOne of Berman\u2019s targets this season is becoming one of the league\u2019s rising stars he explained, \u201cI think so, we\u2019ll have a good team and good players and it would be a good environment to be able to flourish in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berman played under one of Israel\u2019s staunchest allies in Auburn Head Coach Bruce Pearl, \u201cHe\u2019s very excited for me. I was in Auburn all summer training and they were happy for me to be coming back here. They were all supporting me and it\u2019s good to have them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Berman knows that there is one main goal going into the season, \u201cThe goal is to win games, play as hard as we can and try to be successful.\u201d
\n\"\"
\nJosh Freund also spoke about returning to Israel and Maccabi Rishon Le\u2019Zion, \u201cI\u2019m very excited to get back, but it felt like I was just here. We just got the job done, but restart and refresh everything and it\u2019s time to go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maccabi Rishon Le\u2019Zion are back in the top league and two of their naturalized Israeli players landed in Israel on Tuesday as Lior Berman and Josh Freund will begin training camp this week. The two were met by The Sports Rabbi in the arrivals area of Ben Gurion airlift as both players spoke about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":152421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1529,5112,64],"class_list":["post-152445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holy-land-hoops","tag-josh-freund","tag-lior-berman","tag-maccabi-rishon-lezion","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\nFirst division test: Berman and Freund ready for Maccabi Rishon Le\u2019Zion foray into the Premier League - Sports Rabbi<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsrabbi.com\/en\/first-division-test-berman-and-freund-ready-for-maccabi-rishon-lezion-foray-into-the-premier-league\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"First division test: Berman and Freund ready for Maccabi Rishon Le\u2019Zion foray into the Premier League - Sports Rabbi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Maccabi Rishon Le\u2019Zion are back in the top league and two of their naturalized Israeli players landed in Israel on Tuesday as Lior Berman and Josh Freund will begin training camp this week. 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