Conversion Play
Nesvisky, Matthew
CONVERSION PLAY If you think player recruitment is tough in the NBA, wait till you see how the Israelis do it MATTHEW NESVISKY Old joke: Jew sees a new deli has opened on the Lower East Side and,...
...On the other hand, the day I lunched with Williams and Aulcie Perry at the Tel Aviv Hilton, there was no denying the hero-worship in the eyes of the hotel staff (I eventually determined this was not directed toward me) or the open flirting of the women around the pool (also not aimed at the little white boy sitting between those two striking giants...
...But in recent years Israel has twice been European basketball champion, and twice it has been runner-up...
...Following the rules laid down by the European Basketball Association, each Israeli team is allowed to include one non-Israeli hired gun, or two for international matches...
...This story coaxes a smile—and then another one...
...If such suspicions are not present, and if the candidate fulfills the period of study and undergoes the required rituals according to halachah, then he or she is welcomed into the covenant...
...The whole thing is so unexpected, of course...
...Geffen shook his head...
...I've taken the name Eliahu Ben-Abraham, and I'm feeling more Jewish every day...
...But I feel good here in Israel, I've never had any static for doing what I chose to do, I've always been accepted here and I'm looking forward to going to the army to help defend the country...
...In a voice that resembles the rumble of tank treads, Williams declined to specify his reasons for converting, saying only that he has always been interested in the Bible and that "living in the Promised Land" has increased his appreciation of the People of Israel...
...Rabbi Louis Bernstein, president of the Religious Zionists of America, commented that he sympathized with Perry, but said that he was the innocent victim of a rabbi who was "totally unacceptable to Orthodoxy...
...The friends, of course, are Americans...
...Levy, Levy," muses the Jew...
...If the athletes have difficulty with Hebrew, well, they are hardly the only Americans in Israel who hide their Jerusalem Post inside their Ma'ariv...
...We're speaking in generalities, of course, but in the absence of scientific data I think we can assume that a black American residing in Israel is accepted roughly the same way he would be in any of the other European Basketball Association countries...
...Some, like Neal Walk (New York Knicks, Phoenix Suns), played a few seasons and left...
...God knows Israelis need a lot of education in sportsmanship...
...But that, interestingly enough, does not in itself appear to mitigate the admiration they inspire with the public...
...But what does any of this have to do with O'Leary's kosher delicatessen...
...He shook his head again...
...Schools, corner lots and national stadiums could now afford a sport requiring three pieces of equipment: a ball and two open-ended net baskets...
...His ethics are questionable because he (reportedly) offers quickie conversions at cut-rate prices...
...American Jews might cry: 'Oi, first they push us out of the Bronx and now they're taking over Israeli sports...
...Don Gould, Assistant Dean of Students at Tel Aviv University and a coach for young basketball squads, told me, "The American influence has already paid off enormously...
...You're maybe related to Levy from the electric appliances on Essex...
...And more such conversion plays are likely...
...This is no mean achievement, considering the size of the country and its newness to the sport...
...Yet the controversy continues...
...If that means taking the oath and giving a little blood, well, that's okay by me...
...In recent years four non-Jewish American basketballers have entered the Covenant of Abraham and under what we might call the Law of the Rebound have become full-fledged Jews and Israelis...
...The Devil makes me lose my temper and get into fights," Earl observed, perhaps falling back on his Christian cosmology...
...This may keep the Jewish soccer clubs from achieving the level of their European counterparts, they say, but at least Israel's teams have the satisfaction of doing their best with their own homegrown boys...
...Meanwhile, at least two black former Americans playing big-league basketball as Israelis are untroubled by all of these questions...
...Aulcie Perry, a Maccabi star ever since his conversion in 1978, has the reputation of being a sort of Broadway Joe Namath of the Dizengoff Street disco scene...
...Now only a mean-spirited cynic would believe these fellows changed their religion just to change their basketball uniforms...
...Some of course disdain blacks, just as many Israelis (including some in positions of high authority) are not enthusiastic about bringing Falashas to Israel...
...I'm circumcised already, and I'm prepared to satisfy all the other requirements for conversion...
...To succeed we have to do it ourselves...
...The suggestion was that the rabbi instructing Perry was a certain well-known Brooklyn character of questionable ethics...
