I just screened the fantastic film from Brett Rapkin and Eric Kesten, Holyland Hardball, and I am certainly glad I did. The film itself does a great job focusing on the small details required to start a baseball league while telling compelling personal stories.

But there's a subtext throughout, not only one of sadness- for as I knew when watching, this 2007 season is, as of now, and orphan in Israeli baseball history- but one that is a question: how does anything take root?

It is a question repeatedly hinted at in the film- after all, there is no history of baseball in Israel- but more to the point, of Israel itself.

The parallels are striking. Israel's birth in 1948 was the projection of a new country on this very same land. Yes, there is a monumental difference in tradition. But the question of where a Jewish homeland should be was an open one- and to many, the question of whether one was even necessary was open as well.

So I was struck by the number of Israelis who didn't believe something new, something vital could take root in the Israeli soil.

This is not to say introducing a new sport is easy. Take the reverse attempts of people around the world to introduce soccer to the United States. The current version, the MLS, often struggles to build crowds or find the attention of even American soccer fans. Many of them simply watch the world-class action on television to be found in England or Spain.

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News came last week that Tamir Goodman, once a prospect so heralded at the high school level that he earned the moniker "The Jewish Jordan" before he was old enough to buy cigarettes, was retiring from basketball after a career that did not, alas, lead him to become the greatest player in the NBA. Sadly, he never achieved his goal of even making the league.

While this is unsurprising- it is a nearly impossible standard to reach Michael Jordan's eminence, even with the relative modifier "Jewish" in front of the namesake- what I find most interesting is just how quickly the Jewish community affixed this nickname to Goodman.

We are, as a people, desperate for our iconic modern sports hero. It's been a while since we had one.

That is not to say there aren't prominent Jews in sports today. As I have traveled around the country, giving talks about my book, The Baseball Talmud, I have been quick to point out that 2009 contained the most Jewish players in any single season of Major League Baseball.

And many of those players are not mere journeymen: Kevin Youkilis, Ryan Braun and Ian Kinsler have all been standout hitters, while Scott Feldman and Jason Marquis have excelled in particular on the mound.

But what has struck me among the people I've met during my tour is the reverence for Sandy Koufax. It is at a level that surpasses even the Jewish baseball fan's love for Youkilis locally in Boston, or for Braun in Milwaukee. He was an icon.

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