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Unique therapy program offers troubled Jewish youth a distinctly Israeli alternative
KIBBUTZ HAZOREA, Israel — Throughout high school, Ben rarely did his homework, struggled to complete school assignments and used marijuana on a daily basis.
Frustrated with his situation, Ben, 18, decided in early September to leave his U.S. home and enroll in Free Spirit Experience — an in-residence therapy program in Israel’s Carmel Mountains. Three months on, it has ended up changing his approach to life.
“I went there to work on my studies, but I ended up figuring out who I was independent of my parents and learning how to prioritize,” said Ben, whose last name is being withheld to preserve his privacy. “Just being able to separate myself from my family was really important.”
The program at Free Spirit caters to Jews from the Diaspora in their teens and early 20s struggling with emotional, social or family issues including anxiety, social isolation or depression. Some lack motivation or the executive function skills necessary to succeed in college.
What they have in common is a need for a different kind of help, and they’ve all turned to the program at Kibbutz Hazorea — not far from Haifa — that takes advantage of Israel’s unique location, environment and culture.
“Nobody else is doing what we’re doing,” said educator Tzahi Billet, who ran a boarding school for delinquent Israeli teens near Akko before founding Free Spirit with psychologist Dr. Tamir Rotman. “There are yeshivot for Orthodox kids, and they have the Torah, but they don’t have therapy, and they usually don’t work through deeper issues. For us, the fact that we’re Israelis is very important. The participants here realize we’re very straightforward with what we have to say.”
Some of the teens who come to Free Spirit are experiencing personal or interpersonal challenges, such as isolation or low self-image. Others are in emotional turmoil or crises of various kinds, including relationship issues, failure to launch and other mental health challenges.
Billet and Rotman founded Free Spirit in 2015 to meet the urgent needs of youth from abroad in crisis or serious emotional turmoil. The organization’s programs — which include gap-year offerings, summer sessions and rolling admissions for youth in crisis — combine treatment and emotional and social coaching with outdoor education and therapy. The goal is to instill in Jewish youths greater stability, self-regulation, confidence, sense of purpose, self-reliance and independence.
The location, in the bucolic Jezreel Valley on a kibbutz founded in 1936 by German immigrants, is meant to be an ideal setting to help young people from any kind of Jewish background tackle the underlying conditions that lead to anxiety, depression, anti-social behavior and other issues troubling so many teenagers today.
The organization’s mission is “to bring people from all over the world for a meaningful empowering experience based on a challenge by choice.”
“For a lot of these kids, this is the first time they’re being seen by mental health professionals on a 24/7 basis, so we have a much better understanding of their issues,” said Rotman, the psychologist. “In the U.S., you have programs like ours that force participants to attend. Here, the kids have to want to come. We don’t accept anyone if they don’t want to be here.”
Fundamental to Free Spirit’s philosophy, said program therapist Yuval Gofer, is using social and emotional coaching to give young people the inner strength and flexibility to make their own decisions, rather than merely respond to the promise of reward or threat of punishment.
“In many other programs, you learn to live inside the system and not do things because you’ll get punished, but when you leave that place, there’s no reason to continue that specific behavior,” Gofer said. “We don’t work with punishments. We want this growth to be sustainable after they leave us.”
Keren Shema, Yuval Goffer and Tzahi Billet, left to right, form part of the 12-member staff at Free Spirit, a program for at-risk youth at Kibbutz Hazorea in northern Israel. (Larry Luxner)
The gap-year program Free Spirit runs is tailored to Jewish youths ages 18 to 23 from overseas. Some already have struggled through a semester or more in college; others are graduating from residential programs and need help managing the transition from a structured environment into independent life. During the year, participants experience community life on the kibbutz, spend four weeks traveling in Italy, sail to Cyprus on a yacht and do a semester-long internship in Israel.
The summer program — which is designed for teens ages 14-18 who are experiencing challenges but who get by during the school year — includes kibbutz living, excursions, and therapeutic programming designed to encourage social engagement, boost self-confidence and help teens navigate the transition into adulthood.
The rolling programs for youths in crisis usually last eight to 10 weeks and are also for teens and young adults.
So far, over 150 youths have attended Free Spirit programs, about 85% from the United States and Canada and the rest from Europe. The cost is roughly $2,000 per week; partial subsidies are available to those who can’t afford the cost. Aside from tuition fees, Free Spirit is funded by an American Friends of Free Spirit organization largely supported by families of alumni.
