In 1936, Margaret "Gretel" Bergmann (now known by her married name, Margaret Lambert) was Germany's highest-ranked female high jumper. However, Germany's racial laws meant that she, as a Jew, was not welcome on their national Olympic team. Trying to get good PR, Germany forced Margaret to train for the 1936 Berlin games, only to claim she had an injury and not allow her to compete. They even trained a young man to dress in women's clothing and compete against her.

A new film, Berlin '36, stars actress Karoline Herfurth as Gretel and will open the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival (AJFF) on January 13th." I was asked to interview Gretel for a piece that appeared in the accompanying booklet for the film. I was able to meet Gretel, who is now ninety-five years old, and have tea with her at her home in Queens. She is, quite simply, the coolest ninety-five year old woman I have ever met, and I hope if I live to be her age I can be even a third of the woman she is.

The AJFF piece appears below:

 

In 2009, nineteen years after a front page New York Times article brought Jewish high jumper Margaret "Gretel" Bergmann-Lambert's story to worldwide attention, German filmmaker Kaspar Heidelbach directed Berlin '36, a compelling film based on Gretel's experience being forced off the 1936 German Olympic team.

During the shooting, the now 95-year-old Gretel, touched by the attention her story has garnered, invited cast and crew members to her home in Queens, New York. Gretel and actress Karoline Herfurth, who plays her, became close friends and regularly email. They were even photographed together by Bruce Weber in a spread for German Vogue. Gretel was particularly impressed that Herfurth did all her own "stunts" in the film, spending three months learning to high jump.

"I think the movie was well done," she says. "They had to change some things, for Hollywood, for drama. But I liked it."

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For three hours on Sunday afternoon at Madison Square Garden the New York Knicks hosted Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv, the pride of Israeli hoops, in an exhibition that somewhat resembled a professional basketball game. But the rabbi involvement and prevalent Hebrew music were a few of the constant reminders that this was clearly not a typical NBA game.

Midgal Ohr ads played during the breaks (the game was a benefit for the Israeli charity), and the Israeli national anthem got big cheers. Also, most of the crowd wasn't thrilled about the Knicks.

Well, that last part is pretty standard at Madison Square Garden these days. But Rabbi Grossman of Migdal Ohr took over center court for a sing-along during halftime, and that's pretty unusual.

Since the Knicks last won the NBA finals in 1973, Maccabi has won 34 Israeli championships (that's all but 2 times) and 13 European championships. Seriously. Bill Clinton was president when the Knicks launched their last winning season. Perhaps history fails me, but it's possible Israel wasn't a state the last time Maccabi had a bad year.

Ehud Olmert and Israel basketball legend Tal Brody watched on as the Knicks soundly defeated Maccabi 106-91. (For the record, Olmert's introduction drew much less applause than when attendees Sara and Robbie got engaged on the big screen during the second half, while the organ piped Hava Nagila.)

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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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When we’re not watching painful baseball beatdowns, we love this job, because we get to write about things we never thought we’d get to.

This evening, members of the Tribe….no, not that Tribe…will go to synagogues all over America.  The luckiest of them will even perhaps run into us!

The rest of them, however, can still be glowing with excitement, because it’s official: The biggest matzah ball in the universe, ever, has landed.  It contains 1,000 eggs, 200 pounds of matzoh meal, 20 pounds of something semi-worrisomely referred to as “chicken base,” and 80 punds of margarine.

Margarine?  Our bubbe is turning in her grave.  In any case, the 267 pound sphere of carbohydrate goodness is celebrating an exhibition game scheduled for October between the New York Knicks and an Israeli national team, the proceeds of which will benefit Migdal Or, a huge orphanage/educational center for underprivileged kids, recent immigrants to Israel, and others.

You can find out more about the program and buy tickets here for either the Knicks game versus Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv on October 18th or the Israeli team’s tilt versus the LA Clippers on October 20th.  We wish we could be there.

In the meantime, we’ve got some cooking to do.

 

Crossposted to UnPink Hats: a sports blog from a female perspective.  Check us out!

Last week's MLB All-Star Game featured three Jewish players - Boston Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis, Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun, and Colorado Rockies pitcher Jason Marquis. It could have been four had Texas Rangers second baseman Ian Kinsler won the fan vote for the 33^rd spot. It was the first time baseball had seen three Jewish All-Stars since 1999, when Shawn Green, Mike Lieberthal, and Brad Ausmus all made the team.

Today there are a total of 10 Jewish Major Leaguers, and with Braun and Youkilis in the MVP discussion, this might be a golden age for Jews in baseball. It's a far cry from other sports where Jews have not had as much success lately.

This past season, Jordan Farmar of the Lakers was the only NBA player who was at least half-Jewish. This led to a running joke I used to have, in which I claimed that there were more Jews in the NBA who were commissioner of the league (David Stern) than players. Of course now there is considerable optimism over recent Sacramento Kings draft pick Omri Casspi from Israel, but by and large, Jews have struggled to make the NBA.

Jews haven't seen much more success in pro football lately, with only four expected to put on an NFL uniform in 2009. Of those only San Diego Chargers defensive lineman Igor Olshansky and Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sage Rosenfels are expected to make any significant impact, and for Rosenfels that's only if Brett Favre decides to stay retired.

There are currently two Jews on the US national soccer team (Jonathan Bornstein and Benny Feilhaber), four in the NHL, and two on the PGA Tour. Also the names Sasha Cohen, Dara Torres, and Jason Lezak (more on him later) are recognizable to most of us.

But baseball continues to be the sport where Jews have the most success. Why is that? Well, I think there are a variety of contributing factors. First, over the past generation, baseball has become something of an elitist game in this country. While poor and disadvantaged children in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela play baseball in droves, it's become far more exclusive in the U.S.

