Going for the Gold
By Jeffrey Goldberg
The Jerusalem Post, August 21, 1992
What a thrill it was to see Yael Arad win a silver medal! I still think she should do something with her hair, but nevertheless, it was a proud moment and all 12 tribes should cherish it. But we also have a responsibility to ensure that our victories in Barcelona were not mere flukes. This is why I have begun to train in judo myself, and I believe with some degree of certainty that I will bring home the gold medal for Israel come 1996. I hope to win it in actual competition, but I am also willing to take it when no one is looking.
This is a very serious endeavor. I have even begun trying to memorize the words to “Hatikva” so I can mouth them in a moving manner when our flag is raised over the stadium in Atlanta.
My training schedule so far has been rigorous, especially when compared to my previous lifestyle, which was closer to that of a dog than of a human, i.e., eat, sleep, wake up, take a nap, wake up, sniff the embarrassing regions of other humans and watch them act all nonchalant, like I’m not sniffing their embarrassing regions, go to sleep, eat a chew-stick, do a bad thing on the Persian rug, take a nap.
But now, I wake up every morning at 5:30 except for Tuesday through Sunday, gulp down a power shake made from discarded herring parts and begin, after a short nap and a bout of hellish indigestion on account of the herring shake, my training routine.
Since I don’t know anything about judo, my schedule so far has been quite limited. I skip a little rope, I run around the block, I eat a herring bar for a burst of quick energy, and I sometimes sniff other people’s embarrassing regions, some habits being hard to break. After this rigorous workout, I retire to my training headquarters, where I eat a protein-packed lunch of herring and herring by-products.
JUDO, TRUTH be told, was not my first choice when I joined the Israeli Olympic squad. I was more interested in the synchronized sitting competition, or the hammock jump, but we were doing best in judo so far, so why mess with a good thing?
One problem I’ve discovered, though, is that judo isn’t actually a sport, at least according to my understanding of just what sport is, that is to say, something you “play.” You “play” tennis, you “play” basketball, but you don’t “play” judo. Look at it in a sentence—“Hey, Yael,” I say, “let’s go play some judo.” This is when Yael fly-kicks my pancreas.
Also, the point of judo, which is to kill people, is just a little too sinister for me. Whereas the point of ice hockey is to slash the opposing player’s face with your skate, and the point of soccer is to incite fans to riot and kill thousands of innocent women and children who happen to be in the way while you and your neo-Nazi skinhead buddies trample through … never mind.
And another thing, judo matches aren’t a thrill a minute. Hold them in tubs of steaming jello, and that’s excitement, but as it stands now, the whole sport puts me to sleep, which could be dangerous in actual competition.
And there’s another problem, at least so far as women’s judo is concerned. Many males don’t want to spend long periods of time looking at women who could beat them up with their left eyelid. And many women don’t want to watch women who look like men who could beat their husbands up with their eyelids. And many men don’t want to watch women who look like men who act like women acting like men who beat their husbands’ women friends, either.
But the International Olympic Committee says it’s a sport, and gold is gold, so I’m ready to go. In a way, this was my destiny, because I’ve always been a natural athlete, at least by Jewish standards, which means that I’ve never dropped a bowling ball on my head, and I know approximately why baseball gloves exist.
Ha ha, no death threats please. I know as well as anyone that the Jews have produced some mighty fine athletes, including Sandy Koufax, Sandy Koufax and Sandy Koufax. Also, a lot of team owners.
My own athletic career began early, when, in the only pitching appearance of my entire Little League career, I beaned the police chief’s son, which led to state assault charges, later dropped because I was seven years old at the time.
In high school, I joined the football team, only to quit after I found out that other teams were playing a game called “Kill the Jewboy.” It wasn’t so bad at first, but when they started with the knives, I realized it was time to shift my focus to academics. Luckily, I had spent enough time on the field to impress a number of college scouts, and was eventually awarded a full football scholarship to Brandeis University, where I led the school team, “The Flying Nebbishes,” to three consecutive league championships, overcoming strong competition from Wellesley, Smith and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.
I CHOSE not to pursue a career in professional football on the advice of my agent, Hymie “Town” Rothstein, and instead joined the Israel Defense Forces, where my athletic skills were utilized in such track and field events as the “Scrub the Toilets That Haven’t Been Cleaned Since the Sinai Campaign in Under Two Minutes Competition,” the ever-popular “Stun-Grenade Toss” and the “Chase Small Rock-Throwing Palestinian Children Through the Nablus Casbah While the Friendly Natives Drop Cinder Blocks on You 10-Kilometer Invitational Open.”
I saw some great athletes in the army, proof positive that Israel could, if it focused on athletic development with the same intensity it has focused on, say, privatization, or on improving the rail system, become an Olympic powerhouse in under 374 years.
I was particularly excited by the performance of the Kach-sponsored Israeli yachting team on the waters off President Bush’s Kennebunkport home last week. You will recall that supporters of the late Meir Kahane waved angry banners protesting the Bush-Rabin summit meeting, a spectacle which led President Bush to remark: “I thought this guy was kind of dead! And how’d those Jewish guys get that thing out there anyway? Yitz, I didn’t know you people did the whole sailing thing.
“That’s fantastic, fantastic. Nobody on Yale crew was Jewish, religion-wise. I wonder why that was. Keep going, Jews-in-sailing, keep going. Just don’t try to join my club, okay?”
There is a whole range of other sports in which Israeli athletes could excel. With discipline and proper training, Israel could beat the world in long-distance seed-spitting, especially if the matches were to be held in movie theaters. And we shouldn’t forget to exploit the abundant talents of our world-class Egged bus drivers, who would fare well in demolition derby-type activities, should they ever be included in the Olympics.
The kibbutz movement could make a serious contribution to the Olympic team. On my kibbutz’s dairy farm, many of our tasks could have easily doubled as sporting activities, such as the event in which we would move piles of cow guano from one end of the barn to the other, then move it all back again because the dairy manager couldn’t decide where he liked it best. Just add a timer and a referee and you’ve got yourself a full-scale Olympic sport that could draw big crowds and lucrative endorsements. Plus, it would be more exciting than judo, and nobody would notice the herring on my breath.