In the past, religious Jews often discouraged their children from participating in organized sports because of the inevitable conflicts with the Sabbath. “But that group is now driving the issue because they want to be involved,” Lipman said. “Their ability to excel in sports is very much stunted because of Shabbat, and they are not content with that.”

Lipman added that the issue was one of many related to the overarching question of what it means to live in a Jewish state. “Israel is only 68 years old, and we have been fighting for our existence from the beginning,” he said. “The things that go with living — sports, the Sabbath, how it all fits together — is still in the baby stages.”

Clouding things further is the reality that many proposed solutions would involve scheduling more games on Sunday, a workday and school day in Israel. Mr. Lipman said he could see a situation in the future in which the government considers altering the current Sunday-to-Friday-afternoon workweek, but he conceded that adding a second rest day to Israeli society would be far from easy.

For now, the argument continues. Dayan said the players had wide support, and he claimed that there were even players on the country’s biggest teams, like Maccabi Tel Aviv, Maccabi Haifa and Be’er Sheva, who supported the protests against Shabbat-intruding matches but were afraid to speak out for fear of retribution from their clubs. If the matter is not resolved this spring, Dayan said, the players plan to protest again. They may even consider a strike, he said, at the start of next season.

Kobby Barda, a spokesman for the Israel Premier League, said the league would comply with whatever the government decided, but he questioned the depth of the players’ religious convictions (“Why do they play on Shabbat at all then?”) and said the complaints were wholly unreasonable. Beyond the fact that playing all games outside the Sabbath would require the construction of new stadiums — at least three clubs currently share Teddy Kollek Stadium here — the precedent of playing soccer on Saturday “existed here before Israel even existed at all; most people just want to keep things as they have been for the past 100 years,” Barda said.

He continued: “If you have taken the burden of being a religious person, there are a lot of things you are losing. You have to give up so many things, and that is your choice. If you are a professional player, you need to be wherever you are told to be at the right time. If the game is at 12 p.m., you play at 12 p.m. That is what being a professional player is. We don’t have any room in the current situation to negotiate.”

That leaves the players and the league at odds, and the fans — some of them, at least — unsatisfied. Levy’s early departure meant he did not see the two red cards issued in the second half of the heated game between Hapoel Jerusalem and Herzliya or the beautiful goal that gave Hapoel a surprising 1-0 victory.