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Original Article Published on The Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem Post Children’s Articles

The US was awash with tennis champions during the US Open and the many lead-up competitions that preceded it. Dash American correspondent Howard Blas had the opportunity to catch up with two of Israel’s leading tennis players, Shahar Peer and Dudi Sela during the competition.

Tennis is one of the world’s leading international sports. Players and fans from all around the world converge upon Roland Garros (French Open), Wimbledon (Wimbledon), Melbourne Park (Australian Open) and Flushing Meadows (US Open) to see the world’s best tough it out game after game, set after set, in impossible heat, in order to bring home the trophy, the crown of the tennis world.

Though they haven’t won a grand slam tournament yet, Israeli tennis stars Shahar Peer and Dudi Sela are on the rise, and have captured the hearts of Israeli and Jewish tennis fans across the globe. Earlier in 2009, Shahar Pe’er made headlines around the world when she was denied a visa for Dubai in order to compete in the Dubai Tennis Championships, only because she was Israeli. Also earlier in the year, Dudi Sela put Israel squarely on the tennis map during the Davis Cup quarter final men’s singles match, which was played at the Nokia Stadium in Tel Aviv. To the home crowd’s delight, Sela knocked over Russian tennis giant Mikhail Youzhny to get to the semifinals. D’ash American correspondent, Howard Blas, had the opportunity to catch up with Israel’s tennis stars during the Pilot Pen, a US open warm-up. This month we are featuring Shahar Peer and next month we will be featuring Dudi Sela.

Shahar Peer is one of the highest ranked women’s tennis players in Israel’s history. She and Anna Smashnova, another Israeli tennis champion, have each reached 15th in the world. The 22 year old Peer was born in Jerusalem and when she is not playing tennis around the world, lives in Maccabim. She enjoys reading and romance movies! She has an older brother Shlomi, who is 29 and an older sister, Shani, who is 26. Her mother, Aliza, is a retired sports teacher and her father, Dovik, is CEO of a software company. She comes from an athletic family. Her father was an award winning swimmer and her mother was a champion sprinter. D”ash reporter Howard Blas briefly met Peer at the Pilot Pen, a tennis tournament in New Haven, Connecticut, which serves as a warm up to the U.S. Open.

How many times have you played in the US Open? What is your current ATP ranking? This is my fifth time playing in the U.S. Open (first time was 2005). I am currently ranked 64th in the world.

Do you enjoy playing overseas? never play in Israel. There are no tournaments in Israel! (The only time I play in Israel is in the nationals). So I am always playing tennis overseas it is my life, my job, my career. I enjoy traveling. It is part of what I do.

What’s your greatest challenge as an athlete? It is not so hard being an athlete. I enjoy what I do. I guess the greatest challenge is playing well.

What’s your greatest challenge as an Israeli athlete? It is not so challenging being an Israeli athlete. I am proud of Israel and I enjoy representing Israel.

When competing overseas, do you find a lot of Israelis/Jews come to support you? Yes, especially places like New York at the U.S. Open and Melbourne at the Australian Open. Israelis and Jews come out to cheer and show support.

How does Israel’s prowess on the Tennis court affect public opinion about Israel, in your opinion? I am not sure what people think about Israel or about Israeli tennis. I hope it is positive. I hope they are happy watching Israelis playing the sport.

Can you tell our readers about your army service? Was it a tough decision to do it since you are a professional athlete? Or was it important simply because you are Israeli? Going in to the army is natural. Everyone does it for their country. I am happy I did it. I did what I had to do for my country.

You’ve had a couple of interesting, somewhat high profile incidents in the past few years. First, what was it like teaming up with Indian Sania Mirza for doubles and what was your reaction to playing with a Muslim player? We were friends before we played together and we are still good friends. We don’t involve any politics on the court.

How do you feel now looking back on the Dubai incident in February? How did it feel to have the support of Venus Williams and other players? Note: Peer was prevented from playing at the Dubai Tennis Championships in the United Arab Emirates since she was denied visa. Many players condemned this action and some sponsors pulled out. The tournament organizers were also forced to pay major fines for this action. Israeli tennis player Andy Ram was given a visa for the same tournament the following week. It was not a happy thing. I was not happy about it. I was happy that other players came out and supported me. I was especially proud of Andy Roddick.