...Brodie, former All-American from the University of Illinois and a member of the 1968 Baltimore Suns squad, was even awarded the Israel Prize in 1977 for his contribution to Israeli athletics...
...But nobody minds...
...He added that his organization had been trying to fight that particular Brooklyn beit din for 30 years...
...In this same period Israel's athletic clubs began to shed their amateur status...
...Geffen halted, choosing his words carefully before continuing...
...That game reMatthew Nesvisky is an editor andfeature writer at The Jerusalem Post and a moment contributing editor...
...The sports associations compensated players for travel expenses, provided subsidies and handed out pocket money...
...It's one of the many questions that just didn't exist for all practical purposes in Judaism before the establishment of the State of Israel...
...Israelis want sophisticated missiles, and they want world-class athletics as well...
...But until then, if Americans are being bribed to convert to Judaism just to make jump shots and rebounds for the Jewish State—well, on that question I'll pass the ball to you...
...Yet the feeling persists that however it was arranged and approved—wink wink— material gain is the motive behind these conversions...
...That's all we have to say...
...The left-wing parties in the Knesset accused both sports organizations of being tools of the religious establishment at the expense of "the Israeli workingman's sport...
...But that could never be reason enough to admit a convert...
...But the conversion issue—frankly, I find it bothersome...
...Others, like Tal Brodie, Steve Kaplan, Lou Silver and Barry Leibowitz, have become permanent fixtures in Israeli sport...
...So I'm happy to have the Americans here elevating basketball...
...The second, more subliminal response comes from an attitude that probably thrums deep within each member of the tribe: crazy enough to choose to be a Jew...
...But I want to say, too," Earl told me, "that I'm serving God now in the Jewish religion...
...That perhaps is really the crux of the matter...
...The American Orthodox organization replied to Hapoel that the Brooklyn rabbi's beit din was not recognized by them and said that they considered Perry's conversion invalid...
...That was Boatwright, a former Mormon from Utah, who is white...
...Soon the Israeli sports associations were actively recruiting in the States...
...Most of them of course were people planning to marry into the faith...
...Not many years ago basketball hardly existed in Israel...
...Tel Aviv Maccabi was the first to take advantage of this ruling by recruiting talent from the U.S., and other Israeli teams were quick to follow suit...
...The only thing is to improve the level of the game...
...Hapoel officials wrote to the ultra-Orthodox Agudas Horabbonim in the U.S...
...Perry maintained that his was no conversion of convenience but a matter of intellectual and spiritual predilection...
...Scores of Americans have done just that, coming to the Israeli courts either right from college or from brief careers in the NBA...
...A person has to believe that Judaism is the only faith possible for him, regardless of any other consideration...
...Their sports organizations help them buy flats and may even assist them in setting up offseason businesses, usually a sporting goods shop or some other related enterprise...
...All that is operative, of course, on the assumption that the first recruited player is Jewish...
...The first is from mere surprise at the switcheroo in the punchline...
...Deli man shakes his head...
...But what kind of pride can a nation have when a contest proves only that its American mercenaries are better than the other team's American mercenaries...
...Today, in the much-criticized system of "shamateurism" in Israeli athletics, star players may receive cash grants, home mortgage and business loans, cars, expense accounts and other goodies...
...The Histadrut, which sponsors Hapoel, claimed the government was out to get them because the Liberal Party, which is also in the government coalition, is historically tied to the Maccabi sports organization...
...Back in the good old days when it was still a developing country, Israel was essentially a one-sport state...
...He said he had been contemplating the move for over a year, and added: "As is customary, my rabbi has tried several times to dissuade me from converting...
...But I do try to serve the Father and not the Devil...
...Soccer...
...Why would an American Jewish basketball player move to Israel...
...Answer: Plenty...
...When it was revealed in the summer of 1978 that Maccabi star Aulcie Perry was undertaking study for conversion, his team's arch-rival, Tel Aviv Hapoel, reacted in a very unsporting manner...
...CONVERSION PLAY If you think player recruitment is tough in the NBA, wait till you see how the Israelis do it MATTHEW NESVISKY Old joke: Jew sees a new deli has opened on the Lower East Side and, naturally curious, pops in and meets Levy, the proprietor...
