Omri Casspi on meeting up with Gilad Shalit, what it’s like to wear number 36, and life as the only Israeli playing in the NBA

NEW YORK — Basketball player Omri Casspi achieved overnight rock star status in 2009 when he was drafted 23rd overall in the first round by the NBA’s Sacramento Kings. Casspi signed a three-year contract worth $3.5 million and became the first Israeli to play in the NBA.

Casspi averaged 10.8 and 8.6 points per game in his two seasons with the Kings, and in 2010, he was selected to play in both the NBA All-Star Weekend Rookie Challenge and NBA All-Star Weekend H–O–R–S–E Competition. On June 30, 2011, Casspi and a 2012 first round draft pick were traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers for forward/center J.J. Hickson.

Throughout Casspi’s NBA career, he has taken very seriously what he perceives as his role as ambassador of Israel and the Jewish People. Many United States communities have organized “Jewish Heritages Days” at their NBA stadiums, and Casspi has patiently posed for pictures and signed hundreds of autographs.


‘I feel happy being Israeli and Jewish every time I step on the court’

“I feel great pride being Jewish and Israeli, and a lot of responsibility. I feel happy being Israeli and Jewish every time I step on the court,” Casspi told The Times of Israel Wednesday.

Casspi was born into a sporting family. Father Shimon is an accomplished tennis player, mother Eliana was a competitive basketball player and sister Aviv played basketball for Elitzur Holon. Brother Eitan often travels in the States with Omri.

As a child in Israel, Omri Casspi played basketball for several local teams and at age 13, moved to the Maccabi Tel Aviv youth team. By age 17, Casspi turned pro and played for Maccabi Tel Aviv. He was drafted by the Kings at age 21, after he had completed his mandatory three-year service with the IDF.

Casspi signed with Maccabi Tel Aviv during the 2011 NBA lockout and intended to join the team if the lockout was not resolved.

The 161-day lockout, which began on July 1, 2011, ended on December 8, 2011, and a shortened season began on December 25th. Casspi is averaging 22.8 minutes per game with the Cleveland Cavaliers with 3.4 rebounds and 7.7 points.

Casspi spoke with The Times of Israel in the visitors’ locker room at Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden prior to Wednesday night’s heartbreaking 120-103 loss to the New York Knicks; the Cavaliers led at the half 61 to 49.

Omri Casspi taking a shot at Wednesday’s game.

There is a picture of you and Gilad Shalit which appeared all over the Internet and Facebook yesterday. What is the story behind the picture and meeting?

Gilad Shalit came to Orlando for the NBA All Star Weekend last weekend. He wanted to keep it off the media. Nobody really knew he was there. He wanted to have quality time with his family and a few really good friends. We had dinner. It was very emotional for me.

How did he seem?

He seems fine. First of all, he is a big fan of basketball. I was honored to be around him and have dinner with him and talk.

How did you choose number 36?

[Smiling] Double Chai! I wore 18 in Sacramento. I come to Cleveland and Anthony Parker wore that number. I was going to either cut it in half and take 9 or double it — double chai — so I took 36.

Were you disappointed that you didn’t get to play for Macabi Tel Aviv, or were you happy to just get on with the season after the lockout? Were you in Israel during the lockout? Are you in touch with NBA player Jordan Farmar (who also played for Maccabi Tel Aviv)?

I was in States working out. I never got a chance to go to Israel. I was happy and disappointed — both! I kind of wanted to play for Macabi Tel Aviv a little bit and see my family. I am happy I am playing basketball for Cleveland.

I am very friendly with Jordan. We are great friends. He is a great guy. He did a lot of great things for Maccabi Tel Aviv this year. [Farmar actually played for Maccabi during the lockout — he returned to the New Jersey Nets after the lockout ended]

What has the adjustment been like — to a new team and to a new Jewish community?

Because of the lockout, we had no training camp and no summer activities with my new team — we didn’t have time to bond with the guys. We are going to get close this summer.

The Jewish community — wherever we go, West or East — there are a lot of people with flags. They come to support me, invite me for chagim…

Has the Jewish community’s excitement for you died down over time?

