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Reitblat, the Robinsons, translator Luba Berton and Rembrandt the collie enjoy a stroll.
rkadij Reitblat
couldn't smile.
Flashbulbs by the
thousands were going off in
the July night and 60,000
Jews from around the world
were roaring as he stood
there, gripping tightly the
pole holding the flag of
Lithuania, his team of 57
Soviet Jewish athletes bun-
ched behind him.
He and the team were
about to make history: in
moments, they would step
onto the Ramat Gan stadium
track and become the first
team from the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics to
compete in the World Mac-
cabiah Games.
It wasn't merely the open-
ing ceremonies of last
summer's quadrennial Jew-
ish Olympics. It was the Ex-
odus, but with an eastern
European Moses leading his
people into the Promised
Land. And, as before, it rep-
resented a major triumph
over huge difficulties.
"When we actually
entered the stadium, I was
determined to smile," said
Reitblat, reliving the expe-
rience. "But I was so tense, I
couldn't."
Instead, the rabbi's grand-
48
Moses of Maccabi
FRIDAY. FEBRUARY 2, 1990
son felt a load had been
lifted. "Now I can die in
peace," he recalled thinking,
"because I have achieved my
goal: to bring the team to
Israel and the Maccabiah."
Reitblat told the historic
tale as he sat in the West
Bloomfield kitchen of Jay
and Barbara Robinson, with
whom he is staying as he
prepares to repeat the feat. If
all goes well, Reitblat will
bring a team of Soviet Jew-
ish teenagers to Detroit for
this summer's Jewish
Community Centers-North
American Maccabi Youth
Games. It will mark the first
time ever that such a team
has participated in the
Games.
As Reitblat spoke, the
Robinsons — he's general
chairman of the Detroit
Games — also relived the
experience, for they had
gone to the World Mac-
cabiah to work with non-
North American delegations
to the Youth Games.
Barbara Robinson said
Jews from 44 countries had
watched in growing an-
ticipation as team after
team, each behind its flag,
marched into the stadium,
accompanied by music and
Lithuanian
coach Arkadij
Reitblat hopes
to lead his
team into the
JGC-Detroit
Youth Games
RICHARD PEARL
Staff Writer
dancers. Israeli jet fighters
screamed through the night
sky overhead and Israeli
paratroopers dropped from
the blackness into the
stadium, adding another
dimension to the excitement.
Usually, she said, teams
entered almost alpha-
betically, with Israel, the
host country, at the climax.
But this night was different;
Israel entered but the emo-
tion kept building, until
Reitblat and the Lithuanian
athletes marched in.
"To call that moment elec-
trifying doesn't even begin
to say it," she said. "That
was spectacular."
Bringing the Lithuanian
team to Israel, Reitblat said,
was the most important
thing he ever did —
something he believed he
alone could do, in large part
because he sparked the
rebirth of Maccabiah in the
Soviet Union.
That July 3 night in Israel
had its beginning 37 years
ago, when Reitblat was born
in Vilna (now Vilnius),
Lithuania, during the
Stalinist era, to a civil engi-
neer father and bookkeeper
mother.
His parents, caught up in
1920s Communist pro-
paganda — which said the
Jews were part of the new
society — took their infant
son to the Ukraine in search
of better opportunities. But
the virulent anti-Semitism
there thwarted their dreams
and their Jewish learning.
The young Arkadij learned
bits of his heritage by wat-
ching his elderly grand-
father, the rabbi. He lived
next door and was allowed
by the authorities to speak
Yiddish and observe the
holidays.
At age 18, barred from col-
lege because of his Jewish
heritage even though he was
a Ukrainian fencing cham-
pion, Arkadij went to Riga,
Latvia, and learned
mechanical engineering, but
couldn't get a job for the
same reason. He returned to
his native Vilnius and found
work in a factory's testing
department.
The move was propitious;
old Vilna had been known as
the Jerusalem of eastern
Europe — it was the home of
Jabotinsky and the Vilna
Gaon, among others — and
the culture survived the
heavy loss of Jews in World
War II. In 1975, when