Almost no one is happier than I am that Alexandra Raisman won the Olympic gold medal on the floor exercise at the just-finished London Olympics. I’ve been a fan of the teenage American gymnast since 2010, when she first appeared on television at the American Cup. Virtually unknown as a junior athlete, she burst onto the senior scene and placed second in the all-around and has made very few missteps since then.

But only now is the Jewish world catching onto Raisman’s tumbling prowess and general awesomeness. Not only are they expressing tribal/ethnic pride, which is totally natural, they’re trying to figure out how to leverage her Jewishness, athleticism, and popularity in service of that favorite watchword, “engagement.”

In an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, Abe Novick sketches out his hopes for Raisman’s upcoming trip to the Holy Land as a tool for connecting young Jews to their religious identity and the state of Israel. He writes:

While meeting and touring Israel and while fielding offers from marketers willing to shower millions upon her, Israel and Jewish organizations should also consider the larger implications of having someone like Aly as an inspiration to help bridge a divide that American youth have toward their Jewish identities as well as their feelings about Israel. Moreover, Aly could be a symbol and an embodiment of Jewish values to youth of all races and backgrounds.

That’s a lot of pressure to foist on the shoulders of a teenager. I have no doubt that Raisman believes what she said in support of a moment of silence for the murdered Munich athletes. Still, it’s a bit of leap to now turn Raisman into some sort of Jewish role model charged with being successful where millions of dollars and thousands of programs have only had uneven results at best: engaging unaffiliated Jewish youth.

Yes, the answer is to use everything and everyone popular and labeled as “Jewish” to get the young kids engaged. I imagine the same idea went through everyone’s heads back in 1996 when Jewish gymnast Kerri Strug left the Olympic Games as arguably an even bigger celebrity than Raisman. In one of the most dramatic moments in Olympic history, she vaulted on a sprained ankle to ensure the gold for the American women, the first ever team title for the U.S.

Did the Jewish community conspire to turn Strug into a tool for Jewish engagement? I don’t know. I was 13 at the time and all I cared about was watching my tapes of the competition until they warped. (I even went to a stop on the post-Olympic tour in 1996 and bought a t-shirt with a picture of the team on it that I still have never worn out of fear of staining it.)

But even if they had so planned, it clearly didn’t take. Strug, while a beloved past Olympian, went on to live a largely private life. She certainly didn’t become a Jewish figurehead, doing flips to convince the kids that Judaism is cool. (Also, since when is gymnastics even cool? I know for a fact that it isn’t. My entire life has been an exercise in trying to convince my friends and family to care about the sport. I’ve mostly failed at this.)

A lot of significance has been attached to Raisman’s choice of “Hava Nagila” as a floor exercise soundtrack. She started competing with this particular floor exercise over a year ago, at a domestic qualifying meet. Shortly thereafter, I interviewed her about the song selection and though she expressed religious pride in performing to it, there was no mention of the 40th anniversary of the Munich massacre.

In fact, it was Martha Karolyi, the Romanian born national team coordinator, who reportedly suggested using Jewish wedding music, according to Raisman’s mother, Lynn. It was Lynn who found the version with whistling that her daughter used to win the Olympic gold medal. While Karolyi might’ve thought it would be nice to have something connected to Raisman’s own heritage, her top priority was probably finding a piece of music that would get Raisman and the crowd engaged. Folk music is ideal for this purpose. (There have been at least four other elite gymnasts who have used Hava Nagila in elite competition prior to Raisman. As far as I know, none of the others are Jewish.)

As an ardent gymnastics fan and blogger, I’d support turning Raisman into some kind of Jewish figurehead if, in turn, the Jewish world had to start caring about my beloved sport year round, instead of once every four years. It’s a two way street, folks. This means that her next competition (should she decide to compete after this year) would have to be covered by all the Jewish media outlets even if she changes her floor music—which she undoubtedly will since she’s been using “Hava” for two competitive seasons now. If we want her time and unwavering support, it’s time we gave her ours. (I’d like to nominate myself as official Jewish media correspondent to all gymnastics meets so we don’t miss an angle and opportunity for “engagement.”)

I’m not saying that Raisman wouldn’t make an excellent Jewish ambassador, but let’s pause for a second before we make her Queen of the Heebs. We shouldn’t be reading too deeply into song selection and a few comments. She is only eighteen, after all. Like anyone that age, she is still finding her voice and opinion on a whole range of issues, Judaism included. I don’t think we’d want her endorsing Judaism and Israel as she would a product line.

But if she does agree to a Jewish-themed advertisement, please let it be like the one 2008 Olympic champion Shawn Johnson made for Ortega. Raisman can be to latkes what Johnson was to tacos.

The post Leave Aly Raisman Alone appeared first on Jewcy.