I get a warm reception. It has always been great.

Is there a communication gap between the Jewish communities of the US and Israel?

In Israel, we are not seen as a Jewish community. We are a country. It is a little different. Here, in the United States, people really get together. I think the two do understand each other — absolutely. In Israel, we support the Jewish people of the US, and the Jewish people in the US have a lot of influence — political, etc. I have been here 2 or 3 years now — I don’t think we [Israel] would have a country without the people of the United States.

Any ideas what you will do after basketball?

[Laughing.] No, I am still thinking about my basketball career. Not yet!

Jeremy Lin? [The Knicks’ Chinese American Harvard grad sensation]

I played against him before — when he was with Golden State. It is a really nice story. What a big step forward he made. Really nice story.

How do you relate to the Jeremy Lin story?

Everybody can relate in a way. When I first got here, many believed I could not play in the NBA. Then, I got better. When you see a guy like Jeremy Lin, it is inspirational.

(Source: http://www.timesofisrael.com

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“What’s the frummest book you sell here?” the customer asks Adam, the gregarious bookseller.  “Do you sell Judaism for Dummies?  asks a man, not appreciating the irony–he was asking hovering over books, just under the sign indicating he was in the “Scholarly Works” section.  Welcome to YU Seforim Sale, currently in full swing on the campus of Yeshiva University in Upper Manhattan.

The Seforim Sale, which takes place from February 5-26, 2012, is, according to their website (http://www.theseforimsale.com/) “the largest Jewish book sale in North America…The sale provides discounted prices on the widest selection of rabbinic and academic literature, cookbooks, children’s books, music and lecture CDs and much more.”

Minutes after havdalah, we caught the M101 bus on Third Avenue for the 45 minute ride to “the sale.”  As first timers, we had no idea what to expect.  Perhaps yeshiva bochers searching through piles of Gemarahs and Tanachs?  Could it possibly be true that last year, the book sale drew more than 15,000 people from the tri-state area, featured more than 15,000 books, and grossed more than $1 million in sales?

We were amazed with what we experienced.  Armies of helpful Stern College women and YU men were already in their places—on the floor and at the cash registers—as the doors of Belfer Hall opened at 8 pm.  Colorful maps were distributed to help the crowd navigate the carefully organized room—in addition to sections of gemarahs, midrashim, mishnayos, rishonim and achronim, were sections for history/Holocaust, novel/biographies, English mussar/machshava, haggadahs, Israel, cookbooks and more.

I expected to find only books reflecting a certain perspective.  Next to such titles as The Laws and Concepts of Niddah, and  Hide and Seek:  Jewish Women and Hair Covering were Wendy Mogel’s  The Blessing Of A Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children, books by Conservative rabbi, Reuven Hammer (The Torah Revolution:  Fourteen Truths That Changed The World), and Solomon Schechter’s classic  Aspects of a Rabbinic Judaism— With a New Introduction by Neil Gillman, Including the Original Preface of 1909 & the Introduction by Louis Finkelstein.

And the book lovers also came from many walks of life.  While most were clearly traditional, and many seemed to know each other, there were women with skirts of various lengths and some in jeans, and men with and without head coverings.  All in all, a diverse crowd sharing a love of books.

We shlepped our  books to the check out counter–minutes before the Y-Studs, one of Yeshiva University’s acclaimed a cappella groups, began their performance.  As we left, plenty were just entering—likely to stay until the midnight closing.  We smiled all the way home, with our first hand knowledge of why Jews are known as “The People of the Book”—or is it books?!

(Source: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com)

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TIkvah Staff past and present from Ramah New England, Darom and Wisconsin joined New York area Tikvah parents last Saturday night at REELabilities, a unique abilities/disabilities film festival. The festival, which now takes place in several US cities, was started in 2007. The NY festival is the largest in the country dedicated to promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories and artistic expressions of people with different disabilities.