A typical day at Free Spirit starts at 7:30 a.m. with breakfast and a group meeting to discuss the day’s plan. Participants then work on projects from building tables and decks for the kibbutz to creating their own art. After that is lunch, rest time and a variety of afternoon and evening activities like forest hikes and campfires. There are weekly field trips to points of interest throughout Israel.
Interest in the program is increasing as a consequence of what managing director Rami Bader described as the post-Covid “mental health crisis” sweeping North America.
“You name it, we see it: anxiety, depression, lack of social skills,” Bader said. “A lot of this has to do with the Internet and lack of face-to-face meetings, and Covid only made things worse.”
Some of the youths who come to Free Spirit are grappling with gender dysphoria.
“Part of the natural process of adolescence is figuring out who you are, but in recent years, things that were obvious are no longer so obvious,” Rotman said. “Your gender is not something you assume anymore.”
The unique value proposition in an Israel-based therapy program isn’t just the location and Jewish environment, but the benefits of Israel’s culture of structure and responsibility as well as in-your-face directness, according to Bader.
“We are not a rehab program, but we do accept people after they complete rehab,” he said. “Although we don’t allow drugs or alcohol, we don’t have a zero-tolerance policy, which allows us to work through some of these issues if possible.”
Ben said that when he started the Free Spirit program in September, he felt he no longer needed the marijuana he had relied upon for so long. “At Free Spirit, we spent a lot of time outdoors, hiking and also sailing to Cyprus,” he said. “I was able to take time to reflect and think without a phone or other distractions.”
Now in the United States for a brief visit, Ben plans to return to Free Spirit for another four months and then attend American University in Washington, D.C., to study communications, economics and government.
Josh arrived at Free Spirit from London in 2015 as a troubled 16-year-old having been kicked out of two previous therapeutic programs.
“Growing up, I had a difficult childhood and I always struggled to fit in,” said Josh, whose last name is being withheld to preserve his privacy. “I had a toxic relationship with my father, with screaming matches on a daily basis.”
He spent three weeks at Free Spirit. But when he returned to England, so did all his emotional problems. Realizing he had left too soon, Josh convinced his parents to send him back to Hazorea, where he ended up staying for eight months.
Josh eventually joined the Israel Defense Forces, spending two and a half years in an elite paratroopers’ brigade — an experience he says “helped me grow into a man.” Now 23, he works at a high-tech firm in suburban Tel Aviv and visits his friends at Hazorea whenever he has time.
“Free Spirit embraces people’s personality traits. They help you find the correct path in life in a way that society will be more accepting of you,” said Josh. These days, he added, he has an “infinitely better relationship” with his father. “We’ve put the past behind us.”
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The post Unique therapy program offers troubled Jewish youth a distinctly Israeli alternative appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Sex, drugs and Torah scrolls: At the Psychedelicatessen, visitors receive a powerful dose of art
Hypothetically, if someone you had every reason to like and trust told you that if you went up one flight of stairs, you would “probably see things you never expected to see, ever,” how would you react? A sane individual might feel curiosity or skepticism, tempered with a dose of fear.
However, if you are anything like the crowd that gathered at YIVO for the opening of kosher-pop-art-visionary Steve Marcus’ new exhibit, “Psychedelicatessen: A Powerful Dose of Art,” the answer is simple: you’d get your tuchus upstairs, and fast.
In the gallery, the dose of art was as powerful as the exhibit title (and exhibit director Eddy Portnoy) had warned. The walls had gone groovy with technicolor mashups of Judaica and LSD, Flower Power and Maimonides. Strange shiducchim were being made in that room: There was a yad, a ritual Torah pointer, flashing a peace-sign instead of a pointer finger; a drawing of the “Power to the People” fist wrapped in tefillin; a wall of famous-rabbi-themed blotter art; a poster for “The Grateful Reb” in which a skeptical-looking Hasid in a tye-dye shirt (presumably the Grateful Reb himself) stood in front of a colorful mandala. It was like walking through a Hasidic hippie’s hallucinations.