Baseball is an expensive sport to play when one factors in all of the equipment one must purchase. While basketball can be played in any park, requiring just a ball, baseball players need to have a bat, a glove, cleats, batting gloves, mitts for different positions, stirrups, and a whole host of other apparel just to play at a youth level. Just as important is a quality playing surface, and fields are often not well-maintained in inner-city communities, nor in troubled neighborhoods located in cold-weather climates. Fields are more likely to be well-kept in wealthier suburban neighborhoods. Also, baseball has numerous specialized skills which require expensive coaching to teach at a high level.

While Dominican ballplayers actively play baseball as their "ticket out of poverty," poorer Americans have turned to basketball and other sports to land their lottery ticket to success. As a result, most American baseball players today come from the suburbs. Players like Youkilis, Braun, and Marquis came from reasonably well-off families, and grew up in suburban environments where it's not uncommon to find Jews.

In 2007, the percentage of African-American players in baseball dipped to an all-time low of 8.2%. It has since increased to 10.2%, thanks in part to efforts by Major League Baseball to promote baseball in the inner-cities. But for now Jews are flourishing in the sport as well as they ever have because they are growing up in environments that support the game.

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While you may not associate Jews with basketball skills, it might surprise you to discover that the very first basket in professional basketball was sunk not by a 6'5" phenom but by a Jewish kid. That mythical basket, as well as the story of Jews and their connection to the sport of basketball, is told in the new documentary The First Basket. Here are a couple of clips. See if you can spot Friend of Jewcy and Yeshiva University professor Jeffrey Gurock.

 

 

 

When my roommate moved in this fall he told me he practiced his religion 18 Sundays a year starting at 1:00pm in front of his 50 inch television, with a couple of beers and maybe some pizza or chicken wings. He is a very devout practitioner. I’ve seen him watch multiple games in a day, frequently swearing and yelling at the TV even occasionally jumping out of his seat in jubilation (or rage).

So, with his Highest Holiday coming up this Sunday, we decided to open our apartment to the community of football fans could share in good food and bad beer. We're doing our part in keeping the Super Bowl the most watched television event of the year. But as our guests started respond to our invitation, I couldn’t help but notice an absence of positive responses from my Jewish friends. But had made me wonder if I had not noticed before, but did Jews not like football?

Maybe my Jewish friends, most whom are generally social justice loving, lefty, and nebbish just aren’t into football? But at a peace rally a few weeks back while we shivered in the cold, I noticed one friend keeping warm in a NY Giants hat. So I started to ask around. Turns out some Jews do like football. As one yid who works in a sports marketing firm said, “sure, Jews like football, they like to bet on it and they like to own it.” This was relayed to me during a drunken Shabbat evening, where I was also told that a third of all NFL team owners are Jewish.

But do Jews play football? After all my first exposure to football was the Friday night high school football game – an obvious no-no for observant Jews. Even college football is played on Saturdays – again problematic for the same reasons. And there is this issue of touching footballs a/k/a “pigskins.” Can Jews touch the skin of a non-kosher animal? A friend’s mother says the 614th mitzvoth is “Jews don’t play football,” but I haven’t yet gotten a good explanation to why. Although not every Jewish mother got that memo because Alan Veingrad, Ron Mix and a few others play and have played professional ball.

So, Jewish or not, if you plan on partaking in the great American tradition of Super Bowl Sunday, here is a super easy, really yummy bean dip recipe you can make for your party.

Cream Cheese Bean Dip

1 package (8 oz) of cream cheese
1 can (15.5 oz) of black beans
garlic powder to taste

Take the cream cheese out of the package and soften the cream cheese either in the microwave (a minute or two in a microwave safe bowl stirring frequently) or on the stove (on low heat stirring frequently).

Stir in the beans and add garlic powder to taste.

Serve warm with corn chips.

Recipe by Dena Fleno

I don't see any potential for "trickle down effect" in C.C. Sabathia's Contract

Last week my roommate and I finally watched No Country for Old Men. The story revolves around an evil, creepy man pursuing a briefcase containing two million dollars that is found following a drug deal gone wrong by a random passerby. This man is absolutely brutal, shooting anyone who gets in his way with no mercy.

At one point, I asked my roommate, “How much money is in there? Two million?” He nodded. I followed with “Doesn’t A-Rod make that, in, like, one game? It’s pretty sad all these innocent bystanders are losing lives over two million bucks when A-Rod earns about that much per at bat.”

I love baseball. Always have. Always will. But when I heardabout C.C. Sabathia’s $161M contract with the Yankees yesterday, I was finally ready to admit for the first time, that baseball players' salaries are beyond extravagant. They are an insulting slap in the face toward those who are being hit hard by the economy.

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Does Race Determine the Volume of Negative Press when Athletes Misbehave?

Vick Dog Chew Toy

While reading the Times yesterday, I saw numerous articles about Michael Vick, who had just pleaded guilty to dog fighting charges as a necessary measure in his goal to get back to the NFL.

I am an animal lover with a dog-breeding grandmother, an aunt who has a horse farm and another aunt with a dog kennel, so, like many others, I wanted the NFL and the powers-that-be to make an example of Vick for condoning, and profiting from animal abuse. Now, I'm having second thoughts.

The fact that I mainly follow baseball and the fact there are plenty of blacks in the NFL allowed me to overlook the underrepresentation of black quarterbacks until it was pointed out in one of the Times articles. The article, which highlights how Vick's race versus Matt Ryan's race affects the Atlanta fan base, turned me onto the reality that Vick is a meaningful loss to his predominantly black Atlanta fans, despite his well-above-adequate replacement and indisputable indiscretions.