For the staff members from the various Ramah special needs programs, this marks another wonderful opportunity to get together in the offseason, share ideas and discuss important issues. The Hebrew language film, MABUL (“flood” or “storm”).

featured an Israeli young man with autism who returns home on short notice from his “institution.” The film shows the painful struggles of the family and community. We are most appreciative to Rabbi Mitch Cohen and the National Ramah Commission (and to our various funders) for making it possible for Tikvah staff and families to view the film free of charge. We enjoyed seeing a number of friends of Tikvah at the event, and we loved the 16 Handles ice cream we shared during our post film discussion!

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Original Article On the Jerusalem Post

Sitting at the Nalaga’at (“Please Touch”) Center in Jaffa, Howard Blas, special educator and social worker from New York, sits down to speak with The Jerusalem Post about a fascinating group of young men and women who have come to Israel for a 10-day trip. The travelers, all affiliated with the Conservative movement’s Camp Ramah, are developmentally disabled and their experiences, their counselors tell the Post, have allowed them to see this country through fresh eyes.

As several deaf waiters weave among tables ” the center is a major employer of the handicapped and an inspiration to the campers whom they are serving ” Blas explains how the trip has helped bond his charges to both nation and religion.

The campers all belong to the Tikvah program, a track at the Ramah summer camps for those with special needs. All eight of the campers on this specific trip fall into the higher-functioning spectrum and some are even taking classes at community colleges back in the US.

The group that’s here on the Israel trip are some of the older members of our group, Blas tells the Post. The youngest is turning 19 today and I guess that the oldest is probably 25 or 26.

The idea of an Israel trip, Blas continues, was the brainchild of Herb and Barbara Greenberg, now residents of Israel, who believed that this population, who had been learning about Israel at camp… had the same love for Israel and the same right to travel to our homeland as any Jew.

Since the first trip in 1984, Camp Ramah has brought Tikvah participants to Israel numerous times. A number of the campers on this trip have been here before.

We stress Israel [and] Zionism at camp and this is their chance to really [experience that] Blas says.

The trip, which brings the campers, who normally prefer stability and routine, to different destinations every day, really focuses on their independence, he explains.

Some of the higher-functioning campers will have been together so many years in camp, some have been in camp for 10 years, so some know how to help each other… and compensate for each other’s shortcomings.

According to Blas, in a new country there are a lot of new systems to learn, so even something as simple as the shower, the shower works differently. We go to three different hotels. It’s a different experience in each place so we even have to go ahead and figure that out quickly and then explain it to them… It’s a very frenetic pace.

This is my fourth or fifth trip that I’ve done he says, and the founders did eight or nine trips when they were the directors and with each trip you really fine-tune what you do so you pick hotels that don’t have a lot of extra room for wandering around [for example].

By bringing the campers to Israel without their parents, he continues, they’re learning life skills. Small things like packing in a hotel, it’s all part of life skills. That’s really what the goal is: to prepare them for living as independently as they can.

We give them a lot of running commentary and try to connect what they are seeing with things that they have learned in camp, but they’ve been fantastic, the director enthuses about his campers.

THE TIKVAH program itself was founded at Camp Ramah in 1970 by the Greenbergs, who now live in Raanana. In its first year, the program enrolled eight campers classified by their respective school systems as brain-injured, learning disabled and emotionally disturbed, says Blas. Over the years, it has enrolled children and adolescents with Down syndrome, autism, neurological impairments, developmental delays and rare disorders such as Smith-Magenis and Prader-Willi syndrome.

As the director of one of the first such programs in the Jewish world, Blas is noticeably pleased with his work, telling the Post that Tikvah is a trailblazer.

Are very proud of the fact that we are probably the first program [of its type], he says. One of the few places where there is real collaboration in Judaism is around special needs.

Howard Blas’s son, Daniel, a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, is one of the counselors on this year’s trip, his second time coming to Israel with Tikvah.

Daniel believes that by being forced to explain things to his campers in a simplified manner, he has to reevaluate everything he knows, thus gaining a deeper understanding of Israel and [his] beliefs in general.

Asked to give a specific example, Daniel says that when explaining to his campers why there are soldiers everywhere, he must confront head-on the fact that Israel is a “country in conflict.” This helps him recognize why the soldiers are there in the first place [and] the fact that at this point, after many Israel trips, I’ve just taken [many things] for granted in general.