As it turns out, Steve Marcus is neither entirely a hippie nor entirely a Hasid, though he has had brushes with both worlds. Marcus was born in the Summer of Love, 1969, just a year after the original Psychedelicatessen, an East Village headshop, got busted by narcs. Marcus spent his childhood — maybe even his life — surfing the afterwaves of the 1960s. He read MAD Magazine and Cracked. He gorged himself on Looney Tunes. As a teenager, he dug into Comix, the underground world of illustration concerned with hippie preoccupations like sex and drugs. As for Judaism?
“About a year after my bar mitzvah, I took a long sabbatical,” Marcus told me. It was the day after the opening, and we were sitting on a bench in the empty gallery. Marcus was jittering his knees up and down like he’d had too many Astro Pops.
He grew up Masorti, attending shul with his parents on Saturday morning and then booking it to the Yankee game that same afternoon to eat non-kosher hot dogs with his dad. But when Marcus was in his late thirties, his father died of a heart attack on Rosh Hashanah at the age of 66. “He was blown out like a candle,” Marcus said. “It kind of rang my bell.” He decided to say kaddish for his father three times a day for almost 11 months. It was during this period that he started grooving with the ultra-Orthodox.
“The only people showing up to shul three times a day are hardcore,” he said. He had noticed some of his Haredi compatriates studying Torah. When he asked how much it would cost to study there for a semester, “they were like, ‘You want to learn? You just come!’” For the past 17 years, at least three hours a day, Marcus has done exactly that.
Since turning to Talmud, Marcus has kept his art kosher. He obeys halachic stipulations such as not drawing the moon or the sun (or naked ladies, for that matter). He says halacha does not limit his work, but makes its reach more expansive, allowing Jews of every religious stripe to enjoy his art. But other halachic rules rankled him at first, most of all the Hasidic man uniform. Marcus looks like a countercultural Tevye. He is grizzled and bearded, and wears a baseball cap as religiously as other Jewish men wear yarmulkes. On the night of the gallery opening, he was wearing a camo jacket.
Earlier in his religious journey, he consulted a famous rabbi about his fashion troubles: “I said, ‘This white shirt, black suit, black hat thing? I don’t think it’s gonna happen … Is this a problem?’” The Rabbi in question replied with an interesting analogy. “‘You need to think of the halacha like a box,’” he said. Just because some people were crowding in one corner of the box didn’t mean that that was the only place in the box to stand.
“Sometimes, unfortunately the world, especially the Jewish world, wants to put everybody in a box,” Marcus said. “I think it’s hard to put people in a box.”
Marcus plants his eye-popping, mindbending art in familiar cultural boxes — pop art, Judaica, Flower Power counterculture — and then, before you get too comfortable, he explodes them with something unexpected. He showed me a piece called “Daf Yomi Agin!”, a yeshiva-bokher take on Robert Crumb’s famous ’70s poster “Stoned Agin!”, a six-panel depiction of a guy melting into blitzed-out goop. Except in Marcus’ version, the man is a Hasid turning aqueous at the thought of restarting the Daf Yomi, a seven-and-a-half-year cycle in which you read one of the 2,771 pages of the Talmud each day.
“They have an expression in yeshiva called ‘breaking your teeth,’ right? Which is when you’re trying so hard to understand something that they break their teeth over it,” Marcus said. “To me, it’s more like melting my brain than breaking my teeth, so that’s why it’s like this slow progression to a complete meltdown.” He has done the Daf twice already. One time, he said, he even went to the yeshiva in Lublin where the Daf Yomi began. He said his presence shattered the minds of the Hasidim. “I showed up, and it’s like I look like the hair in the matzo ball soup or something. They were like, ‘How do you know about such a place?!’”
A lot of Marcus’ stories start like this: Two dudes of different walks of life collide. First they are baffled; then they are bros. The phrase “Hey, man” makes frequent appearances. Marcus told me stories about his Zuni friends out in New Mexico who invited him to a secretive winter solstice holiday called Shalako in which the Zuni build a new house and feast on a dish that’s “almost like a cholent made of mutton.” He talked about meeting author Ken Kesey (whose grandson, Caleb Kesey, printed the rabbinic blotter art), and painting his Jeep with a phoenix rising against a psychedelic background. He told a story about a World War II vet named “Buzzy Katz” he used to hang out with who taught him how to cut onions. Marcus seems down to hang with the whole world.
“I’m one of those people that feels at home wherever I am,” he said. “I put on a backpack. I get into a truck or whatever and I fly over to another place.”