I am a Boston College alumnus and am perfectly proud of Matt Ryan's achievements. Maybe I should start pretending to be related to him instead of Nolan Ryan. However, Michael Vick's demise brings about concerns over racial double standards in sports.

Michael Vick was not just that "random big black guy" on the defensive line. He was the star quarterback and an icon. A rising star and an exception to the norm of pretty white faces like Eli Manning and Tom Brady representing the most visible position. It seems that, besides Donovan McNabb, black football players haven't had as much access to the positive exposure and coveted endorsements that come with the territory of QB. Peyton Manning's countless commercials are always wordy. Advertisers seem to think audiences value Manning's opinions and feedback about a product, while they might rather watch blacks running in their Nikes and chugging their Sprites in silence than actually be told by those blacks to buy the brands.

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The sun is rising over the Lake Chabot Marina, in California's Castro Valley, and I've just opened my eyes to find a heavy-set African-American woman slipping fluorescent pink and green fliers under my windshield wipers. She smiles apologetically, and when I smile back, she mouths "thank you" and proceeds down Lake Chabot Road. There are dozens of cars to paper. I go back to sleep. An hour or two later, I clamber out of the Jeep and inspect the fliers.

One advertises Herbalife, a weight-loss program pushed, like Ginsu cutlery, through multi-level or "network" marketing. The other promises that I can "lose 2-8 pounds per week." The contact name and number are identical: This is Vanessa's home business. If only she'd noticed the decals, bumper stickers, and license plate frames on most of these cars: "Marathon Freak," "26.2," "Runner Girl," "Running Is My Prozac," and "Western States 100 Mile Endurance Challenge." These are not people greatly in need of weight-loss nostrums.
I could use that, I think, my thoughts returning to the Crockpot back at my apartment, in which a four-pound pork shoulder is cooking. I'm one of a few people at the Lake Chabot Marina, the starting point of the Dick Collins Firetrails 50, not there in an athletic capacity. I have no interest in running fifty miles. I have a vested interest in not running any miles. I'm merely the hungry, exhausted, and woefully hung-over chauffeur of rookie ultramarathoner Sarah C. Murray, who strives daily to put the loco in locomotion.

At 6:30 AM I escorted her in complete darkness to the starting line. A surprise to see someone report so cheerfully to a torture chamber.

The gloom was punctuated here and there by headlamps like will-o-wisps. The mood at the registration table, at this hour the only oasis of light in the park, was a kind of mocking inversion of my own. I hadn't made time to shower, despite not having managed to sleep, either. Yet here was a flock of merry and chattering loons eager to take wing. Everywhere I looked, a pair of striated legs was being stretched out in elaborate and unpleasant-looking ways. One man appeared to be rubbing IcyHot into his thighs; it turned out to be Vaseline, to prevent chafing.

An alien language was spoken here: "Not plantar fasciitis, I hope?"; "You've done three ultras in two months?"; "I trashed my patella"; "Did my first 100 in September." CamelBaks and bottled-water holsters were strapped on like armor before a battle. I dreamed of a Camel Light and a bottle of something high-proof to usher me back to slumberland. Put plainly, I loathed these people. They didn't register how cold it was, how pointless this was, how much happier they'd be in bed-even were that bed the back of a Jeep. Had I not known better, I might have supposed that they wanted to run fifty miserable miles.

I felt myself forming a philosophical objection to the ultramarathon, a term referring to any race longer than 26.2 miles. Some people accept mortality, embracing and, where possible, encouraging bodily limitations. Tempus fugit, as someone wise once observed: The paunch is coming, the double and treble chins, the thunder thighs, the muffin top. To this species of chronological determinism, the ultramarathoner says, no thanks. Ego fugit. Let time catch up with me. And it's pure hubris.

As a consequence, most ultramarathoners look like the Visible Man science model: bones, muscle, and a pair of eyes to remind you that this was once a human being. Ms. Murray is not among their number. Despite running between seven and twenty miles a day, she pays no special attention to nutrition. Her fuel inheres in beer, soup, and pretzels, a diet fit for hobos and endurance athletes alike. She keeps pace with her metabolism. She looks normal. Appearances can be deceiving.

I've rehearsed Latin aphorisms and Greek concepts, and this is no coincidence. Ms. Murray is not only a running fanatic who won her first marathon (Death Valley, 2007), but also a classicist and archaeologist (pursuing a Ph.D. at Stanford University). She's been to Marathon, where a statue of Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the International Olympic Committee, commemorates the first marathon-as well as the New Balance sneaker company, which commissioned the statue. She runs, coincidentally, in New Balance, women's size 9.5.

Greece inspired her first fifty-mile run, but not because of the feat attested in Plutarch and Herodotus. It was a sixty-kilometer (roughly forty-mile) walk from Korphos, on the eastern Peloponnese, to Mycenae, during which she discovered a Bronze Age site, that sealed the deal. "If I could walk it," she recalls thinking, "I could run it faster." There are echoes in this straightforward act of will of Patrick Leigh Fermor, the British travel writer who walked across Europe in his youth-a trip chronicled in A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water-and went on to write two stunning books about Greece, Roumeli and Mani.

I'm not thinking of any of this as I sleep fitfully in the Jeep, then decide to scout a patch of grass in Chabot Park. In forty-eight hours, I've barely slept. Because Ms. Murray is a graduate student and I'm a freelance writer-an "ink-stained wretch," in George Orwell's memorable phrase-we keep different schedules, and I didn't manage to adjust my 4:30 AM bedtime in time for the race. It is with mild annoyance that I approach the marina café five hours into the race, order a cheeseburger, and plant myself on a deck with views of both algae-choked Lake Chabot and the red digital clock recording the runners' final times.

