Let’s be plain: there are not many good Chanukah movies. For the children, there is the Rugrats Chanukah special. For the adults… It’s A Wonderful Life? (One can only imagine a restless Jewish station manager conspiring to schedule as the yearly Christmas viewing a movie that is 98% human misery and only 2% Christmas.) However, blessed is the Disney Channel, for from this unlikely place came one of our only modern Chanukah classics (the other, of course, being The Hebrew Hammer in all its exploitation glory), Full-Court Miracle.

Inspired partly by the true story of ex-Sixer Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, who coached the girls of Akiba Hebrew Academy so his son (Kobe—you might have heard of him) could play basketball at nearby Lower Merion High, and partly by the real-life Lamont Carr, 2003’s Full-Court Miracle tells a fable of five Philly day school kids and their quest to win a local basketball tournament. There’s T.J., whose temper can only be cooled by his passion for Rebecca Bloomberg; Joker, mouthy and sardonic; Ben, the fat one; Stick, a leggy nice Jewish boy who is clearly the MVP of the movie (he’s the first to dream up that their new coach is Judah Maccabee, is endearingly bookish, and even scores the winning points with his hook shot); and Alex “Schlotz” Schlotzky, our pint-sized, basketball-obsessed hero.

When Schlotz is tired of losing to a team of the most obviously villainous opponents since the 80s, he stumbles upon a former college basketball star, Lamont Carr, who the boys believe to be a reincarnated Judah Maccabee (a classic, I know). A series of obstacles ensue and are overcome, and along the way we all learn the true meaning of Chanukah.

It’s really a miracle that this movie exists at all. Nothing else stands like it in the canon of Disney Channel Original Movies, a staple of many childhoods, with a new movie featuring snowboarding or surfing or motorbiking teens each month. (Sadly for kids today, these are released with much less frequency.)

In Full Court Miracle, there are menorahs on every surface, so you know these characters are really Jewish. The sports-fanatic rabbi has a running joke asking “is there something on your mind beside a yarmulke?” There are explanations of chukim (Lamont responds to the idea with a saying of his grandmother’s about how if we knew everything God knew, we would be God ourselves). There is a moment of tension when, at the Shabbos table, Lamont asks for a glass of milk with his chopped liver—even though, of course, he just ate chopped liver with his gefilte fish. There is a Dreidel, Dreidel rap remix. (I don’t think it can be overstated how much of classic this movie is.)

On the other hand, it’s unbelievable no one made this movie before. Chanukah really is the ultimate sports movie, if you consider sports movies at their hearts to be underdog stories. Who has ever been more underdog than the Maccabees? (Think of how many Jewish sports organizations are somehow Maccabee-derived.) Full-Court Miracle merely mashes up the genres to create the optimal version of the Chanukah story. Instead of the Syrian-Greeks, we have the Warriors—yes, the Warriors—led by the sneering Tyler, who is so evil he calls a timeout to end the final game, and his over-the-top coach, who is begging for a mustache to twirl. Instead of Judah, there is an ex-ballplayer with bad knees who lives in a van down by the river. (License plate: JM 165.) Instead of the hills of Judea, there is a facsimile Philadelphia. And the climax of the movie models both miracles of Chanukah when a bunch of Jewish kids succeed where they are not supposed to by outlasting their rivals and a backup generator overextending its fuel supply.

Of course, this idea makes up the DNA of most Jewish sports movies: when the world isn’t a level playing field, let the playing field level the world.  Even Ernest Hemingway noted it, in his more-than-vaguely anti-Semitic portrait of Robert Cohn in The Sun Also Rises: “Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton… He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton.”

Consider School Ties, where the protagonist is a Jewish quarterback in an anti-Semitic 50s boarding school, who bests his detractors in the end zone. Consider Chariots of Fire, where the protagonist is a Jewish runner in an anti-Semitic 20s university, who bests his detractors on the track. Consider Race, where in the midst of Jesse Owens’ story, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller cheesily flash their Star of David necklaces in the faces of Nazi guards. Each feels freakish and undermined, and so responds with feats of greatness, avenging themselves and their people in an arena where disadvantages can be surmounted.

To reflect inward a moment, Full-Court Miracle feels like a movie that was designed almost specifically for me: Jews, sports, loving shots of the Philly skyline, Allen Iverson jerseys. But I can sympathize with Schlotz and his Lions even more because my alma mater once cooked up an experiment as to whether or not a Jewish day school could front a competitive tackle football team. There were even pep rallies and cheerleaders. (My school sport was geography, and no, we did not have pep rallies or cheerleaders.) It went about as well as could be expected, but we kept the orthopedic surgeons sharp that season.