...So far everybody's happy...
...Earl Williams is the latest of the converts, switching from the Detroit Pistons to Tel Aviv Maccabi a few seasons back, and hanging up his fundamentalist Christian background for Judaism a few months ago...
...Answer: More than you'd think...
...He certainly proved his identification with Israel during a famous match in Athens when the Greek crowd was hurling anti-Semitic insults at the Israeli side...
...Whether racial prejudice was behind this, or simply concern that an uncomfortable trend was being set, is impossible to determine...
...Basketball, superstar Tal Brodie, bristles at the whole subject: "When we're scouting foreign players, we should look for talent, period, without consideration for a man's religion or whether he's going to be a potential immigrant or whatever...
...I want to join the fold...
...Many may smile when the issue of their conversion comes up, but the attitude is generally: "Well, hell, if these guys are willing to take on all the obligations of being Jews—and if they're ready to accept our crummy phone system and outrageous taxation and the military duties and our 150 million hostile Arab fans—well, then, welcome aboard...
...mains the most popular sport on the globe because citizens of even the poorest Third World countries can afford a game that requires only a single acquisition: a ball...
...if we have confidence in those authorities, then their decisions should not be a subject for debate...
...The public meanwhile sits back to enjoy top-class basketball...
...But how many would choose to number themselves among the Chosen People for the privilege...
...Hapoel has stopped crying foul ever since its star Lavon Mercer converted last year and made room for another American player...
...True, but then the Defense Ministry never carped about the American equipment and expertise it received over the years—or for that matter the assistance it got from British Major Orde Wingate in setting up the Haganah...
...When I moved down here I changed it for business reasons...
...It would seem that if foreign aid in establishing basketball in Israel on a competitive basis is to be a limited-term phenomenon, then there is nothing wrong with the idea...
...Connected maybe with Levy the Zipper King from Upper Broadway...
...I am not some Christian Jew...
...The sports officials, who run tough interference between the press and their players, say they have nothing to add on the subject of conversions...
...I sought out what I thought would be a more liberal opinion from Dr...
...or British teams...
...There have been periods in our history when it was maybe politic to become Jewish—under the Hasmoneans, say, or in the case of the mass conversion of the Khazars...
...Unless the non-Jewish player agrees to convert...
...Well, presumably he would come for the same reason an American Jewish pipefitter or an American Jewish computer programmer would come: love of Zion...
...I'm aware that he's supposed to do that, as a test of my sincerity...
...in launching the first satellite because the Soviet Union's captured German scientists were better than America's...
...Traditionally, soccer and basketball players had always been students or working lads who just kicked or dribbled once or twice a week for the pure love of the game...
...One leading basketball figure told me he feels very strongly on the subject, "but I'll speak out only when my basketball career is over, if you don't mind...
...A top player's earnings are as much a secret as the guidance system for the Gabriel missile...
...These critics point to Israeli soccer, which does not permit hiring foreign players...
...Unlikely, you say...
...and asked them to investigate the legitimacy of Perry's conversion...
...What does Israel gain...
...Or let's say he does make the NBA...
...David Geffen, former Conservative rabbi in Delaware and today the head of Gesher, an organization that arranges programs to bridge the gap between religious and non-religious youth in Israel...
...The wedding never came off, but he stayed Jewish...
...The problem is reminiscent of the early days of the space race, when it was said that the Russians had beat the U.S...
...How this peculiar matter arose— and indeed how it almost made a government fall—requires a little background...
...Williams attacked the Greeks and was benched by a referee...
...In any event, the language barriers don't seem to prevent them from social contacts...
...he not only dates actresses and models, he's appeared as an ad model himself (Gottex sportswear...
...Socially the basketballers tend to hang out with other basketballers, but there is nothing unusual in that: Pipefitters probably fit best with other pipefitters...
...If he doesn't happen to belong to the world of Jewish basketball, he can't automatically become an Israeli citizen...
...That's a complicated matter involving politics, economics, ethics, theology, religious factions, individual conscience, Who Is a Jew, What Is an Israeli, and What Price the European Basketball Cup...
...Members of the Agudat Yisrael Party in Israel thereupon promptly threatened to pull out of the coalition if the Interior Ministry declared Perry a citizen...
