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FLUSHING, New York – A handful of Israeli players fought for the chance to qualify for the prestigious U.S Open Grand Slam tennis tournament, which began plan on August 26 and will wrap up on Sept. 9. The U.S. Open is the world’s highest attending sporting event, with more than 700,000 fans expected to attend.

Dudi Sela, ranked 76 in the world and a member of Israel’s Davis Cup team, automatically qualified for the main draw of the tournament. In the week leading up to the Open, Sela participated in an Israel Tennis Center clinic in Manhattan, playfully rallyng with New York Junior Tennis League tennis students, as well as with nine-year-old Israeli hopeful Neria Yona. Sela arrived a week early to the Open to practice with his coach and other main draw players, and to watch countryman Amir Weintraub’s third round qualifying match. Sela won two Challenger tournaments this summer and has acclimated to his new Wilson Blade tennis racket; he switched rackets several months ago and reports, “I had a tough time getting adjusted to my new racket.”

On opening day, Sela took on Andrey Kuznetsov of Russia in a nail-biting match. Sela was down 4-1 in the first set, but battled back to take it 7-6. He then won the second set 6-3, but lost next two sets 6-7 and 5-7. With the men tied at two sets each – and with his countrymen and Open doubles players Andy Ram and Yoni Erlich in the stands – Sela won the fifth set 6-4 for the match. Exhausted, he fell to the ground, then stood up and proceeded to pose with every single fan seeking a photo and/or an autograph.

Julia Glushko won her first round match .

Julia Glushko, who played in last year’s U.S. Open and is currently ranked 128, battled her way through three matches in the qualifiers to earn a spot on the main draw.  She won her first match on August 27 against 20th seed Nadia Petrova of Russia. While Glushko needed three qualifying round wins to make the main draw, coach Liran Kling, in an interview with the Ledger following her first round qualifiers match, noted proudly, “Now, people expect Julia to qualify [for the main draw of major tournaments]; it is not like last year when she was a surprise.”

Weintraub, ranked 188 and also a member of the Davis Cup team, spent three weeks in New England this summer playing for the Boston Lobsters World Team Tennis team. He won two matches in the qualifying tournament, which took place the week before the Open, but in the third round match, a 6-4, 6-2 loss to Argentinean Maximo Gonzalez prevented him from making the main draw.

Shahar Peer, ranked 79 and coming off her first tournament win in four years with a victory over 19-year-old Saisai Zheng of China at the Caoxijiu Suzhou Ladies Open, was the number one seed in the qualifiers. Peer, whose up and down career has taken her as high as number 11 in the world, suffered a disappointing 6-4, 7-6 defeat in the first round of the qualifiers to Russian Ksenia Pervak.

Also getting ready for their first-round matches, as the Ledger went to press, were doubles partners Ram and Erlich, as well as Shahar Peer, who was scheduled to play womens doubles. One Israeli junior, Or Ram-Harel, may attempt to qualify for the juniors main draw.

Once again this year, kosher tennis fans will be able to feast at the open, thanks to New Jersey resident Jonathan Katz, owner and operator of Kosher Sports, and his staff, who will be operating a cart outside of court 12.

The Kosher Grill cart at the US Open is a popular food stop for fans.

“This is our tenth U.S. Open,” Katz told the Ledger. Among the items diners will find on his cart: chipotle chicken wrap, crispy chicken wrap, Italian sausage with peppers and onions, sliced steak sandwich, knishes, franks, and overstuffed pastrami sandwiches. All meats are Glatt kosher and all breads are Pas Yisrael; the cart is under supervision of the Star-K and will be open each day of the Open, except Shabbat and Rosh Hashanah.

Katz was not particularly concerned about loss of business due to the Jewish holidays.  “We’ve had Rosh Hashanah fall during the US Open before. He says, “The main factor affecting sales is the weather!”  The cart closes at 4 pm on Fridays.  Katz concludes, “We are looking forward to another successful US Open!”

(Source: http://www.jewishledger.com)

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Original Article Published on The New York Jewish Week

I came to the Tikvah Program at Camp Ramah in New England in 1997 and was a camper in the Amitzim (the brave ones) division of the Tikvah program for campers with disabilities for about five years. Coming to Ramah was mostly my parents’ idea. We were looking for a Jewish camp mostly, and that was basically it.

My camper experience depended on the summer. Some summers were good. Every summer has challenges and risks involved. It depends on the director, staff or campers. Things were never perfect.