The lesson here is not in the failure, but in what makes Full-Court Miracle such a universal movie: it is ultimately about dreams. Dreams we have and dreams we shouldn’t have, dreams we reach for even though we’re told we can’t accomplish them and dreams that change as we change. Maybe a yeshiva boy shouldn’t dream of playing in the NBA, but neither was Judah Maccabee expected to liberate his people. Which is why this is the Chanukah classic we all deserve—because in the face of insurmountable odds, what is really to fail is to never try at all. (And because of the Dreidel, Dreidel rap remix. Of course.)

Image via YouTube

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David Goldstein’s sophomore book, Alley-Oop to Aliyah: African American Hoopsters in the Holy Land  tells the fascinating story of how black NBA players ended up playing on Israeli Teams. These men came to Israel with to play basketball, but ended up falling in love with the country.  

I asked my Israeli friends about this phenomenon, and they gushed about the American players choosing to play in Israel and how “they really make the team.” And while Israel is most often associated with soccer, basketball is also a hugely popular sport. To quote the first chapter of the book, “In Israel basketball matters. Sure it is just a game, but it represents so much more than that.”

For example, Maccabi Tel Aviv gave the Israeli people hope after the Yom Kippur War. Before Aulcie Perry, a black American, joined, their team had been the joke of the Euro Cup, but his arrival in 1976 turned Maccabi Tel Aviv into an international powerhouse. They went from losing the European Cup year after year to winning it– six times total.

Perry’s role in Maccabi Tel Aviv becoming a championship team inspired teams around Israel to start bringing African-American players over. But there was a small issue with loading teams with these players: a league rule limiting the number of foreign players on a team. And so, the powers-that-be solved this issue by making these elite players citizens. In the 1970’s and 80’s, players began converting to Judaism en masse so that they could use the Law of Return to become citizens. Many of them even married Israeli women, which Goldstein insinuates was to expedite the immigration process. While some Israelis claimed these acts of assimilation were ingenuine, Perry, at least, had a sincere conversion and continues to practice Judaism today.

Alley-Oop to Aliyah also highlights the love that Israeli fans have for their players. Dean Thomas, a former player for Maccabi Tel Aviv, said the following about Israelis: “The fans love you- they honestly love you, and they treat you as if you are one of their own… When I broke my leg before the 2005 Euroleague Final Four, I had (Israeli-American) fans fly from Tel Aviv to New York to visit me in the hospital. They brought their whole family!”

If that doesn’t show the deep love that the fans have for their players, what does? And not everyone plays for the blue-chip Maccabi Tel Aviv; many play in small cities and towns. Ramon Clemente played three seasons in Israel’s second league while living on a moshav. One day, a neighborhood kid approached him to ask for free tickets to the game. Of course, Clemente said yes, and even drove the kid– and six of his friends– to the game. Clemente recalls this experience as an example of the communal and supportive atmosphere of Israel.

Even if you aren’t a superfan of basketball (I’m not), there still may be something for you in Alley-Oop to Aliyah: African American Hoopsters. After all, it is also a tale of Jewishness, Israel, immigration, and belonging. You can get all that from Amos Oz, sure, or you can get it here, through basketball.

Alley-Oop to Aliyah: African American Hoopsters in the Holy Land, by David Goldstein, comes out on November 7, 2017 from Skyhorse Publishing.

Photo of Stanley Brundy with his son, Nadav. Brundy was from New Orleans, played one year in the NBA before taking his career overseas, and has primarily played in Israel, where he is now a citizen, since 1999.

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The Atlanta Hawks visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on Friday, USA today reports. Bruce Levenson, the Hawks’ managing partner, has a long-standing association with the museum as a donor, and his mother-in-law, Irene Boyarsky, survived the Holocaust as a teenager. Before the tour began, Levenson introduced the team to Boyarsky and played a short clip from her survivor testimony, recorded by the USC Shoah Foundation in 1998.

Graduates of USHMM’s youth outreach program—which was founded by Levenson and his business partner Ed Peskowitz—led the team’s players, coaches, and support crew through the museum.

“It was powerful,” said power forward Elton Brand. “What hit me the most was the atrocities were not too long ago. There are still survivors, and I met two of them. That’s surreal to me.”

Coach Mike Budenholzer, who has been to museum several times, emphasized the importance of player development: “We want individuals who care about what’s going on or what’s happened in the world besides just basketball. We learn from history and we learn from what’s going on today and hopefully in some small way we can make sure things like that never happen again.”

The impact was undeniably profound. After the visit, center Al Horford tweeted, “Life changing experience today at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.”

Life changing experience today at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

— Al Horford (@Al_Horford) March 28, 2014

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It looks like Drake is following in Jay-Z’s footsteps. No, no, Solange Knowles is already taken. But like Hova and the Brooklyn Nets, Drake just became an executive for the Toronto Raptors. He signed on as a host, consultant, and business partner, the Toronto Star reports:

The nuptials will start Monday with an announcement that Drake is partnering with the Raptors as they accept the 2016 NBA All-Star Game. He’ll be drafted in as a non-official host of festivities. An actual MC, as well as a figurative one.

