“Could somebody tell the rabbi to stop knocking people over?”
You put a hockey stick in Rabbi Shlomo Zarchi’s hands, and, by golly, he’ll use it.
“No blood, no foul. That’s my motto,” explained the rabbi, the spiritual leader of San Francisco’s Chevra Thilim — and, it turns out, not the guy you want to tangle with when you’re between him and the puck.
Zarchi is one of scores of players — including several rabbis — to suit up for an Oakland-based Jewish floor hockey league (hockey without ice, and tennis shoes in lieu of skates). And after the rabbi continued to give his fellow players a personal reenactment of what it’s like to be crushed on a Tokyo subway, Yossi Offenberg, the league’s founder, finally came up and gave the rabbi a pat on the shoulder — carefully.
Hockey is in Offenberg’s blood — the blood he fortunately kept within his veins after his rink encounter with Zarchi. The longtime JCC of San Francisco employee has lived in the Bay Area for a dozen years but he hails from the Great White North. Every morning at his old school, the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto, the rabbinical headmaster led the singing of “Hatikvah” over the intercom — then, naturally, he would break down the previous day’s action in the school’s intramural hockey league.
One recent Shabbat morning at Oakland’s Orthodox Beth Jacob Congregation, Offenberg’s mind wandered back to hockey, and he had an epiphany. So the old goalie flagged down Rabbi Judah Dardik and made his pitch — how about forming a Jewish hockey league right here in the Bay Area?
Dardik could only smile, because he’s an old goalie too.
“When I moved out here, on a whim — and I don’t know what I was thinking — I brought all my stuff, my pads, my hockey equipment, just in case. And I also brought a goal,” said Dardik, 32, the former starting goalkeeper for the Frish Cougars of the NY/NJ Yeshiva Hockey League.
And that was the start of the Oakland Kochavim (“Stars” in Hebrew). Scores of Bay Area Jews have since picked up sticks and taken to the concrete rink — and they’re always looking for more.
To answer the question every rabbi who has ever played sports is asked: No, they are not thinking about Torah out there in the heat of the moment (and anyone not thinking only about hockey while out on the rink will likely wake up attached to a feeding tube).
But that’s not to say hockey can’t be a Jewish experience.
“Maimonides writes that a healthy body makes a healthy soul. Keeping a healthy body is one of the ways to serve God,” notes Zarchi, 33, who puts the maim in Maimonides.
“I’m trying to uplift their souls,” he jokes, regarding the shots he gave opponents in the corner.
“Being a Jew is sometimes a test of endurance. You eat a lot on Shabbos but you fast on Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av. You need a healthy body that can endure some big swings … As a rabbi, one of the things I always remind myself is, as a Jew, I’m not just playing sports to play sports. It really keeps you invigorated, makes you a more productive person, allows you to focus more clearly, have better endurance and be a better Jew and rabbi.”
Adds Dardik, “There’s a lot of Torah lessons to be learned from sports. We love seeing excellence. But if I look at a neurosurgeon at work, another surgeon might say, ‘That’s incredible!’ I wouldn’t have the foggiest. But anyone can watch a really beautiful play and appreciate the excellence of sinking a shot, making a pass or hitting a home run.
“All Torah lessons go with sports, and it’s great to see that excellence in front of you.”
Unlike Zarchi and Dardik, who grew up, respectively, in Brooklyn and Tenafly, N.J. (where water freezes in the winter), Rabbi Mark Bloom of Oakland’s Conservative Beth Abraham is a Bay Area boy. His most striking memory (no pun intended) of his night of hockey-playing with the Kochavim was that getting hit by the ball really stings.
While it’s not unusual to face off against a rabbi, the vast majority of the players are regular Jewish guys (and the occasional girl) in their 20s, 30s and 40s. There are computer programmers, businessmen, real estate agents, consultants and, thankfully when something goes “pop,” Dr. Dan Kliman is also a regular player.
Some attend synagogue regularly while others limit their interactions with the Jewish community to hockey night — for now.
As the league grows — more than 50 players are on the roster already — Offenberg hopes to pick up players from every temple and Jewish organization in the realm, and make hockey night an easy (if not painless) way to get to know a wide swath of the Bay Area’s Jews. Or Haviv, an Israeli-born businessman and martial arts instructor, even brought an Israeli friend in the biotech field to play — and meet up with another player in the biotech industry.
“You meet so many people,” said Haviv, who created the league’s Web site, www.oaklandkochavim.com.
“You’re there to have fun, and it’s like golf on the run trying to hit that damn thing.”
Forty-five minutes of game action passes in what seems a heartbeat. Ben Marcus, a 42-year-old father of three, runs like a teenager from blue line to blue line. Gav Shapiro and Shimon Israel fake out everybody twice with their stick-handling, traversing the rink in a serpentine manner. Jon Melman, a 36-year-old chemist from San Mateo who plays in several floor hockey leagues, nonchalantly zips passes onto his teammates sticks, and at one point even flicks the ball up into the rafters with one deft flick of his wrist.
Afterward, the players peel off their helmets and gloves and talk hockey. Jewish men who normally wouldn’t see each other anywhere but in shul or, perhaps, the crosstown bus, laugh and joke with the camaraderie endemic to team sports.
“I love going head to head with Rabbi Dardik. He really sticks it to you, checking left and right. He’s a good sport about it, though. He always apologizes afterwards,” jokes Ian Framson, a 23-year-old Beth Jacob congregant.
Adds Dardik, “There’s that strange feeling when you see your kindergarten teacher in the supermarket. Many of these guys see each other largely at synagogue and to get together wearing sweats and T-shirts and to see each others’ skill and the camaraderie, it’s a nice feeling and it’s great to develop relationships on a different plane.”
One person who is definitely on a different plane is Offenberg. Much of his young life was spent in the streets of his largely Jewish Toronto neighborhood playing hockey on foot, yanking up the nets when a car rumbled by, and coming in only when the light from the stars above wasn’t enough to keep the ball from ricocheting off one’s noggin.
Decades later in Oakland, his team came up short, 4-2, but the spry 42-year-old was playing every shot like it was Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. He flipped his body this way and that for every ball, his top and bottom halves swinging in discordant directions like a two-part fire engine.
At one point, he launched himself high and to his left, both feet coming off the ground as he gloved a screaming slapshot before thudding to the cold concrete floor.
Offenberg’s young son, Josh, whooped with approval, booming, “Wow, Dad, that was a professional save!”
Yossi heard and he smiled, but he was light years away. He was in Toronto, back on the street, and he and his buddies were straining against the dusk to play just a few minutes more, just a few more, before putting away their hockey equipment.
Until next time.
For more information about the league,
visit www.oaklandkochavim.com or email [email protected].
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Cover photo illustration by Cathleen Maclearie