After a few summers in Amitzim, my parents said I was ready for Ramah’s vocational education program. The Tikvah director agreed. Each year in Voc Ed was different. My first jobs were in woodworking. We made mezuzahs and other projects and did some teaching. My friend, Jeremy, and I worked with Ron, the woodworking head and built a Torah ark, which we presented as a gift to the Tikvah program.

When I was a camper, I often had to take charge of nikayon (clean up) in the bunk — because someone had to! I think my advisors and the guesthouse head recognized that I was good at nikayon. In 2006, when the six-room Greenberg Tikvah Guest House (named after Tikvah program founders Herb and Barbara Greenberg, who were its directors for 29 years) opened, I started working there. I cleaned rooms, made beds and helped with the laundry. I can work and be happy alone.

After I while, I started training and supervising others. I have to make sure the guesthouse stays clean and maintained. For example, I tried to teach Leah how to sweep. And I teach such things as how to clean a toilet. This year, I have had to teach Bryce, a guy who wears hearing aids, how to do his job. I have no training working with people who have disabilities. I figured out that I needed to point to show him what to do.

Supervising means taking command of the situation. I have figured out that it is better to use persuasion than force. The workers look at me in different ways. Some people look at me pretty highly, some lowly and some in the middle. As far as my own supervisors go, I get along with some of them.

The Tikvah director and others have asked if I’d ever consider a career in the hotel industry. We even had a person come out to camp last year from the Marriott Corporation. The problem is that each worker at a hotel has to make up a certain number of rooms and that might be hard!

I don’t really know where I will be in five or ten years or even in the next six months.

Hopes and dreams are unknown. Who knows? For now, I basically have an Associate degree in liberal arts from a community college. I enjoy playing on the computer and magic cards. I enjoy Jewish and secular learning, like science, history, and areas of science fiction. I am good at getting information. And I love Israel’s history and culture. I have been to Israel three or four times.

At Ramah, I have shown that I am reliable and can get the job done. But, at the end of the day, my socializing skills are even below those of the 10-year-old campers. Consequently, people at Camp Ramah in New England see me complexly. Many see me as disabled; they see me in multiple shades of light.

Jason Belkin is 29-years-old and lives in a Monsey, New York supportive apartment with a friend. Jason reports that his disability is in the areas of hand/eye coordination and socialization skills.

Ramah, the camping arm of Conservative Judaism, operates eight overnight camps and three day camps in North America, offering programs for campers with disabilities at nine of them. This summer more than 50 older teens and young adults with disabilities participated in vocational education programs offered at four of the camps, including Camp Ramah in New England. The Ruderman Family Foundation recently awarded Ramah a $50,000 grant to support its vocational education programs.

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World ranked 224, Israel’s Amir Weintraub ekes out a living playing World Team Tennis as a Boston Lobster. It helps pay the bills in the sport he loves.

BOSTON — Call it “tennis light,” “family-friendly tennis,” or perhaps, most importantly for players like Israel’s Amir Weintraub, call it “three weeks of tennis with a guaranteed paycheck.” Welcome to World Team Tennis.

For pro players like Weintraub, World Team Tennis is an opportunity for a few weeks’ steady income in a precarious field. Currently ranked 224th in the world, Weintraub ekes out a living playing such relatively minor events on the pro circuit, racking up points with the hope of making it to a major tournament.

World Team Tennis was co-founded in 1974 by tennis legend Billie Jean King (with former husband Larry King) and is based on a concept of gender equity. It consists of eight teams, which travel more than 60,000 miles to play 56 matches; this year’s season ran from July 7 to 24.

Weintraub and his Boston Lobsters finished its 2013 Mylan World Team Tennis season with 23 wins and 15 losses. Eastern and Western Conference Championships were held July 25, followed by the Mylan WTT Finals on July 28 where the Washington Kastles prevailed.

Unlike more conventional professional tennis matches, whose sets and matches can last several hours, WTT matches consist of just five games. Game scoring is no-ad; the first team to win four points wins the game. Tennis without deuces means matches last no more than 30 minutes — even with breaks for on-court dances by mascot Larry the Lobster, MC announcements and cheers (“OK Crustacean Nation-Turn up the Heat!”; “What time is it? Break Time!”), and even on-court player interviews.

During a brief opening night rain delay, the courtside announcer asked Weintraub such playful questions as his first concert (Scorpions), an instrument he’d like to play (guitar), breakfast today (Dunkin’ Donuts), the last concert he saw (Rihanna) and strangest gift ever received at a tennis tournament (a cape from Uzbekistan).