...But even in this era of Reaganomics we haven't heard of anybody getting Jewish just to get a job...
...The argument that all other European basketball squads do it has some validity...
...A brit milah also isn't exactly the mark of Cain on Publishers Row or out in Hollywood...
...Willie grew up in Harlem with a kipah on his head...
...Reason...
...Today Perry understandably says the matter is closed, and doesn't feel obliged to discuss it further...
...Specifically, in Israel's National Basketball League...
...We likewise should show favor to the proselyte who left his family, his father's house and all the gentile peoples of the world, and came to us...
...Levy, Levy—I just can't...
...That goes for basketball players or Swedish volunteer girls on kibbutzim or anybody...
...But my impression is that a large number of Israelis seem to consider negritude as something exotic, handsome and perhaps even exciting (one of Israel's top fashion models, for example, is a black woman...
...Rabbi Haim Zvi Kruger, head of the Agudas Horabbonim's family law commission, said he had studied the relevant documents and had concluded that "Perry was not a Jew...
...Israelis have raised this rather unsporting charge of converting to Judaism solely to secure employment in—of all areas—Israeli sport...
...How many gentile American basketball players would be interested in the first place in running up and down the courts in Israel...
...according to the Midrash, "The Holy One, blessed be He, loves proselytes exceedingly...
...Hapoel was criticized for raising the issue not out of sudden concern for religious proprieties but to keep Maccabi from gaining a new Israeli player...
...And what of the poor proselyte who had sparked the controversy in the first place...
...They've satisfied the religious establishment here, so I welcome them as Jews...
...I'm really not all that religious, you know...
...Soon everybody was impugning everyone else's motives...
...But if you're asking had they come to me for conversion . . . well, I'd have to say the fact that their employment depended on their being Jewish would make me feel . . . well, I don't see how I could do it...
...Yankee hoopsters began dribbling to Israel in the waves of aliyah that followed the Six-Day War...
...So they come, get their shot at the Olympics and then emigrate back to where they came from...
...It won't be long before we'll be beating the foreigners at their own game...
...Most of these converts, and many of the other 25 or so foreign players at present pounding the national league courts in Israel, happen to be black...
...blamed each other for allowing fly-by-night rabbis to operate...
...One black American basketballer recently told the Israeli press: "Hell, man, the important thing is to get a contract...
...Religious organizations in the U.S...
...The prosperity, false or otherwise, that Israel experienced after the 1967 Six-Day War allowed Israelis a little upward mobility in athletics...
...A person's motives for conversion should be up to the competent authorities to divine...
...An official (who prefers to remain anonymous) in the bureau dealing with converts in Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren's office stated the rabbinate's view very firmly: "If there is any suspicion about a candidate's motives— that is, any motive other than a pure desire to embrace Judaism as his or her spiritual way of life—then that person will not be accepted as a convert...
...Israelis by and large have been delighted with these long, tall converts...
...he always has the huge crop of younger, taller and faster fellows breathing down on him each season...
...With four such conversions in Israel already and others perhaps in the offing, the matter has certainly lost its novelty...
...But unlike our pipefitter or programmer, an athlete operates in a highly competitive and severely restricted field...
...His parents were Jewish and raised him Orthodox...
...In either case, at some point the player will have to face giving up sports to become an accountant, like his mother wanted him to be all along...
...Israel, as in every other respect, is a different kettle of knaidlach altogether...
...Agudat Yisrael was criticized for blackmailing the government in an effort to maintain its authority in religious matters...
...Reasonably enough, each would also hope to work among the Chosen People in his chosen profession...
...Some Israelis, undazzled by the European Cups brought home by Israel's national basketball squad, maintain that the time has come for some protectionism on imports...
...There is a negative side to importing," says one sports writer...
...Israel meanwhile benefits from an upgrading of its sport, the extensive coaching of youth teams that the Americans frequently provide, a new source of national pride in terms of the European competition, and the satisfaction of seeing some fine immigrants settle down, marry and raise little sabras...
...Fine...
...One is John Harwing, who plays for Elitzur...
...They're not called salaries, but whatever they are, the amounts are reputed to make national league sport among the most lucrative pursuits in the country...