If you had a message for all of your fans out there, Israeli, Jewish or otherwise, what would it be? Work hard and enjoy what you are doing.

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Original Article Published on The Jerusalem Post

Ari Zivitovsky is a little like Indiana Jones. But the scientist rabbi is not in search of The Ark of the Covenant; instead, he travels the world looking for kosher animals. Zivitovsky and his partner, Rabbi Ari Greenspan, have come head to head with some incredible and exotic creatures, some of which you may have never even heard of.

Zivitovsky has a PhD in biomedical engineering and is a senior lecturer in brain science at Bar Ilan University. Greenspan is a practicing dentist in Jerusalem.

Zivitovsky and Greenspan met as children in New York and have been going on Jewish adventures together ever since. When they were studying together as teenagers, a slaughterer came to their yeshiva to demonstrate kaparot. The two teenagers were interested in seeing what the insides of a bird looked like. The shochet saw their interest and encouraged them to become shochtim. So they did.

The two newly certified shochtim found themselves asking lots of kosher questions. So they traveled the world in search of answers.

The two men have traveled to four continents on their kosher animal quest. They have been to Turkey in search of the Talmudic Shiboota fish, they have been to Cyprus in search of grasshoppers, and most recently, researched giraffes here in Israel. When a giraffe died in a zoo in Ramat Gan, Zivitovsky was given permission to dissect the dead giraffe to further his knowledge of kashrut. Yes, a giraffe is kosher. It chews its cud, has cloven hooves and it only eats plants. These traits make it a kosher animal. So then, one might ask why we can’t buy giraffes at our local meat market. Zivitovsky explains that they are not endangered, they have no natural enemies, and no one hunts them, so in many ways they are an ideal animal to eat. However, the problem is that giraffes are so strong they could kill an adult lion with one kick. You would need to restrain it in order to kill it in the kosher way. Could you imagine having to restrain a giraffe and then climbing three meters in order to slaughter it? The conclusion therefore is that it is not practical to kill giraffes for food.

What do Zivitovsky and Greenspan do with all of their kosher knowledge? Since 2002, they have been hosting a series of very unique dinner parties, where they introduce weird kosher foods to the diner participants. At the first dinner the menu included pigeon, sparrow, water buffalo, fallow deer and red deer, muscovy duck, partridge and pheasant. “Nearly one hundred people filled the restaurant to hear over two hours of lectures and eat a thirteen course meal,” says Zivitovsky. “Had I been cooking, I would have just cooked all thirteen types of birds in one big pot. But we found a master chef, Moshe Basson, who prepared each one differently.”

And for dessert? Grasshoppers! I was shocked that ten to fifteen percent of the participants actually tried them, said Zivitovsky.

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Bruce Beck had to sing in order to get a world exclusive with Israel’s only Olympic Gold medalist.

Every Jewish man remembers his bar mitzvah. Some even remember parts of their haftarah. Rarely does this ‘feat’ get them anywhere in life. Not the case for New York’s NBC TV sports anchor and reporter, Bruce Beck. Bruce grew up in Livingston, New Jersey, 25 miles southwest of Manhattan. Following a traditional, pretty much unremarkable, bar mitzvah in 1969, he attended Ithaca College in upstate New York and became a sports broadcaster. Beck has been the weekend sports anchor for News 4 New York for the past 11 years. As part of Beck’s “dream job,” he has covered Super Bowl XLII, the World Series, the NBA finals, the Stanley Cup Finals, The US Open Tennis Championship, the US Open Golf Championship, the NCAA Final Four and the Kentucky Derby. Nothing, however, he maintains, compares to his’s coverage of the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, when windsurfer Gal Friedman became the first Israeli to ever win an Olympic gold medal. “I was down at the windsurfing venue trying to get an interview,” reports Beck. “The way it works is that you wait in the mixed zone, a little control area behind fences, with all of the international reporters.”