It's the finest cheeseburger I've ever eaten. It renews my commitment to sloth and gluttony. Smothered in onions, pickles, and molten cheese, snug in a nest of potato chips, it reminds me that there are two sources of pleasure in this world: the thing that feels so good when you stop, and the thing that goes on feeling good until you decide to stop. I will always be a fervent devotee of the latter.

But I cannot stifle the awe in which I hold those who choose the former. A little while after the six-hour mark, men begin to attain the finish line. Some have water bottles velcroed to their hands. All have legs chiseled into athletic history. I have something in common with these guys: I too am chiseled from marble. In my case, in the shape of a slob who eats cheeseburgers for breakfast.

Men and women, from the young to the very old, trickle into a victory chute marked off with orange traffic cones. Every flurry of applause yanks my gaze from the book I'm reading without much interest, but there is no Sarah Murray. I perform calculations, first with my cellphone and then, when its battery dies, with my brain. (My iPod, which I'd been using as a stopwatch, has long since crapped out.) What would her mile pace need to be to finish at seven hours? At seven-fifteen? At seven-forty-five? At eight? I watch an old woman remark a skywriter, a bird, a lesbian couple holding hands. I snort when another woman approvingly points out a "Google Bear," left in a stroller, to her daughter. I watch a young boy try to climb the fence surrounding Lake Chabot, to retrieve an escaped soccer ball. He changes his mind; he goes to fetch an adult. "Sissy," I think.

Still no Sarah. I feel concern, then anger. How could she get herself into this? How could she try to run fifty miles without eating a decent meal the night before? Without a hearty, or any, breakfast? Without water? Why doesn't she have high-tech sweat-wicking apparel like the other runners? I contemplate disaster scenarios: Would anybody stop if a runner collapsed of heat exhaustion, dehydration, or hyponatremia? Running fifty miles isn't just stupid; it's dangerous. Too little sodium in the blood can kill you. I begin to wonder if she's given this possibility the thought it deserves.

I maintain calm, and eventually she appears on the paved track. Most of the Firetrails 50 takes place, as its name suggests, on trails-the middle portion of the altitude profile looks suggestively like devil horns-but the first and last stretches are on asphalt. She's been beaten by dozens of runners, but she's alive. Her face is so caked with salt that it looks like she's wearing a Phantom of the Opera mask. She throws the goat as she passes the finish line, at 8:57:06.

But, as usual, I've misjudged the situation. Someone's handing her a tote bag and a bottle of wine. I understand my mistake: an ordinary marathon, which started later in the day, has been feeding the same finish line. The middle-aged women and senior citizens who've been "beating" Sarah for the past two hours aren't even part of her race. She is, in fact, first in her (21-29) age group, first among women who've never run a fifty-mile race before, and fifth among women overall. ("Rookie" appears next to her #169 on the results board, a funny term for someone who can run a greater distance than most people drive without whining about it.) She is thirty-third overall, including men of any age. As usual, she has swung for the fences and crushed it.

"Some girl had a pacer running with her," she says, "so that she could win the rookie title. I had to beat her."
She isn't howling or vomiting or cursing God. She's eager to be driven-my role, as you recall-to a Classics cookout, where our friends have been drinking Anchor Steam and playing leisurely games of badminton for the past few hours. Is she in terrible pain? She gestures guiltily to a fanny-pack full of Ibuprofen, salt pills, and NoDoz. It turns out she's been listening to Classics lectures on her iPod so as "not to get bored." Most runners would fret about the postage-stamp-weight of the device. She washes her face in a drinking fountain, and we walk to the Jeep.

The Bear Flag of the California Republic flaps and flutters above the golden hills of Chabot Lake Park. "There were llamas," she informs me. "There were cows looking at us, like, ‘What the hell are you doing?'" I feel a bit bovine myself. "The aid stations were good, though." The aid stations, according to the Firetrails 50 website, had "water, GU 2 0 Hydration drink, Gu, Coke, Sprite, ice, fruit, homemade baked cookies, hard candy, potatoes, P.B. & J sandwiches, pretzels, Succeed Caps, crackers, potato chips, salt, wonderful volunteers, etc."

No pulled pork.

Returning home through the Castro Valley, we pass a sign for the candidacy (I don't catch the office) of one Hera Alikian. My thoughts return to Greece. Hera, as every classicist worth her salt pills knows, was symbolized by the cow and the peacock. I'm grateful that there's room for both of us to roam the girdled earth, we ruminants who stand in awe, and the peacocks who can't resist showing us up. All I ask, over a cioppino meant for two (not a bite of which is offered to me), is that we keep the hundred-miler off the table-but, then, that's asking a peacock not to strut its stuff.

Prior to winning a Super Bowl ring as offensive lineman on the Dallas Cowboys (1991-92), Alan Veingrad spent five years as a Green Bay Packer (1986-90). He was often the only Jew in the locker room, and never really embraced Judaism until after he retired. Today Veingrad is Orthodox, and recently sat down with Newsweek’s OnFaith reporter Kathy Orton for an interview about what it was like to be a Jew in the NFL, and why he became more religious:
Alan Veingrad: from helmet to yarmulke

 

"I just felt as I was going to my rabbi’s house Friday night for the traditional Shabbat meal and I was driving with my family, and then on Saturday night I was going out with my friends and their wives and I was comparing the two ways of life. Friday night was so meaningful and so rich and so fun and so real and then Saturday night was so, what? What? What do we talk about? The next vacation you’re taking? That new car that you got? Your golf score? You’re going fishing and boating? Okay, there’s nothing wrong with all those things and I enjoy all of them. And I also like to go fishing and I like to exercise, and when I have the time I love taking my kids to Orlando to the theme park to do things like that with them. However, that is a very small part of life. The main focus of life is your relationship with God and growing toward that."

