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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Showing later this week as part of America’s largest documentary film festival, DOC NYC, Supergirl tells the story of Naomi Kutin, a 95-pound, Orthodox Jewish girl who, at age nine, started breaking records in competitive powerlifting. We caught up with director Jessie Auritt to find out more about this cool project.

Jewcy: How did you hear about Naomi, and what interested you about this subject?

I came across an article in the Jewish Daily Forward about Naomi in January of 2013 and I was really intrigued, not only because there’s a young girl participating in this male-dominated sport and beating women 3-4 times her age, but mostly that she was Orthodox Jewish. I wanted to understand and explore deeper about what it looked like for her to be participating in this sport and observing pretty traditional conservative laws of Orthodox Judaism.

Jewcy: The family’s observance doesn’t come up too much during the movie – were there other obstacles to her competing, and did anyone in her community object?

The Kutins are pretty observant as far as Modern Orthodox standards go. They observe Shabbat and keep kosher, and Naomi is always dressed modestly when she’s not powerlifting. I’m Jewish but wasn’t raised religious, and I was very interested in this. We filmed them observing the rituals, doing things like eating only kosher foods out of the back of their car because they couldn’t find anything else. They always travel with their own food wherever they go since powerlifting communities aren’t usually in Jewish areas. We also filmed them getting up at 4am Sunday so that they can get to a competition since they couldn’t travel there on Shabbat. We filmed a lot, and most didn’t make it into the film. Part of me wanted to include it because a lot of people who aren’t Jewish don’t know that these things exist. If you are Jewish or do have some understanding, you know. You might think that there’s not much conflict, but there actually is. She never competes on Saturday or trains on Saturday, and she actually misses out on a lot of competitions. Sunday is usually the day that men lift, and sometimes they’ll make exceptions and she’ll be the only woman lifting.

Jewcy: Was there anything that surprised you about this intersection of the two worlds?

The one thing that surprised me was that I thought that things might be more black-and-white and that they would have received more opposition in her Orthodox community for her powerlifting because people might think that she’s not modest, since she has to wear spandex to compete. She has to wear something form-fitting that shows the shape of her body so that it shows that she’s doing the lift properly. That was non-negotiable for Naomi to compete in the sport. I was surprised that both her family and her community, including her rabbi, were wholeheartedly supportive of her doing this sport. I thought there would be criticism of her for not following the rules, but there was a great fluidity in this spectrum of Judaism.

Jewcy: Do you think you’ll return to either of these worlds in future projects?

I’m always intrigued by people who are going outside the norm and breaking stereotypes. For me, that’s what exciting in filmmaking. You take something people wouldn’t expect or believe and bring that to light. There’s something particularly intriguing about the juxtaposition of contradictory things like a young Orthodox Jewish girl and a powerlifter. It’s really interesting to see how they interact. I have a few projects in early development, and they definitely resolve around that sort of idea.

Jewcy: How do you think this film will go over with non-Jewish audiences?

Even though Naomi has this extraordinary talent, this is really a relatable, heartfelt coming-of-age story about what it’s like to find yourself while going through adolescence, something that we’ve all been through. We’ve found that people of all walks of life and ages have really enjoyed.

Jewcy: Is there anyone who thinks that you’ve made a movie about an alien from Krypton?

There is some confusion at first, but it’s the nickname her parents gave her. It’s actually very fitting for the film. Naomi does have these two dual sides of her personality, like Superman or Supergirl. She’s a typical, slight Jewish girl and, on the other side, she’s this other strong power lifter. You can easily confuse the two.

Supergirl is screening at the SVA Theatre in New York City this Sunday, November 13th at 4:30pm as part of DOC NYC and having its Philadelphia premiere earlier that day at 1:30pm at the Gershman Y as part of the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival.tan

Image from Supergirl

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Today, in “Information that will not even help you in bar trivia”: Jews and skateboarding.

There are actually a number of great Jewish skateboarders, but let’s focus on a pioneer of the sport: Alan Gelfand.

If you can name one skateboard trick, it’s probably the ollie, the jump that brings the skateboard up into the air with you. But grungy teenagers didn’t all wake up and do it one day.

If you check the Oxford English Dictionary, you’ll see its origin as “from the name of the US skateboarder Alan ‘Ollie’ Gelfand, who invented the jump in 1976.” That’s right, the ollie is named for a Jewish kid. Gelfand, New York-born and Florida-based, is famous in skateboarding history, part of the modern pioneers of the 1970s. He’s even a member of the International Skateboarding Hall of Fame.

Gelfand has also been a racecar driver, though there is no word on whether like in his signature skateboard move, he can make cars jump without a ramp.

Check out young Ollie doing his thing:

Photo Credit: Ricky Aponte via Flickr.

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Marc Tracy and Franklin Foer’s new collection Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame, a series of essays profiling some of the most influential Jewish personalities in the world of sports, has won the 2012 National Jewish Book Award for best Anthology. Jonathan D. Sarna’s When General Grant Expelled the Jews, published by our cousins at Nextbook Press, is a finalist in the American Jewish Studies category. You can view the full list of award-winners here.

Tracy, a former Tablet staff writer and longtime friend of Jewcy (he wrote about Krusty The Clown, the great Jewish entertainer on The Simpsons, for our Network Jews series), recently stopped by Tablet’s podcast, Vox Tablet, where he and Foer discussed some of the lesser-known Jewish athletes featured in the book—such as Sidney Franklin, the bullfighter from Brooklyn—as well as bigger names like Oakland Raiders manager Al Davis. Have a listen:

2012 National Jewish Book Award Winners [Jewish Book Council] Previously: Network Jews: Krusty the Clown, Jewish Entertainer on ‘The Simpsons’

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There’s a great article today in Tablet Magazine about the epic rise and fall of Tamir Goodman, the high school basketball phenom nicknamed ‘Jewish Jordan’—and his unlikely friendship with Omri Casspi, the first Israeli to play in the NBA. When Casspi was traded from the Sacramento Kings to the Cleveland Cavaliers, Goodman, who lives in Cleveland, brought over a mezuzah! How do you say ‘bromance’ in Hebrew?

The two bonded, it seems, not only over their shared faith—Casspi, who was raised in a secular Israeli home, has gotten more religious since getting drafted to the NBA in 2009—but also over their professional experiences. When Casspi struggled last season, he turned to Goodman for advice. If anyone knows how to deal with disappointments on the court, it’s the former ‘Jewish Jordan’ himself, who retired from the sport at 27 and now happily coaches basketball camps for young Jewish kids.

From the article:

“Omri is the story of the underdog, the self-made man,” says David Blatt, the coach of Maccabi Tel Aviv, who has worked with both athletes. And Goodman’s is the story of how the weight of expectations can overwhelm a young athlete. “Even today the term ‘Jewish Jordan’ makes me cringe because it did such a disservice to him,” Blatt says. Despite their different trajectories, however, Casspi and Goodman would discover they had more in common than they realized. They would share the same agent, Steven Heumann; the same team uniform, Maccabi Tel Aviv; and then, in 2011, the same Cleveland area code.

The Jewish Jordan Subs Out [Tablet Magazine] From the archives: Will There Ever Be a Jewish Jordan?
Why I’m Glad There Isn’t A Jewish Tim Tebow

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