The hip-hop star will also launch a clothing line in conjunction with the team. Most intriguingly, he is being asked to consult on a complete redesign of the club’s image to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the franchise in the 2014-15 season.

Drizzy is obviously the man for the job. He frequently sits courtside at games and he’s Toronto’s biggest star, besides Geddy Lee, of course. Come to think of it, a co-rebranding by Drake and Lee would be inspired, but what do we know.

Mazel tov, Drizzy! If only you were around in the early 2000s, then maybe Vince Carter would’ve played harder.

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• The Harvard basketball coach behind Linsanity? A Jewish kid from Scarsdale. [Tablet]

• H. Jon Benjamin returns as Archer tonight, proving yet again that neurosis and alcoholism are funniest when left in the hands of a Jew. [Slate]

• Jesus was Jewish??? [Huffington Post]

• Nazis still trying to steal Jewish artwork from beyond the grave. [Times of Israel]

• In other news, political women still subjected to games of hot-or-not. You stay classy, Germany. [Haaretz]

• Jon Stewart uses comedy against the NRA because logic and reason can’t seem to make a dent. [The Daily Show]

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
There Goes the Boom
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

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Over at Tablet, Jordan Teicher introduces us to Sandy Pyonin, a little-known basketball coach from New Jersey who’s been responsible for getting 34 players to the NBA, most notably Kyrie Irving and Al Harrington. His latest prospect? Tyler Roberson, who recently committed to Syracuse.

Still, no one seems to have heard much about Pyonin, whose day job is at Jersey’s Golda Och Academy, where he runs the basketball program and teaches gym class. The guy doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. What gives?

Former players regularly use the word “crazy” to describe their coach—crazy as in ridiculously focused, intense, and fanatical. Zack Rosen, point guard for Hapoel Holon of the Israeli Super League, trained with Sandy from 2003 to 2005. “The guy knows the game and he knows how to work you. He pushes you every day.” Before joining Hapoel Holon, Rosen had an accomplished career at the University of Pennsylvania, winning Ivy League Player of the Year in 2012 and earning a spot on the Philadelphia 76ers Summer League roster after graduating. Rosen believes Pyonin helped him develop a strong work ethic in those early years at the Y.

The NBA’s Jewish Playmaker [Tablet]

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If only slips of the tongue counted.

Today Skip Bayless of ESPN’s First Take made a tiny, but amusing mistake while debating whether it is appropriate to call Blake Griffin of the Los Angeles Clippers the first great white star because while his father is black, his mother is white.  To support his argument, he appealed to the Jews for help in determining someone’s identity.

His slip of the tongue: “I would just like to point out that in some cultures, like in the Jewish culture, if the mom is white, you’re Jewish.”

Huh?

How many First Take watchers followed the badly premised logical proposition and concluded that Griffin and dozens of other NBA players were considered Jewish, we’ll never know.  But better they spend their time thinking about how many NBA stars would take off for Pesach than follow Bayless and Rob Parker’s cringe-worthy conversation about white pride and “black blood.”

Bayless went on to clarify what he meant, “The mom differentiates, the mom is the deciding factor.  I’m not saying that has to apply here [to Griffin], but….”

First Take should be careful with the “Who is a Jew?” question.  Next thing you know our little game at Chanah Senesh will be overrun by people who can actually play.

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• Larry Brown steps down as head coach of the Charlotte Bobcats: is this the end to one of the greatest Jewish coaching careers in basketball history?

• Rahm Emanuel is officially able to embark upon his quest to dominate the mayoral elections in Chicago,

• The office of incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has created a Twitter account for the lawmaker’s new post:  @CantorPress.  We’re sure you will get lots of exciting news.

• Brett Gelman gives us Jewish Santa.  (NSFW)

• A gallery of people dressed as Krampus, the horrific anti-Santa-Claus who is traditional in Alpine mythology.  Kinda looks like one of those old Jewish devil cartoons.

• Stephen Sondheim visits Michael Rosenblatt on Bookworm.

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Phil Jackson is arguably one of the greatest coaches in NBA history, but when he says “them” in this interview with ESPN, who the hell is he talking about?

“When I was in the CBA, we had a commissioner who had a Christmas Eve game. I had to call him up and say that’s the holy time. … You just have to keep reminding them that this is a special day.”

“It’s like Christian holidays don’t mean anything to them anymore,” said Jackson, the son of a minister. “We just go out and play and entertain the TV. It’s really weird.”

Who are these bastards that are keeping pious Phil down?  We certainly hope he doesn’t mean NBA Commissioner David Stern, and his fellow Elders of Zion.

Seriously Phil, you and your domination of the sport has brought us so much joy over the last twenty or so years, we really hope we aren’t the ones you’re talking about.  We’re willing to bet it’s the owners or the Illuminati you’re talking about, and will continue to root you and Kobe on until we hear you say “those Jews are making me play on Christmas.  I’m sick of it!”

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