The Lobsters opened the 2013 season at their new home, the Joan Norton Tennis Center at the Manchester Athletic Club on Boston’s North Shore. Each night of the WTT season, fans were treated to men’s and women’s singles, men’s and women’s doubles and mixed doubles. The coach of the home team decided the order of events.

Weintraub represents the level of great athletes who hover around the top without quite breaking into the ranks of big prize money

In the first match of the evening, Weintraub, playing in his second WTT season, defeated Jesse Witten 5-2. Witten, playing in his sixth season with the Sportimes, reached a career high of 163 in singles and 274 in doubles. Weintraub and partner, Eric Butorac, closed out the evening with a 5-2 doubles win over Witten and Robert Kendrick (who reached a career high of 69 in 2009).

But even before Weintraub’s impressive opening night performance, Darlene Hayes, Chief Development Officer and General Manager of the Boston Lobsters, noted, “We are really excited to have Amir play with the Lobsters. He played WTT for the first time last season. We watched and were very impressed with how he played for the Springfield (Missouri) Lasers and for Israel’s Davis Cup. So we scooped him up!”

The good-natured, slim, 6 foot 2 inch (188 cm.) Weintraub, the only Israeli playing this season in the WTT, spoke with the Times of Israel prior to his first match with his new team. The Rehovot native was introduced to tennis at age six when his father, Luis, begin hitting balls with him in a parking lot. Luis also served as his designated driver, and was responsible for getting Amir to and from the Israel Tennis Centers in Jaffa, forty-five minutes each way.

Following a three-year stint at Israel’s Wingate Institute, Weintraub trained at a tennis academy in Vienna, Austria.

“It was hard being alone for two years,” recounted Weintraub, who was sixteen at the time. Upon returning to Israel, Weintraub qualified as an “outstanding athlete” and served the full three and a half years in the Israel Defense Forces. He continued to train at the Israel Tennis Centers in Ramat Hasharon and has been playing professionally since 2005.

Weintraub on the court (photo credit: Howard Blas/Times of Israel)

Weintraub represents the level of great athletes who hover around the top without quite breaking into the ranks of big prize money. In January 2011, Weintraub even participated in the qualifiers of his first Grand Slam — the Australian Open — but he never made it into the main draw.

He has won several low-paying Israel Futures events, and he was a finalist in the 2011 Bangkok Challenger tournament. In 2012, Weintraub reached a career high ranking of 161. In 2013, he qualified for the main draw of the Australian Open, but lost in the qualifiers of Wimbledon.

Weintraub, now 26, constantly reflects on life “below 100” on the pro tour.

“The players below 100 are not less good, but less consistent than the top 100,” said Weintraub. “Every week, we travel somewhere else. I travel about 30 weeks a year. Because we have no relations with the Arab countries, there are no tournaments close to Israel. It’s a hard life.”

A post on weintraubamir.com entitled, “Waiting For an Offer from the Bundesliga,” begins, “If you’re not a top-100 tennis player, you’re doomed. Financially speaking, it will take you a few years to see that you are broke, you’ve spent all of your parents’ money and you’ll ask yourself why you haven’t pursued a football (soccer) career instead.” He explains why tennis leagues in Europe can be lucrative for tennis players, but Weintraub hasn’t played in these leagues. “You usually need a European passport to play in the European leagues.”

So Weintraub found himself in Boston, where it may sound ironic that a Jewish Israeli has been for three weeks, a “Lobster.”

“It is very intense. There are so many matches. And it is a tough format — you get few chances to come back.”

But, it helps pay the bills.

Following the Lobsters season and a series of tournaments, Weintraub is currently playing in Vancouver, where he has made it to the second round. He hopes to qualify for the US Open, which kicks off in late August. Then, it is off to Belgium where Weintraub joins teammates Dudi Sela, Jonathan Erlich, and Noam Okun for their September 12-15 Davis Cup matches. And finally, back on the road again —hoping to make a living doing what he knows and loves. Even as a Lobster.

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Original Article Published On The Times Of Israel

Mixed marriages, special needs kids, Russian immigrants, Israelis: How inclusive is your child’s Jewish camp?

NEW YORK (JTA) — Is there a more enthusiastic camper in the world than Ezra Fields-Meyer, a 17-year-old with high-functioning autism and a regular at Camp Ramah in Southern California?

Not if you ask his father.

Tom Fields-Meyer says his son’s annual visit to the rural retreat in Ojai, 80 miles northwest of Los Angeles, is a much-anticipated opportunity for Ezra to spend time with all kinds of children in a fun and nurturing environment.