Avriel Feiner, known as Avi, also serves on the staff of the Tikvah program. A 22-year-old senior at the University of Maryland, Feiner is studying special education, in large part because of her involvement with the special campers of Camp Ramah.

This is my first time ever going [to Israel] with this population it’s really interesting and inspiring to see Israel through their eyes, she says, concurring with Daniel.

I was complaining today No, not the Palmah Museum again, she says. We walked out and they were like ‘my gosh, this was so cool, we love this. History is so awesome, that was so intense.

Many experiences, such as visiting the Western Wall, Feiner says, have lost their excitement to someone who has been there numerous times. However, going with the Tikvah participants this time, she says that “the guys were dancing like crazy [on the men’s side] for an hour and a half. That’s amazing. Where else are they going to have that?

Moreover, Daniel interjects, the campers have had an influence on everyone who we’ve seen, not just on me and Avi as the leaders.

Daniel recounts that on one occasion, one of the campers entered the dining room of their hotel to say goodbye to the participants of an unrelated Birthright trip, many of whom called out goodbye to him by name, despite the two groups not having had any official contact.

He’s just been so friendly to everyone and everyone’s been amazed, Daniel says, smiling.

THE CAMPERS who spoke with the Post seem to back up their counselors assertions, smiling and regaling this reporter with stories of their experiences. Many, Howard Blas asserts, have minimal contact with Jewish life outside of camp, making this experience even more important to them on a personal and spiritual level.

Sarah, a sweet girl the same age as Feiner, attends a boarding school in Connecticut where she is studying the life skills necessary so that she can be mainstreamed into as normal a life as possible. These skills will be especially important as she plans to move into her own apartment for the first time next year.

The trip, she says, is very nice and not “boring like Birthright. Now I learn more, she says.

Her favorite part of the trip, she says, is “making candles. This is a typical type of project for the campers, providing a physical stimulus and engaging them in a hands-on activity. The campers have also picked vegetables for charity and engaged in an archeological dig at the Beit Guvrin national park.

Such outings have even more meaning for Sarah than for most of the campers, as her time at camp accounts for all her Jewish experiences for the entire year, which makes this trip something of a bittersweet experience.

The skills she had learned in the Tikvah program, Blas says, will serve her well in life. Ramah special-needs campers perform jobs at camp, enabling them to learn skills that many people take for granted.

With guidance here and there, some of the campers on this trip, Feiner believes, could function independently soon.

Chiming in, Daniel Blas adds that “In general, we try to focus on abilities rather than disabilities.

Jason, a 27-year-old participant who is studying journalism, among other subjects, at a community college, is a good example of this mind-set.

Coming to Israel, Jason says, means connecting with “different areas of Israeli history and culture [and] to better understand what’s going on inside the country. This, he explains, makes it more easier to understand what may happen later and possibly in the future.

The experience for the special campers of the Tikvah Program is best summed up by their visit to Mount Herzl, the burial place of Theodor Herzl.

We also went to Har [Mount] Herzl, someone who believed in a State of Israel because he saw that the Jews couldn’t live in Germany because the French accused them of treason, says Avi, another Tikvah participant.

[The French] tried to execute them so Herzl brought many Jews to Israel.

The visit, explains Daniel, allowed trip participants to discuss their dreams and aspirations in a comfortable way while connecting to their heritage as Jews and Zionists.

Sitting in the military cemetery, we were trying to find a way to have them connect to all these graves, Daniel says, and we decided to speak about dreams and setting goals for ourselves because a lot of what we do [in camp] is about setting goals.

Sarah and Avi said that one of their goals is to become more independent but really to live in an apartment, so their goal for the future is to move out of a group home and out of the boarding school [and to gain independence] and that’s a way we helped them to connect [to Herzl and Zionism].

Sitting and speaking with the Post on their final evening in Israel, the campers and their caretakers seem happy yet exhausted. After returning home from Israel, Howard Blas says, he will need a vacation from this vacation.




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