You Americans and your peculiar ways. Your “World Series” that no-one else is invited to, your wacky efforts at global policing (much appreciated, by the way), your utter inability correctly to pronounce the word “aluminium”, your insistence on using the abbreviation 9/11 that, everywhere else in the world, refers to the ninth of November. I don’t point out these foibles in the spirit of mockery, you understand, but of gentle ribbing, as two old friends might engage in banter during a drunken evening down the pub.

Anyway, one of the things that amuses us over here (and by ‘us’ I mean those of us who consider the USA to be a friend, ally and brother nation greatly to be admired, not the pseudo-intellectual, Gauloise-puffing Communists whom you’d no more trust to stand and fight by your side than you would not to shag your wife while you were out of town) is the American belief system that places USA! USA! at the centre of the known universe, no matter what the context. Take this unintentionally hilarious comment from Condi Rice the other day, explaining why Cal Ripken is to be a “Special Sports Envoy” for the State Department:

"Sports is a universal language... Everybody knows that if you can play baseball like Cal Ripken then you're going to... have the world at your feet... So he's going to go out and I'll bet he'll find people who want to be Cal Ripken in Pakistan and people who want to be Cal Ripken in Guatemala and people who want to be Cal Ripken in Europe..."

There are, as has been pointed out elsewhere, a number of levels on which this is horseshit. Leaving aside the inherent absurdity of sending a millionaire sportsman to lecture Pakistani kids on the benefits of a strong work ethic, there’s a bigger problem here. No offence, but the vast, vast majority of us do not have a bloody clue who Cal Ripken is. (I’ve been typing “Carl” for the last couple of minutes and didn’t notice my mistake.) You may doubt this, but I can assure you it is true. The overwhelming mass of humanity had never heard of OJ before he did not murder his ex-wife, or Kobe Bryant before he did not rape that girl. Barry Bonds could walk down any street in Johannesburg, Delhi or Melbourne unnoticed. Ronaldinho or Zidane would be utterly mobbed.

My point is not that American sports are (basketball aside) all but unplayed in other parts of the world (though they're not); it is, rather, to note with interest the mindset that goes with being the biggest and most powerful country in the world, and how different it is from that of other nations. It simply didn’t occur to Condi – an intelligent and well-travelled woman - that she might be talking out of her arse. Why would it? After all, most American celebrities find themselves recognised throughout the world. Angelina and Britney don’t need surnames to identify them in Lahore any more than they do in LA. America’s ‘soft’ power is an awesome, unprecedented global phenomenon; no wonder so many resent it. So the exceptions are all the more striking for being so rare. I wonder how an NFL star feels when he walks through the streets of a major European city and no-one gives him a second look. I wonder if he loves it or, secretly, hates every second.

The British are often accused of behaving like we still ruled the waves, and perhaps on one level it’s true. For my part, I’m pretty sure we know that our place in the world is much diminished; billions of acres of print have been expended on analysing the way our national psyche has changed since the days of Empire, and how we've adapted to our more humble station in life. But once upon a while we were the most powerful nation on Earth, just as you are now, and it shaped our national character irrevocably, just as it continues to shape yours. Once we were knocked off our perch we found it hard to adjust; in many ways, 100 years on, we still do. I hope America is top dog for a long time to come, because none of the alternatives are very palatable; but one day she won’t be, and I wonder how Americans will react to the changed realities of that time.

Still, for real arrogance, we must all, always, defer to our politicians. Rudy Giuliani took solipsism to a whole new level yesterday when he proudly announced to astonished London journalists that he was one of the four or five most famous Americans in the world. I wonder which of the cast of Friends he thinks he slipped in ahead of?

In honor of the great lefty Sandy Koufax and of great righty Hank Greenberg, I thought it would be fun today to give some shoutouts to some other Jewish athletes kicking it Greenberg-Koufax style, and a few other happenings in the world of J-sports.

 

Shawn Green considers the way to do the High Holidays his way in this weirdly worded headline, but discussion-worthy article, and here we see a Q&A with BoSox first-baseman Kevin Youkilis about the decision he and outfielder Gabe Kapler made last year to go ahead and play on Yom Kippur. Jonah Keri's piece earlier this month in Salon.com highlights (or, chai-lights? Ba-dum-ching!) eighteen standout Jewish baseball players. Andre Tippet talks about conversion and football here (ha/oy, we see that word "ambassador" again), and Paul Lukas gave us this "kosher look" at Judaism in baseball back in April, giving mention to Mike "SuperJew" Epstein's glove-art.

"SuperJew" Epstein: Taking breaking-in a glove to a new level.

Also, a few of you might remember Jewish Journal's piece last spring about Pesach V. NCAA. Another sports discussion-worthy tidbit lives right here, in the adventures of a Canadian Orthodox hockey player. Also let's revisit the story of karate champion, Sara Rivka Ernstoff, who refused the US's World Karate Championship trials twenty-five years ago.

 

In NY, Cablevision is adding a Jewish On-Demand channel which "will contain a mix of films, documentaries, talk shows, comedy, political commentary shows, cooking programs, sports, children's programs, and holiday specials all with a Jewish theme or connection" and the JNF of Greater NY issues a "My Bad!" after having to rescind a Playboy Mansion trip prize, auctioned off at a sports trivia night in Manhattan. Heading west to Ohio, the Shaw JCC in Akron is pretty excited to be hosting Maccabi Games in 2008 and heading way far away, the JTA reports a tiny bit about the Jewish sports festival held earlier this month in Moldova.

