By Rabbi Koval
I grew up thinking that most old (50+) Jews spoke English with an accent. Three out of four of my grandparents and most of the older folks at shul, even my next door neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Kohn, spoke English with a heavy Eastern European accent.
These next-door neighbors, the Kohns, were very close friends of our family. They were Holocaust survivors, and I learned what that tattoo on Mrs. Kohn's arm meant when I grew older. You see, I used to go to their home all the time after school growing up. From when I was really young, I still have vague memories of me sitting in her yarn basket and watching her sew on a big old fashioned sewing machine. As I got a bit older, I used to go next door to get that little fruit drop candy whenever I visited. Those rectangular shaped candies, all wrapped up in a paper-boat shaped wrapper with the chewy filling that I would bite right into, still bring back fond childhood memories.
When I got a little older, their daughter Suzie got married to a nice Jewish guy with a moustache. His name was Gil. Gil introduced me to the sky-hook basketball shot on our backyard basketball hoop. Before the dunk became so popular, that shot was a revered skill for any center worth his basketball salt. But it was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who made it famous by taking it to an art form. When he went up for that shot, he was unstoppable. I loved that shot at first sight. The perpendicular turn to the basket, the left foot pivot, the gentle upward arc and the spinning of the ball off the finger tips on a trajectory towards the basket.
According to Jewish mystical tradition, the pleasure of sports, like art, is not a physical pleasure, but rather a form of spiritual pleasure, of "romemus," harmony - the basking for a brief moment in a sense of inner peace. I would experience this in the pivot, roll, finger lift and spin in the air of the sky-hook. It felt exhilarating, especially when it would swish the net!
As a young adult I would continue to visit the Kohns in their new home in Lyndhurst and later on in the hospital before they passed away. I learned more about their Chassidic shtetl in which they grew up in Hungary, as well as the horrific anti-Semitism they experienced as young adults at the hands of their "friends" and neighbors, accomplices to the Nazis. (I remember Mrs. Kohn saying that she could never return for a visit, and that she even refused to converse in the mother tongue of her youth, the Hungarian language.)
Growing up, whenever I would see Gil, I would thank him for teaching me the sky-hook shot, and he would always encourage me to keep it up, and play and practice whenever I could.
Recently I introduced that shot to my 10-year-old son and told him all about the Kohns, about Gil-with-the-moustache, and about Kareem. Those of you who have had a Shabbat meal at our home know that I like to tell a story to entertain the kids and engage the adults. Recently I told them the following story about Kareem, the same one who made the sky-hook shot famous.
Many of the athletes who converted to Islam do not have the greatest things to say about Israel. Unfortunately, it goes with the territory. Kareem, formerly Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr. (before his conversion to Islam) is an exception to this rule. He is a great friend to the Jewish state and has even made several highly publicized trips there, most recently earlier this summer. He acts as an ambassador for the American people and for basketball fans, especially Jewish ones, around the world - even before the days of Anthony Parker and Omri Caspi.
Recently Kareem shared the story of his connection to the Jewish people and to the state of Israel. It’s a fascinating tale: His father, Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Sr., a WWII soldier in the US Army, had participated in the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimer, Germany. He rescued a 7-year-old boy named Israel Lau, and paraded him to the local townsfolk in Weimer saying: “Look, this is your enemy?! You should be ashamed of yourselves…”
Before he died he asked his son to go to Israel and find that boy. Kareem did as his father instructed him on his death-bed and met that boy, now a grown man and none other than the chief rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Israel Lau!
Life is a journey. Jewish history has been quite the journey. The Jewish travels through the desert are used as a metaphor for our lives, as a people and as individuals. The message here is that we never really know where that journey might take us, and who we'll meet along the way. Our job is to remember to hold on for the ride and try and play our best game. Or, as the great Vince Lombardi said, “If you don’t think you’re a winner, you don’t belong here.” We're all here to accomplish great things!
