I LIFE IN ISRAEL I

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Jerusalem Rugby Club players practice.

English-Speaking Olim
Bring Various Sports

DANNY BEN-TAL

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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1989

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ports-loving immi-
grants from English-
speaking countries
often arrive in Israel with
more than mere memories of
their favorite sport — they
bring with them rugby boots,
hockey sticks, baseball gloves,
cricket bats and plenty of en-
thusiasm to transplant their
pastimes to the Holy Land.
Rugby, for example, had
never seriously been played
in the country until 1970,
when a group of South
African olim studying at
Jerusalem's Hebrew Univer-
sity got together to organize
an impromptu rugby game
against some friends from Tel
Aviv University. Together
with • a number of South
Africans living on Kibbutz
Yizre'el and other ex-patriots
studying at Haifa's lbchnion,
they formed the national
rugby. league.
Midway through that in-
itial season, Alvin Hoffman,
who had played in the nor-
thern Transvaal league until
his aliyah in,1963, joined the
club. Now, at 48, the
powerhouse forward is still
enthusiastically chasing
every ball.
"What I love about Israeli
rugby is the variety of
backgrounds of the players,"
he says. "The current
Jerusalem squad includes
English, Scottish, Welsh,
French, Dutch, Argentinean,
American, Canadian, South
African and Israeli players."
Now in its 18th season, the
Jerusalem Rugby Club,
which plays under the
auspices of the Hebrew

University, has become an in-
tegral part of the city's Anglo-
Saxon community.
Randy Kahn of Texas in-
troduced baseball to Israel in
the mid-1980s, forming the
officially-recognized Israel
Association of Baseball.
A handful of kids had in
fact been playing regular
pick-up games in Jerusalem's
Sacker Park for a number of
years, but it was only when
Kahn arranged for Mayor
Teddy Kollek to throw in the
first ball, for a 1986 junior
game that people took the
idea seriously.
"There's enough skill and
enthusiasm out there to take
an Israeli baseball team to
the World Cup by the year
2000," sums up Kahn.
Senior softball has been go-
ing for a decade now in Israel.
Seven teams formed the
Jerusalem division last
season (one of three leagues
now operating in the country)
and the game is flourishing.
There's even a regular
women's game every Friday
afternoon at Jerusalem's
Sacker Park.
"We're starting to reap the
benefits of having a junior
league feeding us players,"
says Bert Faudem, manager
(and pitcher) of Focus, one of
the capital's top teams. "But
we're desperately short of
funds to build a proper dia-
mond and purchase new
equipment."
As the echo of the first
cuckoo of spring fades into the
distance and the last grains of
matzos are swept away for
another year, cricket, pro-
bably the most incongruous of
all sports played in the Mid-
dle East, begins its season.