 

Israeli tennis duo Andy Ram and Jonathan Erlich have started a Jewish Sports Foundation to "encourage young American athletes, will also aim to combat negative stereotypes about Jews’ athletic prowess." (Read the Jewish Chronicle piece here.) Speaking of negativity, remember last winter when Bahrain gave the boot to Mushir Salem Jawher for running the Tiberias marathon. Lastly, speaking of the marathon, registration for the Jerusalem half-marathon will open soonish for the March 2008 race.

 

The Texas Department of Corrections is afraid its prisoners will get ideas.

 After reading Dave Zirin's book, "Welcome to the Terrordome", Texas death row inmate Kenneth Foster, who was sentenced for abetting a murder, wrote Zirin a letter detailing his thoughts on sports and prison: 

"I have never had the opportunity to view sports in this way. And as I went through these revelations I began to have epiphanies about the way sports have a similar existence in prison. The similarities shook me. Facing execution, the only thing that I began to get obsessive about was how to get heard and be free, and as the saying goes — you can't serve two gods. Sports, as you know, becomes a way of life. You monitor it, you almost come to breathe it. Sports becomes a way of life in prison, because it becomes a way of survival. For men that don't have family or friends to help them financially it becomes a way to occupy your time. That's another sad story in itself, but it's the root to many men's obsession with sports."

While it’s easy to fall in love with the genius (relative to expectations of barbarousness) of a prisonmate (see: Norman Mailer), the prison system should still readily encourage a correspondence between Zirin and Foster. Instead, when Zirin sent Foster a copy of his first book, "What's My Name Fool?: Sports and Resistance in the US", the Texas Department of Corrections quickly proclaimed the book ill-suited, even dangerous, to its system. Writes Zirin:

A form titled "Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice, Publication review/denial notification" issued to Kenneth on August 9 reads that What's My Name Fool? Was banned from the row because, "It contains material that a reasonable person would construe as written solely for the purpose of communicating information designed to achieve the breakdown of prisons through offender disruption such as strikes or riots." They specifically write that "pages 44 & 55" met this criteria.

After lifting my jaw off the ground, I went to those dangerous palindromic pages.

On 44, the radioactive quote in question comes from that seditious revolutionary Jackie Robinson — you know, the guy whose number is retired by all of Major League Baseball. I quote Robinson's autobiography when he writes about suffering racism early in his rookie season. He wrote: 

"I felt tortured and I tried to just play ball and ignore the insults but it was really getting to me. For one wild and rage crazed moment I thought, 'To hell with Mr. Rickey's noble experiment. To hell with the image of the patient black freak I was supposed to create.' I could throw down my bat, stride over to that Phillies dugout, grab one of those white sons of bitches, and smash his teeth in with my despised black fist. Then I could walk away from it all."

On page 55, the offensive passage was about Jack Johnson's defeat of the "Great White Hope," Jim Jeffries. It reads, "Johnson was faster, stronger and smarter than Jeffries. He knocked Jeffries out with ease. After Johnson's victory, there were race riots around the country in Illinois, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas and Washington, D.C. Most of the riots consisted of white lynch mobs attacking Blacks, and Blacks fighting back. This reaction to a boxing match was one of the most widespread racial uprisings in the U.S. until the 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."

Last night, I was talking about what a shameless dork I am when it comes to certain things (Okay, fine, when it comes to most things), specifically, cheering people on at marathons and other races. See, I run, races, long and short, and when I don't run races, I like to watch races. Being a runner, I know first hand that around the twenty-third mile of a marathon, it's really a struggle. Many runners have said that after the twentieth mile marker, it's an entirely different race, which I completely agree with. You're proud of yourself for just having run twenty miles, but, you know you have a long 6.2 miles to go, your body is tired, your organs are getting sore from being jostled all this way, and your brain, oh man, your brain might as well be on another planet. A lot of people know this and so, many times, runners encounter a crowd of smiling faces at the twenty mile mark. Then, you don't see anyone again until you are nearing the finish line, after about twenty-five or twenty-five and a half miles. With your body ready to revolt and your brain turning to mush and not anyone in sight but your fellow runners, the in-betweens are a bitch, I'm here to tell you.

Rock the boat, just don't tip the boat over: Oh, Guth and her water references.

Last fall, the morning of the Chicago marathon was chilly, and though I had no plans to run the thing that year, I got up early and dressed in layers and layers of technical fabrics to keep warm, excited to watch the race. Without giving it much thought, I headed to the twenty three mile marker. It was a ghost town. I hung out, read the paper, worked on a crossword puzzle, did my thing, clapped when the first waves of elite runners came through, went back to my crossword (I think "adar" is in the puzzle every week, right?), and waited for the next waves of runners.

Although I was by myself and feeling a little self-conscious, I cheered and cheered and said everything I could to encourage the runners (Mostly, "You're almost there! Once you turn that corner, you'll see the finish line!", which are the magic words when you're in that position, believe me!) and the longer I stayed, the more I got into it, just like I always do, as the groups got slower and slower.

An acquaintance walked by on the sidewalk, and we had a short conversation that was something like, "Great, how are you? Hang on, hang on-- Hey, BoSox hat! You're almost there!-- Anyway, yeah, what's new with you..." and I laughed when she said, "You should be so proud. You're doing a huge mitzvah!" Yeah, whatever. No, I just like watching races, and I know the end of a race sucks, so since I'm here and have no shame, eh, might as well. But, on some level, I was appreciative of what she'd just said and I was glad to see runners smiling back and saying thank you. It made me feel like it mattered that I was there. And, let's face it, we all want to count for something.

