18 August 1 • 2019
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Where Are They Now?
Memphis memories are still fresh for two
Detroit soccer players who competed in 1982
Maccabi Games.
I
t’
s been 37 years since Paul Randel
competed for Detroit in the inau-
gural JCC Maccabi Games in
Memphis, Tenn., but many memories
are still crystal clear in his mind.
Like how he persistently pursued
and succeeded in trading his Detroit
soccer jersey for a warm-up jacket
worn by an Israeli tennis table player.
Then there was the trip in a hot
school bus with a police escort from
the Memphis Jewish Community
Center to a Memphis Chicks minor-
league baseball game.
“The Maccabi Games were much
less organized then than they are
today,
” Randel said. “The bus trip to
the baseball game is the only planned
non-sports event I recall doing in
Memphis.
”
Another vignette in Randel’
s memo-
ry from 1982 involves an athlete from
Louisville, Ky., that Randel met in
Memphis.
“His cousin was a girl I knew from
school (at West Bloomfield High
School),
” Randel said. “Sometime
during the following school year after
the Maccabi Games, I stepped out of
a class and there was the guy from
Louisville, in town visiting his cousin.
”
Randel and Dave Stone both played
for the Detroit soccer team in the 1982
Maccabi Games.
The team lost in a shootout to
Toronto in its final game. Had Detroit
won, it would have advanced to the
medal round in the 7 vs. 7 competi-
tion.
Stone scored Detroit’
s lone goal in
the 1-1 tie that preceded the shootout.
“I remember scoring that goal,
” he
said. “I can still see the ball going into
the net. Someone gave me a nice cross-
ing pass and I one-timed it.
”
Stone also remembers soccer games
being played early in the day because
of the heat in Memphis and spotting
armed security personnel on the roof
of the Memphis JCC.
“I didn’
t feel unsafe. I just thought, as
a kid from West Bloomfield, that it was
interesting there were armed people on
the roof,
” he said.
Stone was 12 that summer, heading
into the seventh grade at West Hills
Middle School in West Bloomfield
Township.
He played soccer at Bloomfield Hills
Andover High School and Eastern
Michigan University before graduating
in 1988 and 1992.
He also played soccer for Detroit in
the 1984 and 1986 Maccabi Games in
Detroit and Toronto. Unfortunately, his
team didn’
t win a medal in those years.
Now 49 and living in Chelsea, Stone
is starting his fifth year as executive
director of the Jewish Community
Center of Greater Ann Arbor after
a lengthy administrative career at
the JCC of Metro Detroit in West
Bloomfield.
Randel was 16 in the summer of
1982 and headed into his senior year at
West Bloomfield High School, where
he played soccer and wrestled for the
Lakers.
He went on to attend the University
of Michigan, graduating in 1987. He
was on the club soccer team at U-M as
a junior.
The 1991 graduate of the Wayne
State University Law School has been a
bankruptcy attorney for 21 years.
Now 53 and living in Farmington
Hills, Randel is still involved in the
Maccabi Games.
He was the score reporting com-
missioner when Detroit hosted the
Maccabi Games in 2014, and he’
ll have
the same volunteer role Aug. 4-9.
“I had a good time doing that job
five years ago and I got good reviews,
so they asked me back,
” he said.
Randel and his wife, Deb Lapin,
have three children, Sam, 20, Izzy, 18,
and Jack, 18, who all have competed
for Detroit in the Maccabi Games.
Stone and his wife Tara have three
children: Sophie, 13, Noah, 11, and
Braedon, 7. ■
jews d
in
the
STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Dave Stone
Paul Randel
House Passes
Anti-BDS Vote
Michigan Democrats Tlaib
and Dingell vote no.
A
n anti-Boycott Divestment
and Sanctions (BDS) reso-
lution passed the House of
Representatives last week on a vote
of 398-17. Sixteen of those opposed
were Democrats, including Michigan
representatives Rashida Tlaib and
Debbie Dingell. Four Democrats and
one independent, Rep. Justin Amash of
Michigan, voted “present.
”
The resolution, co-sponsored by 350
members of the House — an equal
number of Democrats and Republicans
— opposes BDS, “including efforts to
target U.S. companies engaged in com-
mercial activities legal under United
States law and all efforts to delegitimize
the State of Israel.
”
Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian
immigrants, said the resolution tram-
pled on the rights of free speech. “I can’
t
stand by and watch this attack on our
freedom of speech and
the right to boycott the
racist policies of the gov-
ernment and the State of
Israel,
” Tlaib said on the
House floor.
Tlaib and colleague
Minnesota Rep. Ilhan
Omar introduced a mea-
sure in the House the prior week that
affirms “all Americans have the right to
participate in boycotts in pursuit of civil
and human rights at home and abroad,
as protected by the First Amendment
to the Constitution.
” The text does not
mention Israel.
The American-Israel Public Affairs
Committee posted on Twitter: “BDS
disguises its true intentions under the
banner of ‘
human rights,
’
yet it hypo-
critically ignores human rights abuses
against Palestinians in other countries
across the Middle East, as well as the
widespread abuses perpetrated by
Palestinian leaders against their own
people.
”
Dingell, who voted no, said in an
emailed statement to the Jewish News:
“This vote was probably the most dif-
ficult of my career. Freedom of speech
and freedom of expression are core
pillars of the U.S. Constitution and
critical to our democracy. Boycotts
have long been recognized as protected
form of speech and that
must be respected. With
our Constitution under
attack, it becomes even
more important.
“Our ultimate goal,
”
she continued, “must
remain a long-term
peace in Israel and
Palestine that supports two states. In
debate of an anti-BDS resolution, we
cannot let this divide us and distract
from our ultimate goals and vision for
the region. I personally do not believe
that a boycott is the way to achieve
peace and a resolution to the conflict,
but I also believe this resolution was
very counterproductive. If we want a
two-state solution, then we cannot be
pursuing inflammatory resolutions like
this one but investing in policies that
actually get us there.
”
Michigan Rep. Andy Levin voted
for the resolution. “I’
m against BDS.
I’
m against singling out Israel among
all countries of the world in this way,
”
he said. “To me, the goal of U.S. poli-
cy toward Israel and Palestine should
remain what it has been for many
decades, which is to get to a two-state
solution. And the BDS (campaign) is
really not helpful to get to two-state
solution and is perhaps even antithetical
to it.
”
Levin was opposed to the Senate ver-
sion of the anti-BDS bill because he said
it would “punish” those who participate
in the BDS campaign. “The Senate bill
actually withheld money
and punishes people
who participate in BDS.
I don’
t have any interest
in that. This is America.
Everybody’
s free to do
whatever they want,
” he
said. ■
JACKIE HEADAPOHL
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Tlaib
Dingell
Levin