Beck was waiting patiently when all reporters were told that Gal Friedman would not be coming through the mixed zone. After the 1972 Munich massacre, Israeli athletes simply do not grant en-masse interviews. But Beck was determined. He called Jerusalem and got a hold of Israel’s press liaison in an attempt to find out where in Athens the Israeli delegation was staying. He was then given the name of the local Israeli press secretary in Greece. After a lot of schmoozing, and his revelation of the fact that he was Jewish, the pleasant, persistent reporter was given the name of the hotel. When Beck arrived at the location, the prospects of meeting Friedman seemed slim. Again, all the reporters were waiting behind a fence. “I just needed to get in to interview Friedman. What could I do? I couldn’t speak or read Hebrew very well. I wasn’t a very good Hebrew school student. But I have a very good memory. I am a reporter. And to this day, I remembered my entire haftarah by heart. “So I started singing my haftarah, the special one for Machar Chodesh – the lovely story of David and Jonathan – for the Israeli press secretary. He was so moved that he said, ‘Bruce, come in, we want you to talk to Gal.'” And Beck got the exclusive – he was the only reporter in the world granted access to Gal Friedman. “Gal knew the whole story. He knew that I sang for the press secretary. He laughed. We talked about Munich, the fight for survival of Jews in their homeland, what it would be like to hear Hatikvah that night as he received his gold medal, etc.”

Beck looks back fondly on the story as a rare moment when a reporter’s religious background actually opened an important door, and when the reporter became part of his own story. “Journalists from all around the world wanted to know why Gal Friedman was such a big story, and how I was picked to interview him.”

“Here I was in Athens, Greece – 4,500 miles from home, in the cradle of Western Civilization – never prouder to be an American – never prouder to be a Jew.”

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Original Article Published on The Jerusalem Post

Every Jewish man remembers his bar mitzvah.

Some even remember parts of their haftarah. Rarely does this ‘feat’ get them anywhere in life. Not the case for New York’s NBC TV sports anchor and reporter, Bruce Beck.

Bruce grew up in Livingston, New Jersey, 25 miles southwest of Manhattan. Following a traditional, pretty much unremarkable, bar mitzvah in 1969, he attended Ithaca College in upstate New York and became a sports broadcaster. Beck has been the weekend sports anchor for News 4 New York for the past 11 years.

As part of Beck’s ‘dream job,’ he has covered Super Bowl XLII, the World Series, the NBA finals, the Stanley Cup Finals, The US Open Tennis Championship, the US Open Golf Championship, the NCAA Final Four and the Kentucky Derby.

Nothing, however, he maintains, compares to his’s coverage of the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, when windsurfer Gal Friedman became the first

Israeli to ever win an Olympic gold medal.

“I was down at the windsurfing venue trying to get an interview,” reports Beck. “The way it works is that you wait in the mixed zone, a little control area behind fences, with all of the international reporters.”

Beck was waiting patiently when all reporters were told that Gal Friedman would not be coming through the mixed zone.

After the 1972 Munich massacre, Israeli athletes simply do not grant en-masse interviews.

But Beck was determined. He called Jerusalem and got a hold of Israel’s press liaison in an attempt to find out where in Athens the Israeli delegation was staying. He was then given the name of the local Israeli press secretary in Greece.

After a lot of schmoozing, and his relevation of the fact that he was Jewish, the pleasant, persistent reporter was given the name of the hotel.

When Beck arrived at the location, the prospects of meeting Friedman seemed slim. Again, all the reporters were waiting behind a fence.

“I just needed to get in to interview Friedman. What could I do? I couldn’t speak or read Hebrew very well. I wasn’t a very good Hebrew school student. But I have a very good memory. I am a reporter. And to this day, I remembered my entire haftarah by heart.

“So I started singing my haftarah, the special one for Machar Chodesh – the lovely story of David and Jonathan – for the Israeli press secretary. He was so moved that he said, ‘Bruce, come in, we want you to talk to Gal.’”

And Beck got the exclusive – he was the only reporter in the world granted access to Gal Friedman.

“Gal knew the whole story. He knew that I sang for the press secretary. He laughed. We talked about Munich, the fight for survival of Jews in their homeland, what it would be like to hear Hatikvah that night as he received his gold medal, etc.”

Beck looks back fondly on the story as a rare moment when a reporter’s religious background actually opened an important door, and when the reporter became part of his own story.

“Journalists from all around the world wanted to know why Gal Friedman was such a big story, and how I was picked to interview him.”

“Here I was in Athens, Greece – 4,500 miles from home, in the cradle of Western Civilization – never prouder to be an American – never prouder to be a Jew.”


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