It’s been almost four months now that my mother, as well as a few ex-girlfriends, started bugging me. For years, they suffered silently my twin passions, journalism and sports. For years, they had to read all about match-up zones, safety blitzes, strikeouts. About how football is being played 90 minutes and at the end the Germans always win. They knew nothing about any of these things. But Omri? Omri they know. So they leave messages on my machine, or send me emails and text messages, all with one simple request: write something about Omri.

Omri, of course, is Omri Caspi, the Sacramento Kings rookie and the first Israeli ever to make it to the NBA. The media in Israel cover the world’s best basketball league, of course, but for most journalists back home, Omri is his own beat. Every one of his shots is covered. Every penalty discussed. Every squabble with his coach dissected. Israeli journalists, apparently, are not alone. Recently, Sports Illustrated ran an admiring three-page article about Caspi; when it was posted on the magazine’s website, readers posted elated comments. His game, said one, mirrors Israel’s human face. Each of his points, said another, brings honor to the Jews. A third claimed that he checked Caspi’s stats every morning before praying.

What, then, is wrong with me? Why can’t I bring myself to say anything nice about Caspi? He is, to be sure, an excellent player, with an average of 12.2 points and five rebounds per game. So why is it that every time I write about him, I feel obligated to remind my readers that Caspi’s in the NBA in spite of Israel’s corrupt sports culture and not because of it, or that his percentages from the foul line are abysmal? What the hell is my problem?

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately, and I’m convinced my issues have less to do with basketball and more to do with identity. As an Israeli-born Jew who had left Israel two decades ago and now lives in Berlin, I spend a lot of my time thinking about just what it means to be Jewish. A while back, the question came into sharp relief: I landed in Israel for a brief visit, and as I was clearing customs I ran into a group of students who had just returned from a visit to Auschwitz. Listening to them speak, I could tell exactly what lesson they had learned from witnessing the death camp’s horrors—almost all of them spoke of the importance of being a soldier and said they hoped to join the Israel Defense Forces’ most elite combat units.

Listening to them talk, I thought about my own visit to Auschwitz, many years ago. A snow storm hit town, and I was forced to spend three days in that sickening place. As soon as I landed in Israel, I didn’t even bother going home. I took a cab to my military unit’s headquarters, and told the officer in charge that I refuse to put on a uniform ever again. To me, the lesson of Auschwitz was simple. It was a message of humanism and of non-violence. Too often, when I read the Israeli papers, I can’t help but think that this perspective has all but disappeared from Israeli culture.

This week, I had a chance to read the greatest fantasist in Zionism’s history. Theodor Herzl imagined a socially progressive nation at peace with its Arab neighbors. But nobody in Israel reads Herzl anymore. For most Israelis, Herzl is a weakling, a Diaspora Jew, sick and a Socialist. We, on the other hand, are the New Jews, muscular and superior and unbound. We’re all Ehud Baraks. We export weapons and make fortunes. We’re ready to die in battle, but not to negotiate with our neighbors. The bravest of these New Jews, the ones willing to sacrifice themselves for their country, are buried—irony of ironies—on Mount Herzl.

I can’t subscribe to this reverence of might. Which is why I can’t bring myself to care about Omri Caspi. I don’t want my children to watch with awe as another muscular Jew elbows his way to power and glory. Instead, I’d much rather they spend their days reading about all those Jews who perished in Auschwitz. And when I wake up and check out some sports statistics before the morning prayer, I read about another Israeli athlete, Boris Abramovich Gelfand, winner of the 2009 World Cup in chess.

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