I stayed until the last of the runners came through, and left thinking, you know, I did do a good thing today. I mean, I was the only one standing at that portion of the race course. Maybe I could stand to feel proud of myself for that.

So, later the following week, I was talking to Rabbi Righteous and we were discussing our weekends. Our mutual acquaintance mentioned to him that she'd been walking down the street and saw me at the race. The rabbi said she'd told him, "What a mensch. She was out there in the cold cheering on the runners while the rest of us were going to brunch." I waved my hand dismissively and began to protest, but he beat me to it. "I told her that wasn't menschlikeit," he said, "but an obligation." And, so Rabbi Righteous and I had a conversation about Ki Teizei, which happens to be this week's parsha, and how it urges us to go beyond our comfort levels, forget about how we might look, and obligates us to involve ourselves in the struggles of our fellow human beings. As we talked, I felt less and less silly about making an ass out of myself on an empty city block before a bunch of running strangers. I felt humbled about it all. I felt humbled and relieved to have done something right without thinking, as if the impulse to do it just lived in my being someplace. But, I have to admit that humble feeling carried a twinge of shame. I felt ashamed, just a little tiny bit, for feeling good about being there that morning. Not really shame, not big shame, but a little fleeting sense suddenly that even talking about it seemed hollow and boastful.

This parsha emphasizes that thought it is perhaps human nature (or current socialization, or a little of both) to not want to make waves by rocking the boat, where opportunities to aid do exist, we simply cannot remain quiet or indifferent, but instead to do what we can. It's okay, and right and correct, to feel like a good person and to feel proud of doing positive things in the world. But, we can't loose sight of where we must put our focus. It's essential we must do positive things for the sake of doing positive things, to make the world better bit by bit, but not with the focus of doing them to put ourselves in a good light or to build ourselves up. Again, it's fine, and healthy, to feel proud of a good deed, but the deeds have to be ahead of our egos, in both the "look what I did" sense and the sense of justifying and rationalizing our way out of opportunities to help.

Almost all of my friends are glued to their television sets during March because of the NCAA tournament, and I always feel like a freak because I just can’t make myself care about who’s going to be this year’s Cinderella. Also, the alliteration irritates me. Sweet sixteen, elite eight, final four… amazingly annoying. I like sports and competition (I adore the Olympics), but I don’t follow any one team with the devotion and fervor of most of my friends.
Yossi Benayoun and Friends: the faith of thousands rests in their hands...
I also find it somewhat creepy how intense some people can get about their fandom. I know a number of families who are shomer Shabbat except when they have tickets to the game. Or, they’re shomer Shabbat, but when the game is going to be on they put the TV on a timer. I mean, I’m all about loyalty, but do you really put the Cubs and God on an even keel?

Once a friend of mine explained his devotion to a baseball team to me by equating watching a game with praying. He said when he watches the field, and is holding out for a run and then it happens, it feels like his prayers have been answered in a way that never happens when he’s at shul. Now, I can see how it might be more fulfilling in that way because you can see immediate results, but of course it wasn’t his little, “Oh please God let there be a hit!” that made the bat make contact with the ball. It was years of batting practice and good coaching.

I bring all this up because a number of my English friends are up in arms about the England versus Israel soccer game tomorrow afternoon. The winner advances towards qualifying for the European Cup. A reform rabbi named Jonathan Romain is on the record saying that British Jews should feel fine supporting England. But in the standard Jewish newspaper in the UK, the Jewish Chronicle, Conservative Rabbi Jeremy Gordon of St. Albans, debates the merits of the various options and declares for Israel.

For a lot of people this is a real conflict of sports and religion in a way that they haven’t ever felt before. It’s kind of amusing, since the outcome rests on a 26-year-old from Dimona named Yossi Benayoun. Luckily, the game isn’t on Shabbat. That would be too much for anyone to take.

Another hard-fought NFL television-watching season is in the books, which means it's time to rejoice and give praise for the greatest holiday on the calendar, Super Bowl Sunday. Unfortunately, not even the cornucopia of chicken wings, cheese fries, and bacon martinis can help us enjoy the pre-game idiocy CBS will roll out. Prepare yourself for faux-inspirational flag football games in the Green Zone, a maudlin profile about the fall and redemption of some millionaire athlete, and lots of grown men screaming about the “Cover Two.”

Sydney, Australia, 1994. I was in year nine (equivalent to American 10^th grade) at Moriah College, Sydney’s biggest Jewish school, when our surly new sports coach gathered us in the auditorium to announce we would be fielding the first rugby team in the history of Sydney’s Jewish community. The auditorium filled with excited murmurs as we crowded around the coach to sign up. Visions of a scrum descending into bloody, out-and-out violence filled my mind. I could be fearless, brutal—and this was my chance to prove it.

An argument broke out the moment I got home from school.

“But Mum!” I shouted.

“You can’t play rugby. Jews don’t play rugby,” she said, punctuating each word with a forefinger.

“But why not?”

“They just don’t.”

“That’s not a reason.”

“It is in this house.”

“But why?”

“Because Jews are different. We are not brutes.”

“Yes we are!”

My overprotective mother wasn’t the only parent unhappy about the school’s new contact sport. The Parents and Friends Association made an official complaint to the principal. Rugby was a dangerous, violent game, they said, one that goyim played when they weren’t too busy drinking cocktails and reading biased reportage about Israel.

