Where have you gone ... Sandy Koufax?

If you've ever been to Israel, or if you've ever read about Israel, you no doubt know about the constant struggle between Religious and Secular Israelies. Well a small little sports story has fueled the fire between that divide even more.

An Israeli goaltender named Dudu (David) Awat, who plays in Spain, told Spanish journalists that even though his team's game was to fall on Yom Kippor, he'd still play for his club. Awat, said that he would fast on Yom Kippor (the game starts on Erev Yom Kippor) and that he would start his fast a few hours later. Like most Israelies, Awat does not strictly observe the Jewish Holidays or Shabbat and, my guess is, probably has never been to Yom Kippor services in his entire life.

Nevertheless, to the Religious in Israel, this was shocking. One Member of Knesset (Congress) even demanded that he be removed from the Israeli National Team. (He's been the starting goalie for the last two international games.) No doubt, Awat, who, I'm 99% sure, served in the Israeli Army, never thought that his decision would fuel the wrath of Israel's religious, much less members of Knesset

As things happen in Israel, it turns out the fury was over nothing -- because of the Spanish league's scheduling snafu, Awat's game actually starts before Yom Kippor begins this Sunday.

It's a funny story and what that gives remarkable insight into a major divide into Israeli culture. My hunch is that if Shawn Green or Sandy Koufax or Hank Greenberg were Israeli, they would have played on Yom Kippor.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year from Jerusalem. Hope that you are well. Stay tuned for some post RH Blogging.


Shana Tova

This time Shalom means goodbye

Wanted to take a moment to mention the retirement of Andre Agassi, not that there has been a lack of media coverage about his swan song in Flushing, but even across the globe his retirement has been getting a lot of press and has been on peoples mind.

Realizing I’m not a sports writer, or even a writer, I hesitate to use the blog as a form to wax nostalgically about Andre (I’ll save that for sermons), but thinking back on it for sports fans of my generation, no other athlete brought so many different things for such a long period of time. While he wasn’t the best Tennis player of his time (Sampras, more recently Federer) he was always fun to watch, always exciting and, even as he got older, always hip.

I remember seeing him at and getting his autograph, I must have been 11 years old, at LaGuardia Airport when he was in his long crazy hair days. He signed his autograph Andre – no last name, just Andre. How many other athletes of my generation could do that? Michael, Magic, Tiger, Pedro?, Mariano, Barry (Sanders or Bonds or neither) Lance, Wayne, maybe a few others. And Andre was never as dominating as any of them.

I also had the honor of being at the classic Agassi/Blake quarterfinal match at last years US Open. Agassi won in Epic fashion – similar to his Baghdatis match this year - and it was remarkable to see him grit out an amazing win. Leaving Queens that night (more accurately, the next morning) it felt as if I had played. The crowd soaked up every moment of Andre (I did too and I was rooting for Blake) and not only did he play tennis, but he performed tennis.

So Andre, thanks for playing tennis. Thanks for not being an aging punk like Connors and McEnroe. Thanks for not having a perfect game and being predictable like Sampras or Becker. Thanks for winning tournaments in weird, wild ways. Thanks for losing as the 1 seed and winning out of the blue.

No kid played tennis wanting to be Courier, Sampras, Edberg, Rafter, Chang, Martin, Washington or Sampras – we wanted to be Andre.

Ich bin ein Berliner

Not really, actually didn’t even come all that close to Berlin, but I just got back from a week of vacationing in Western Europe in Germany and Holland. My base was a small town in Western Germany called Aachen. Aachen is home to about a quarter of a million people and only a few miles from the the Belgian and Dutch borders. The world equestrian championships brought me to Aachen, even though I didn’t attend one event of the horses. I was visiting a friend from the USA who was sent here to work for the week.

Aachen is a charming little town. It’s actually rather historic as well, as it was Charmalagne’s most favorite city and it was very historically significant during the Roman times (coming from Jerusalem it gives you a sense of how broad the roman rule really was). It’s built on a series of mineral water/hot springs and, I gather, has been used as a place to soak tired bones for thousands of years. Needless to say, I’m well rested.

Some other thoughts:

*** Germans like their beer. People drink beer constantly, old/young, men/women, every one was drinking at pretty much every hour of the day. Each little town, neighborhood, street has little bars that, while not crowded, have people in them whenever they are open. The beer is rather good as well, far better than any beer I’ve had in Israel.

*** Took a day trip to the city of Koln (Cologne), which is about an hour from Aachen and one of the biggest cities in Germany. Cologne is right on the Rhein River and has first class museums, philharmonic and boy do I smell good! If you had visited Cologne 125 years ago you also would have been able to see the tallest building in the world. (not even the tallest in Cologne anymore) but the main cathedral still is the center of the City. It’s a rather impressive Cathedral and I trekked my sore legs to the top of one of the Cathedral’s towers. The Cathedral is also the most visited spot in all of Germany. It was a remarkable cathedral, having never really traveled Europe before I sure got a sense of the

*** Made the mistake of order traditional German food at a local Aachen Brauhaus. As you can probably gather pork products are not all that common in Jerusalem (though you can get them) so after diving into the “Butcher’s Platter” one evening -- all of Israel was laughing at me -- I soon became violently ill.

*** Was able to experience first hand the remarkable, and I do mean remarkable, European Train System. Clean, easy, effective, a great way to get around the area.

*** Finally, I can’t help but acknowledge some of my personal feelings about being in Germany (especially coming from Israel). It is a weird parallel between recognizing that Germany is a modern, western and progressive country and also realizing that this was a Country that attempted a full scale genocide of the Jewish People. For me the most poignant moments had to do with the train stations, the same tracks that I traveled on, only 60 years ago were used for deportations.

All in all a great vacation, I’m about to hit full stride and will continue to blog about once a week. Questions, comments thoughts, please share.