The post Sex, drugs and Torah scrolls: At the Psychedelicatessen, visitors receive a powerful dose of art appeared first on The Forward.
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What sort of Yiddish do today’s Yiddishists speak?
פֿון לייזער בורקאָ
ווען מע וואָלט הײַנט געשטעלט די שאלה, „וואָס פֿאַר אַ ייִדיש רעדן די ייִדישיסטן?“ וואָלט אַ לץ מסתּמא געענטפֿערט: הײַנט רעדן זיי ענגליש. אָבער לאָמיר נישט מאַכן קיין חכמות און טראַכטן נאָר וועגן יענע ייִדישיסטן, וואָס רעדן ייִדיש טאַקע — אַזעלכע וואָס שרײַבן און לייענען אַרטיקלען אין „פֿאָרווערטס“, למשל. ווי אַזוי רעדן מיר?
די לינגוויסטקע עמאַ ברעסלאָו האָט לעצטנס פֿאַרטיידיקט איר דיסערטאַציע דווקא אויף דער טעמע. זי האָט אינטערוויויִרט דרײַסיק ייִדיש־רעדער, אַ טייל פֿון זיי — אויף דער ייִדיש־וואָך פֿון יוגנטרוף — ספּעציעל פֿון ניו־יאָרק, באָסטאָן און מאָנטרעאָל. דערבײַ האָט זי אַנטדעקט עטלעכע וויכטיקע און אינטערעסאַנטע פֿאַקטן.
איין פֿראַגע פֿון דער דיסערטאַציע איז, ווי אַזוי מע זאָל אונדז רופֿן. ווען ברעסלאָו האָט געפֿרעגט די מענטשן, אויב זיי רופֿן זיך „ייִדישיסטן“, האָבן מערסטע געזאָגט — ניין. דאָס איז אַליין אינטערעסאַנט, פֿאַר וואָס די ווערטער „ייִדישיזם“ און „ייִדישיסט“ קלינגען הײַנט עפּעס אַלטפֿרענקיש און מע וויל נישט הייסן אַזוי. ברעסלאָו האָט נישט געפֿונען קיין בעסערן נאָמען, רופֿט זי אונדז „די מיעוט־קאָנטעקסט־ייִדיש־קהילה“ (minority-context Yiddish community). אין דער דאָזיקער קאַטעגאָריע נעמט ברעסלאָו אויך אַרײַן געוועזענע חסידים, וואָס קומען אַ מאָל אויך אויף די ייִדישיסטישע אונטערנעמונגען.
איך אַליין פֿאַרשטיי נישט, פֿאַר וואָס מע שעמט זיך מיטן נאָמען „ייִדישיסט“. ערשטנס, וועלן די חסידים און פֿרומע ייִדן אונדז ווײַטער רופֿן „ייִדישיסטן“, ווי אַזוי מיר זאָלן זיך נישט רופֿן. אַזוי הייסן מיר אין זייער ייִדיש און אַזוי וועט עס בלײַבן. עס איז פֿאָרט בעסער ווי די אַלטערנאַטיווע נעמען (כּופֿר, אַפּיקורס אאַז״וו).
אַ צווייטער סורפּריז פֿון דער דיסערטאַציע איז די פֿאַרשידנקייט פֿון דעם ייִדיש, וואָס ייִדישיסטן רעדן. אַ דרויסנדיקער, אַ סטודענט, וואָלט אפֿשר געמיינט, אַז אַלע ייִדישיסטן רעדן דאָס זעלביקע כּלל־ייִדיש. דאָס איז אָבער אַ טעות: אַ סך ייִדישיסטן רעדן אויך פּויליש ייִדיש אָדער אוקראַיִניש ייִדיש אָדער געמישטע דיאַלעקטן. אַ סך ניצן אויך אַ מאָל פֿאַרשידענע וואָקאַלן אין די זעלביקע ווערטער; למשל, מע זאָגט אַ מאָל gut און אַ מאָל git, אָדער אַ מאָל zogn און אַ מאָל zugn.