“The four weeks he goes to Ramah and is away from us are really the four best weeks of his year, which is a little bit hard for a parent to say,” Fields-Meyer said. “The kids in his program are almost celebrities. I think camp is great for all kids, but especially for those like Ezra.”

A summer camp experience can be transformative for kids like Ezra, but many Jewish camps believe that special-needs kids — along with other minority Jewish populations, like Russian Americans, Israeli Americans and the children of interfaith marriages — are severely underrepresented in the Jewish camp system.

“Break down the percentage of kids from various backgrounds who attend and the numbers are not where we want them to be to reflect the broader Jewish community,” said Abby Knopp, vice president of program and strategy at the Foundation for Jewish Camp, a group that seeks to expand access to the Jewish camping experience.

In a conscious effort to promote diversity, Jewish summer camps are working to boost the participation of minority communities in the camp experience.

According to FJC, of the estimated 72,000 youths who attend nonprofit Jewish camps each year, approximately 1,000 are special needs — a blanket term for children and adolescents with a range of disabilities including Down syndrome, autism, paraplegics and visual impairment.

Only 3 percent to 4 percent of children from the Russian Jewish community attend camp, though they represent 15 percent to 20 percent of Jewish children overall, the FJC said. The percentage of Israeli-American kids who attend camp is about the same. Interfaith children comprise about 18 percent of Jewish campers, though their fraction of the larger Jewish youth population surely is much higher.

Camps have taken a number of approaches to integrate special-needs children, ranging from full-immersion programs in general camps to creating specific facilities uniquely for them.

Ezra Fields-Meyer attended a mixed program at Ramah. During the day he took part in the same activities as the wider camp population; at night he stayed in separate sleeping quarters.

“[Ezra] can go go the same camp with his two brothers, be part of the same community, but also acknowledge he has different needs,” Tom Fields-Meyer said.

Some camps have taken inclusivity a step further. At Camp Ramah in New England, special-needs kids have the option of a full immersion program that includes shared accommodations.

“About 12 years ago, families asked if we would consider an inclusion program,” said Howard Blas, the head of the Tikvah program at Ramah New England, in Palmer, Mass. “What they meant is to take the kids and have them be part of the program with the mainstream kids.”

In response, the camp invited Spencer Salend, an expert on inclusive classrooms at the State University of New York at New Paltz, to draw up a curriculum for the joint program. Two kids — one with Down syndrome and one with autism — took part in the pilot eight years go. Now, as many as 12 disabled youths participate each year.

“The idea was that if we started younger, their bond [with the other campers] would be greater,” Blas explained. “We had some very different outcomes. Some have come through the whole program having a great experience. We’ve had some that have been difficult.”

Despite some disappointments, Blas says the initiative on the whole has been positive and productive. But Rabbi Allan Smith, the former head of Union for Reform Judaism’s camp network and now the director of a Jewish camp for special-needs kids in Pennsylvania, says special needs kids who spend summers with peers with similar disabilities come out much more confident and better prepared to interact with mainstream children.

“My position is don’t play games,” Smith said. “Don’t do tokensim and put kids into an environment where they are doomed to fail.”

Another priority has been bringing more Jews from the former Soviet Union and their offspring into the camp fold. Part of the challenge there is introducing the camp idea to a community that doesn’t fully understand it.

“If you look at most of the kids who go to camps, their parents went to camp, too,” said Knopp. “There is a 100-year-old tradition here in America that Russian-speaking Jews are unfamiliar with. Families in the Former Soviet Union sent their children to camp, but they don’t understand the importance of sending their kids to Jewish camps.”

Israeli-American parents also shy away from sending their children to overnight summer camps for similar reasons, the FJC said. Many of them go back to Israel for the summer to visit relatives.

Jewish camps have had more success attracting the children of intermarried families. Though the FJC pegs the percentage of Jewish campers with only one Jewish parent at about 18 percent, Paul Reichenbach, the director of camp and Israel programs at the Union for Reform Judaism, says that up to 40 percent of children at some URJ camps have at least one non-Jewish parent.

Reichenbach says camp curriculums must be sensitive toward children of mixed faiths or they risk becoming alienated from the community. He says the language in some brochures and the content of some programs were adapted to reflect this change.

“While we are all for Jewish values,” Reichenbach said, “we have to recognize we are dealing with kids that are far more pluralistic than they used to be 20 to 30 years ago.”

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