What happens when the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, the Ninth of Av, which memorializes the destruction of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, coincides with you learning about the U.S. women’s victory at the 1996 Olympics, arguably the happiest gymnastics moment in my twenty-year relationship with the sport? Should I cry for the Temple? Or flip for the Magnificent Seven?

Unfortunately, the rabbis never bothered with these (and other) questions in their responsa. I was forced to answer them on my own (I flipped and then felt guilty about it, thus covering both my Jewish and gymnastics bases).

The text above is a snippet from the introduction to Heresy on the High Beam. In it, I allude to a story that I never ended up writing out (though I did tell it at my Leotard Optional book launch party, which was just like a “black tie” event except with a lot more spandex). Since I didn’t include the anecdote in any of the essays, I’m giving it away for free here.

During the summer of 1996, I was at sleepaway camp in upstate New York. This camp, a place I attended for nine summers, had strict rules about correspondence — letters only. You weren’t allowed to receive care packages nor were you allowed to make or take phone calls from your parents. This was only feasible in a pre-cellphone, pre-internet age. I know that I’m dating myself here but I don’t mind. I’ll even do the math for you — I’m 29. (Can someone tell me how it works at camps nowadays? Do kids check in on Foursquare when they arrive at the dining hall? And what does the mayor of the mess get? An extra cup of bug juice?)

Anyway, back then I was 13 and was quite sad to be missing the broadcast of the Summer Olympics from Atlanta. The 1996 Olympic Team was my Dream Team, comprised of athletes I had followed ever since I started doing gymnastics at age 8, including Shannon Miller, Dominique Dawes and Kerri Strug. I demanded regular letter updates from my mother back in Brooklyn to know what was going on in the gymnastics competition. She also sent me information about the platform diving since it was similar enough to gymnastics to merit my attention.

During the waning hours of the Ninth of Av, which for Jews is the saddest day on the calendar because it is when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, I was summoned to the camp office. Weak from fasting, I trudged over. “You’ve got a phone call,” I was told. “It’s your mother. She said she needs to talk to you about your scoliosis.”

I took the phone, utterly confused. Though my scoliosis had already been diagnosed, my mother and I were both under the impression that it was minor. (In a few months, however, we’d discover that it was severe and would require spinal fusion surgery. But I digress.) Why would she be calling me about that, I wondered.

“Mom?” I said.

“They won!” my mother practically shouted into the phone.

“What?”

“The Americans! They won the gold medal!” she yelled.

In the background, I could hear my older sister add her two cents. “Tell her about Kerri Strug on the vault!”

This, as many of you probably recall, was the famous vault on a sprained ankle that the squeaky-voiced (and Jewish) Strug did to the bellowing chants of “You can do it!” from her Romanian coach, Bela Karolyi. She vaulted, stuck it and then had to be carried off the podium, helping clinch the first ever team gold medal for the U.S. (Actually, it turned out that they didn’t need her score after all of the numbers were crunched. They would’ve defeated the Russians even if they needed to count a fall from Dominique Moceanu. But forget I mentioned that. Math ruins stories.)

“I wanted to tell you myself,” my mom said, explaining her deception in getting me to the phone, which I obviously couldn’t openly signal in any way since a camp administrator was watching me carefully. I thanked her tonelessly and hung up.

There was still an hour left to the fast and I had been taught at camp that I should feel sad because the Temple was still burning, at least in a historical sense, and would be for several hours, even after we’d been given the OK to eat.

But as I walked along the path back to my bunk, I wasn’t remotely sad. I was happy, jubilant even. My earlier lethargy had been replaced by joy. I started to skip. Then I stopped. Then I started again. I couldn’t help it. My gymnastics idols had won the gold!

I tried a few more times to rein my feelings in and feel sad for something that happened over two thousand years prior but I couldn’t, not when something so wonderful happened less than 24 hours earlier. And I was so touched that my mother, who used to complain endlessly about driving me to and from gymnastics practice, had gone so far as to lie to tell me about the gold medal as soon as possible. That, I thought, is what family is all about.

And, two days later, the entire newspaper arrived in the mail.

Dvora Meyers has written for The New York Times, Deadspin, and Tablet. She was never allowed to compete professionally, but she is the recipient of a gold medal for gymnastics obsessiveness. Her new book, Heresy on the High Beam: Confessions of an Unbalanced Jewess, is out now.

This post originally appeared on the Jewish Book Council website. The Jewish Book Council is a not-for-profit organization devoted to the reading, writing and publishing of Jewish literature. For additional material on Tisha B’AV from the JBC, included reading recommendations and essays, please visit here.

Art by Margarita Korol.

The post Finding Out My Favorite Gymnasts Won Olympic Gold Medals—on Tisha B’Av appeared first on Jewcy.