ווען ברעסלאָו האָט געפֿרעגט מענטשן זייער מיינונג וועגן כּלל־ייִדיש, וואָס מע לערנט אין די קורסן, האָט זי באַקומען אַ סך נעגאַטיווע ענטפֿערס. באמת האָט קיינער נישט געענטפֿערט פּאָזיטיוו, כאָטש אַ טייל האָבן געזאָגט, אַז כּלל־ייִדיש קען זײַן ניצלעך בײַם אויסלערנען זיך די שפּראַך. אַ טייל אינטערוויויִרטע האָבן געזאָגט מאָדנע זאַכן וועגן כּלל־ייִדיש; למשל, אַז „קיינער רעדט דאָס נישט“ — כאָטש זיי האָבן דאָרט פֿאַרבראַכט מיט אַנדערע ייִדישיסטן, וואָס רעדן יאָ כּלל־ייִדיש, און מיט קינדער, וואָס רעדן עס ווי אַן אײַנגעבוירענע שפּראַך! בקיצור, עס איז פֿאַראַן עפּעס אַ געפֿיל, אַז כּלל־ייִדיש איז נישט „עכט“, ווײַל אַזוי ווייניק מענטשן רעדן עס פֿון דער היים.
די „מיעוט־קאָנטעקסט־ייִדיש־קהילה“ באַשטייט פֿון עטלעכע גרופּעס: מענטשן, וואָס רעדן גוט ייִדיש פֿון דער היים (native speakers); מענטשן, וואָס האָבן געהערט די שפּראַך קינדווײַז, אָבער רעדן נישט אַזוי גוט (heritage speakers); סטודענטן און אַזעלכע וואָס האָבן זיך אויסגעלערנט די שפּראַך; און אויך געוועזענע חסידים, וואָס לעבן הײַנט אין דער „פֿרײַער“ וועלט. יעדע גרופּע רעדט אַוודאי אַנדערש, אָבער צווישן זיי זענען פֿאַראַן אינטערעסאַנטע פּונקטן צו פֿאַרגלײַכן.
די געוועזענע חסידים רעדן חסידיש ייִדיש, וואָס די לינגוויסטן האָבן שוין גוט אויסגעפֿאָרשט. די סטודענטן רעדן געוויינטלעך אַ סאָרט כּלל־ייִדיש, וואָס זיי האָבן זיך אויסגעלערנט פֿון זייערע לערערס. אַ סך ייִדישיסטן רעדן מיט אַ געוויסער השפּעה פֿון ענגליש — וואָס איז נישט קיין חידוש, אַזוי ווי די חסידים רעדן אויך אַזוי. מע זעט אין די טראַנסקריבירטע ציטאַטן אינטערעסאַנטע בײַשפּילן פֿון „בײַטן פֿון קאָד“ (code-switching) — ווען מע גייט אַריבער פֿון איין שפּראַך אויף אַ צווייטער, אַהין און צוריק, אין מיטן שמועס. אַ צאָל ייִנגערע ייִדישיסטן ניצן דאָס וואָרט like אין זייער ייִדיש, פּונקט ווי אויף ענגליש.
אַן אַנדער ענין, וואָס ברעסלאָו פֿאָרשט, איז די אויסשפּראַך פֿונעם קלאַנג ריש /r/. אין די אַלטע דיאַלעקטן זענען געווען צוויי הויפּט־סאָרטן ריש: דער גאָרגלדיקער אָדער אוּוווּלאַרער ריש (uvular R), ווי אויף פֿראַנצויזיש אָדער עבֿרית; און דער צינגלדיקער אָדער אַפּיקאַלער ריש (apical R), ווי אויף רוסיש אָדער שפּאַניש. ייִדישיסטן ניצן ווײַטער די צוויי סאָרטן ריש, ווי אויך דעם ענגלישן סאָרט ריש (retroflex R) — נישט געקוקט אויפֿן שווערן חרם, וואָס אוריאל ווײַנרײַך האָט אַרויפֿגעלייגט אויפֿן ענגליש ריש אין זײַן לערנבוך, „קאַלעדזש־ייִדיש“.
