18 August 1 • 2019
jn

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