...Then he can immediately become a citizen under the Law of Return, making room for the next foreign recruit on the team...
...If the recruited basketballer eventually decided to become an Israeli, so much the better, for that would create an opening for yet another foreign player...
...Hold onto your scorecards, sports fans...
...but to do it for material gain...
...Bringing in foreign players, they say, may help the game, but it does so at the expense of local talent...
...Israel is far from world class in soccer...
...Single-handedly, these Americans changed Israeli basketball from a little-noticed curiosity to something of a national preoccupation...
...His recent works in these pages include "Unofficial Rumors of the War" (October) and "Jerusalem, Intimately" (November...
...The Americans gain an extension of their careers and become national heroes in Israel, recognized on the street and hounded by kids for autographs...
...Maccabi's Earl Williams and Tel Aviv Hapoel's Lavon Mercer, both of whom converted in time for the current basketball season, both say they have no complaints about their social life in their adopted land...
...Former Tel Aviv Maccabi Captain Jim Boatwright, who converted to Judaism after three seasons, married a local girl (and a few seasons later, just to show how thoroughly Israeli the couple was, they left the country...
...But in any case the Perry issue provoked hostility among the sports associations, charges and counter-charges in the religious establishment, and even a cabinet crisis...
...In thepjast three years I've seen youth teams improve 100 percent...
...In America, that is...
...But the larger question is whether Israel should be so dependent on foreign athletes to begin with...
...Perry eventually did satisfy the Israeli rabbinate and become a citizen, and the issue died down...
...But as for pocket money—well, some of those pockets have bloomed to the size of Bedouin tents...
...Understand me, I love sports, I think it's very important to encourage sports in this country...
...Ah, I thought you'd never ask...
...Israeli attitudes, however, are somewhat different...
...I'm speaking of course without knowing these fellows, not having sounded them out...
...But the self-congratulation may be as misdirected as the application of the term "amateur" to Israeli sport...
...Again the proprietor says no...
...Indeed, Jews are enjoined to welcome a converted gentile...
...Of course if you're running a kosher delicatessen it doesn't hurt to be Jewish...
...Yet it is true that when the first American hoopster converted and became an Israeli, there was little fuss...
...Actually," the deli owner owns up, "the name used to be O'Leary...
...And while the European Basketball Cup may be a totally meaningless trophy to Americans, when Israel brings it home the public takes to the streets in an orgy of car-horn tooting, confetti, snake-dancing and other traditional forms of national self-congratulation...
...The Orthodox party, of course, had agreed to join the coalition government only on acceptance of its amendment to the Law of Return, stipulating that a person's conversion must be carried out in strict adherence to halachah...
...The rabbi is indeed well known, for he advertises his services widely in the Jewish press...
...But who ever dreamed that in modern times we'd be faced with a case where it would be materially beneficial to become Jewish...
...Now with the ball players, look, I don't want to cast any aspersions...
...By the time the second conversion was announced— Perry's—a storm of controversy blew up...
...Israel's original Mr...
...Nominally there is still no professional sport in Israel...
...I'm sorry, but I just don't see how anyone could convince me it wasn't the financial motive...
...For Israel would achieve a lot less in basketball without a little help from its friends...
...The other is Willie Simms, of Maccabi Haifa...
...Or he can accept a bid to play in Israel's national league...
...It's unlikely that these converted hoopsters have any more difficulty settling into the country than other new immigrants have, and in some ways they have it easier...
...Nobody seemed to be welcoming Perry with open arms as the latest member of the tribe...
...Six years before being recruited to Israel, he became engaged to a Jewish woman and converted...
...Let's say a Jewish boy starred on his college team but then failed to make the draft for the National Basketball Association...
...But I am firm in my convictions...
...I dealt with a lot of conversions in Wilmington...
...An Army Radio commentator did make a tasteless anti-black joke last fall when reporting the conversion of Earl Williams, but the newsman was roundly criticized for his remarks...
...The basketballers provide us with entertainment, but in the long run—well, we don't ask the Americans to fight our wars for us, do we...
...We've had Jewish athletes induced to immigrate here on the promise they'll qualify for the Israeli Olympic team in track and field, or wrestling, knowing those guys wouldn't qualify for U.S...
Vol. 8 • January 1983 • No. 2
