Congregation Ohav Sholom

The Israel Experience - Softball and The Black Hebrews

The Israel Experience - Softball and The Black Hebrews

by Michael Rosenbloom (spidermr@aol.com)

Starting in 1979, a wonderfully eclectic cast of characters would gather every Friday afternoon, first at Saccer Park and in later years, at Ramat Eshkol in Jerusalem. There, following a long week's work (six days' worth in those days), we would play softball. Like the proverbial ingathering of exiles, the players would filter in weekly, from all corners of Jerusalem. Although all North Americans, they were truly a diverse group. There were immigrants new and old, professors and doctors on sabbatical, graduate and undergraduate students spending a year at The Hebrew University and yeshivah students. To give you an idea, Don Gilden, a neurologist, who had been a pitcher in the San Francisco Giants organization, 20 years prior, was in Jerusalem for a year, with his wife and three sons. Another, James Young, a graduate student at the time, later became a professor of Holocaust studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. A third, Moe Berlin, had immigrated to Israel years earlier with his family. I later learned that Moe had been a boyhood friend of our own Rabbi Wohlberg in Boro Park.

Around 1980, the Israel Softball League formed, composed of teams stretching from the Arava (near Eilat), to Kibbutz Adamit (near the Lebanese border), as well as points in between. There were several Tel Aviv teams, two teams in Jerusalem, one from Kibbutz Galon near Kiryat Gat and one from Arad. The players were mostly from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela. A handful, were Israelis who had lived for a spell in the United States. We were sponsored by a Jerusalem business, which would buy us shirts, imprinted with the sponsor's logo and some equipment, which we would order from the U.S.

It was a "windmill league", meaning the pitcher was allowed to pitch with a windmill windup (the motion that produces the fastest pitches). As international softball rules permit in such a league, bunting and stealing were allowed, which made for a game of high skill and strategy. Participating in a windmill league also meant that if you could find a pitcher who could throw in a windmill pitching motion you had it made. We had to be content with Eddie "Baby" Gedalof, a feisty, chunky, red-headed, Canadian righthander, who could not throw windmill but could throw what is called modified-fast, meaning never fast enough. When we faced fast windmillers in league games, it was always an uphill climb. We usually crushed opponents who had a paucity of pitching like we had. However against teams with windmillers, we were always underdogs. And we relished this role.

The softball season would last from March through July. Each fall, there was also a nationwide single elimination tournament. We would call this fall tournament: "The Cup," much like national soccer tournaments would be called. We would frequently think of creative practice methods. For example, in batting practice we would throw overhand as fast as we could against each other, in order to acclimate our hitting to the speed we'd be facing in the upcoming game. At another practice, prior to the tournament, we divided the team into five groups which rotated among several stations, to practice fundamentals such as bunting, bunt defense, baserunning ("cutting the bases"), sliding and cutoffs.

In preparing for the 1980 tournament, we wanted to play an exhibition game against first rate competition. Trouble is, we didn't want to face anyone we could meet in the tournament. We had the brilliant idea to invite "The Black Hebrews of Dimona" to travel to Jerusalem to play us. I don't quite recall how we heard that they played softball or how we tracked down the telephone number of one of the Dimona players to arrange the game.

If you're not familiar with the Black Hebrews, they were a great hoax; a group of blacks from inner city Detroit, trying to better their lot by moving to Israel, while claiming to be Hebrews or Jews, in order to obtain free Israeli government housing and other subsidies. It's possible that they and their descendants may still live in Israel today. However, in the late seventies and early eighties, not infrequently, one would hear news stories reporting that the Black Hebrews were about to be expelled from Israel, only to have the expulsion order rescinded by the Israeli government, for fear of Israel being branded as racist in the world.

At any rate, the Black Hebrews arrived by bus, late on a Thursday afternoon, with an entourage of women and children, dressed in colorful flowing African robes, equipped with conga drums but speaking the English of American inner-city blacks; a very incongruous setting for an afternoon in Jerusalem. It could have been a scene from a Fellini movie. The game itself was fabulous and the level of play up to all expectations. The Black Hebrew women and children cheered on their husbands and fathers enthusiastically and banged drums during the game. They provided great competition. By the time the game ended, it was dark outside, but we had scratched out a hard fought one run victory.

Being battle tested, we went on to win the fall tournament in upset victories in the semi-final and final games against the American Embassy and Maccabbi Tel Aviv squads, respectively. We played a scrappy brand of softball throughout the tournament. I played the final two games (a doubleheader) with a broken finger, severely hampering my abilities but not my enjoyment over the final outcome.

In total I played nine unforgettable seasons in the Israel Softball League, four in Jerusalem and five more with Maccabi Tel Aviv, before moving back to America in 1988. We traveled the length and breadth of the country, playing in some unusual spots. One was the home field of the U.N. peacekeepers on the Golan Heights, located in a demilitarized zone of the Heights, between Israel and Syria. The camaraderie that sports is so beautifully capable of fostering, created bonds that last a lifetime.

February, 2000

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