Could somebody tell the rabbi to stop knocking people over?”

You put a hockey stick in Rabbi Shlomo Zarchi’s hands, and, by golly, he’ll use it.

“No blood, no foul. That’s my motto,” explained the rabbi, the spiritual leader of San Francisco’s Chevra Thilim — and, it turns out, not the guy you want to tangle with when you’re between him and the puck.

Zarchi is one of scores of players — including several rabbis — to suit up for an Oakland, Calif.-based Jewish floor hockey league (hockey without ice, and tennis shoes in lieu of skates). And after the rabbi continued to give his fellow players a personal reenactment of what it’s like to be crushed on a Tokyo subway, Yossi Offenberg, the league’s founder, finally came up and gave the rabbi a pat on the shoulder — carefully.

Hockey is in Offenberg’s blood — the blood he fortunately kept within his veins after his rink encounter with Zarchi. The longtime JCC of San Francisco employee has lived in the Bay Area for a dozen years but hails from the Great White North. Every morning at his old school, the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto, the rabbinical headmaster led the singing of “Hatikva” over the intercom — then, naturally, he would break down the previous day’s action in the school’s intramural hockey league.

One recent Shabbat morning at Oakland’s Orthodox Beth Jacob Congregation, Offenberg’s mind wandered back to hockey, and he had an epiphany. So the old goalie flagged down Rabbi Judah Dardik and made his pitch — how about forming a Jewish hockey league right here in the Bay Area?

Dardik could only smile, because he’s an old goalie too.

“When I moved out here, on a whim — and I don’t know what I was thinking — I brought all my stuff, my pads, my hockey equipment, just in case. And I also brought a goal,” said Dardik, 32, the former starting goalkeeper for the Frisch Cougars of the NY/NJ Yeshiva Hockey League.

And that was the start of the Oakland Kochavim (stars in Hebrew). Scores of Bay Area Jews have since picked up sticks and taken to the concrete rink — and they’re always looking for more.

To answer the question every rabbi who has ever played sports is asked: No, they are not thinking about Torah out there in the heat of the moment (and anyone not thinking only about hockey while out on the rink will likely wake up attached to a feeding tube).

But that’s not to say hockey can’t be a Jewish experience.

“Maimonides writes that a healthy body makes a healthy soul. Keeping a healthy body is one of the ways to serve God,” notes Zarchi, 33, who puts the “maim” in Maimonides.

“Being a Jew is sometimes a test of endurance. You eat a lot on Shabbos but you fast on Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av. You need a healthy body that can endure some big swings ... As a rabbi, one of the things I always remind myself is, as a Jew, I’m not just playing sports to play sports. It really keeps you invigorated, makes you a more productive person, allows you to focus more clearly, have better endurance, and be a better Jew and rabbi.”

Unlike Zarchi and Dardik, who grew up, respectively, in Brooklyn and Tenafly, NJ (where water freezes in the winter), Rabbi Mark Bloom of Oakland’s Conservative Beth Abraham is a Bay Area boy. His most striking memory (no pun intended) of his night of hockey-playing with the Kochavim was that getting hit by the ball really stings.

While it’s not unusual to face off against a rabbi, the vast majority of the players are regular Jewish guys (and the occasional girl) in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Some attend synagogue regularly while others limit their interactions with the Jewish community to hockey night — for now.

After the games, the players peel off their helmets and gloves and talk hockey. Jewish men who normally wouldn’t see each other anywhere but in shul or, perhaps, the crosstown bus, laugh and joke with the camaraderie endemic to team sports.

“I love going head to head with Rabbi Dardik. He really sticks it to you, checking left and right. He’s a good sport about it, though. He always apologizes afterwards,” jokes Ian Framson, a 23-year-old Beth Jacob congregant.

Adds Dardik, “There’s that strange feeling when you see your kindergarten teacher in the supermarket. Many of these guys see each other largely at synagogue, and to get together wearing sweats and T-shirts and to see each other’s skill and the camaraderie, it’s a nice feeling and it’s great to develop relationships on a different plane.”