The most experience Moriah College had ever had with rugby was through our unofficial bookie, Moshe Ben-David, an enthusiastic Sephardic boy with sleek black hair and an excess of saliva. During the finals season of the Australian professional league, when he wasn’t horrifying the girls with an extracted pube he was impressing and confounding us with professional gambling talk: “I’ll give you four-to-one odds on a half-time five-point lead for the Tigers.” No one understood a word, but we handed him our lunch money and he wrote receipts on brown lunch bags. When word got around that he’d bought a new Game Boy that very week, we did what any group of vengeful adolescents would do: we went to the principal. The principal gave us a lecture and, instead of returning our embezzled funds, placed Moshe Ben-David’s crisp fifty-dollar bill in a blue tzedaka box.

I was about fifteen at the time, and not ready to accept that I was 105 pounds, 5 feet 1 inch tall, and pathetically uncoordinated. I couldn’t sleep at night, imagining the winning tries I’d score in the final moments of a game; I spent my hard-earned pocket money on cleats and a mouth guard and practiced sprints in the afternoons. I was determined to invalidate my mother’s shtetl rhetoric.

Tryouts began, and, while the sidelines oohed and aahed, Moshe Ben-David surreptitiously took bets on who would make the cut. The South Africans proved the outstanding faction, with their freckled noses, broad shoulders and effortless brutality. And Fatty “Babke” Feldman, a boy who was often teased for his girth, became something of a hero. No one could stop him once he got going, his big legs pumping like fattened pistons. We were invincible, and we knew it.

But when it came time for the coach to announce the team, my name wasn’t one of those mentioned. I was left to stand on the sidelines and talk about the game with the white-skinned Russians and hairy Sephardim. My dreams were shattered; I went home despondent, my pristine mouth guard rattling in its clear plastic case.

***

The team practiced every lunchtime; on the sidelines our discussions became increasingly Talmudic.

“You call that a kick? That’s not a kick. Goldberg can kick a hundred meters. You need to kick at least a hundred meters.”

“Fifty meters is plenty.”

“Hundred meters at least.”

“Skovron reckons forty meters is professional-selection standard.”

“What would Skovron know?”

“He knows.”

“He knows as much from football as I do from seafood. Where do you get your information? Even thirty meters is enough.”

After I overcame my initial disappointment, I stubbornly refused to be excluded from the action and continued to show an embarrassing and arguably unhealthy interest in the team. I could often be spotted running off-field to retrieve an over-kicked ball, or sprinting on-field to massage the fullback’s cramping quadriceps.

The coach approached me one day after lunchtime.

“Listen, Nathan. It’s real helpful of you to take on the position as, sort of…team doctor and all—“

“Well, you know, my father is a neurosurgeon.”

“Really. That’s great. But it’s a bit difficult when you actually run on the field during play.”

“I just thought it would be good to be close by in case of an accident.”

“Look,” he sighed. “I think it’s better if you stay on the sidelines until I call you. You’re going to get hurt.”

“Okay coach.” I said, jogging on the spot, shadowboxing. “I want to keep fit, just in case someone gets injured.”

He shook his head and walked away.

Kids can be cruel, but my allegiance must have been so pitiable that none of the other players said a word. In fact, they encouraged me. When I ran a water bottle to a winded prop, everyone just nodded at me and said, “Good work.” If I jogged on-field with a little mound of soil for a goal kick, the players slapped my back: “Nice work, Besser.”

Practices were actually very pleasant. Every one was concluded with fruit and cheesecake and most of our training sessions were spent arguing over rules and regulations.

***

Before the first game, the team huddled into a grunting circle. I stood at a distance, busying myself with water bottles. Then I heard the coach shout “Wait. Where’s Besser? The water boy. Our masseuse. The Doc!” He held out one last jersey and I stepped proudly forward to receive my greatest high-school accolade. I was pulled into the circle, and Feldman’s grip gave me a big shoulder bruise.

Our first game was against Scots College, a private school in the rich hills of Sydney. We piled out of the bus enthusiastically, pouring into formations, passing balls, sprinting, running backwards, dodging each other. As I arranged the water bottles and quartered oranges, I saw our opposition in the distance. The enormous Scots College kids were fiercely tackling a thinly cushioned steel pole. They scored a try within the first five minutes of the game. We pretended it meant nothing. “Next time, boys,” the coach said, twitching.

During our second game, against St. Ignatius, we didn’t fare much better. Blond hair billowing and muscles rippling, they stomped — or rather, strolled — all over us. We had our high-flying South Africans, but the St. Ignatius scrums were heavier and faster. Two of our players got injured, and we lost by 26 points. We were knocked out of the league competition in three disastrous games, losing the third by a mortifying 48 points.

During our final game, Lukowitz, the athletic, ginger-haired winger, was subbed off by the coach. Somehow, I thought he was just thirsty, so I sprinted towards him with a drink bottle and, in the middle of the playing field, sprayed a long stream of water into his face. As it went up his nostrils and in his eyes, Lukowitz became furious, gasping for air and making a guttural gagging sound.

Then, with a quick, furious jab, he broke my nose.

We spent the bus trip home in a weighty silence, a team of gloomy Jewish rugby players and one pathetic water boy with tissues up his nose and blood all over his jersey. Lukowitz was quick to apologize, and I accepted his regrets — after all, it was my mistake. Moshe Ben-David said I could make a mint from litigation, but I thought it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.

Mum almost fainted when she saw me and my mangled schnoz. I told her that I was hit during a tackle.

“You see, Nathan,” she said. “A Jew would never do such a thing.”

I was tempted to tell her the truth, but I just sniffed indifferently. The team had one last, somber cheesecake, our parents breathed a collective sigh of relief, and I never stepped onto the rugby field again.