די גראַמאַטיק בײַ ייִדישיסטן איז אויך כּדאַי צו פֿאָרשן, ווי מע זעט אין די ציטאַטן. כאָטש אַ סך ייִדישיסטן האָבן אין די קורסן זיך מערסטנס געלערנט די כּלל־ייִדישע גראַמאַטיק, זעט מען אָפֿט, אַז מע רעדט נישט אַזוי. דאָס דאַרף אפֿשר נישט זײַן קיין חידוש, ווײַל אין די אַלטע דיאַלעקטן האָט מען אויך אָפֿט גערעדט אַנדערש ווי אין די ביכער. דערפֿאַר דאַרף מען נישט קומען מיט טענות צו די חסידים, וואָס זיי האָבן „קאַליע געמאַכט“ די גראַמאַטיק — ווײַל די גראַמאַטיק איז שוין געווען „קאַליע“ פֿון פֿריִער, און בײַ די ייִדישיסטן איז זי אויך גענוג „קאַליע“, אַחוץ געציילטע מומחים.
ברעסלאָו האָט אַנטדעקט וויכטיקע זאַכן, וואָס יעדע איז ווערט, מע זאָל זי ווײַטער אויספֿאָרשן: די אידענטיטעט פֿון די ייִדישיסטן, וואָס ווילן אַזוי נישט הייסן; די פֿאַרשידנקייט פֿונעם ייִדישיסטישן ייִדיש, וואָס איז לאַוו־דווקא כּלל־ייִדיש; זייער אויסשפּראַך און גראַמאַטיק, וואָס זענען נישט אַזוי ווי מע וואָלט זיך געריכט. די קליינע וועלט פֿון ייִדישיסטן באַשטייט באמת פֿון פֿאַרשידענע גרופּעס, וואָס יעדע האָט אַ ביסל אַן אַנדער כאַראַקטער און יעדע רעדט אַנדערש. ווי גייט דאָס ווערטל: צוויי ייִדן — דרײַ מיינונגען.
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Being a soccer superstar couldn’t save him from the Nazis
For the past 20 years, the German Soccer Federation has awarded the Julius Hirsch Prize for organizations combating racism. This year, the recipients included an 11th-grade class that created an educational tool for anti-discrimination events, a children’s soccer league based in a disadvantaged area and a club originally founded in a refugee center.
Now, graphic novelist Julian Voloj has decided that it’s time for people to learn Hirsch’s story.
In 1911, Hirsch became the first Jewish player to serve on the German national team. He was the first player to score four goals in a single game, and he played for several soccer clubs that won the German football championship. Hirsch also was a decorated war veteran in WWI. Nevertheless, Hirsch was not spared from being a victim of the Holocaust.
“He was first seen as a hero and then seen as evil that needed to be destroyed,” Voloj said.
Voloj’s previous graphic novels have included an anthology of diverse Jewish voices and a story about the first Jewish congregation in America. He learned about Hirsch when he was working with Bayern Munich on a novel, completed in 2020, that explored the life of Oskar Rohr, another Jewish soccer player, who helped lead Bayern Munich to a 1932 championship.
With the help of a grant from the German soccer federation, Voloj is planning to complete Hirsch’s novel, “Juller,” in three years. He is working with an Israeli artist, Avi Blyer, to illustrate his work.
Voloj told me that, prior to the second World War, Hirsch was one of many Jewish German soccer players. “Soccer was an academic sport,” he said. Popular within universities, soccer emphasized values like teamwork and brotherhood, which stood in stark contrast to “the Nazi ideal” of manliness, which praised individual displays of strength and talent. In Austria-Hungary, many Jews became pioneers of the sport, including Hirsch’s teammate Gottfried Fuchs, who set a world record of 10 goals in a single soccer match. Unlike Hirsch, Fuchs survived the Holocaust by immigrating to Canada; he never returned to Germany.
For Voloj, the biggest struggle in writing about Hirsch comes with illuminating his personal life, rather than solely celebrating his accomplishments. “I know a lot about the statistics, but I don’t know so much about Julius Hirsch, the human being,” he told me.
He plans to start by depicting the religion and culture Hirsch was a part of — which he says might be the first time for non-Jewish readers to learn about these traditions. Voloj told me how he plans to recreate Hirsch’s Jewish wedding: showcasing the Chuppah and the smashing of the glass. In the scene, a rabbi will discuss its symbolism — a reminder of the fragility of life and the destruction of the Temple.
Tragically, though, this moment will be followed by one later in life, in which Hirsch divorced his non-Jewish wife as the German climate became increasingly dangerous for Jews. Hirsch hoped this would spare his children from persecution, but it was no use: Both of Hirsch’s children were sent to concentration camps. They ultimately survived, though, and Hirsch’s son later worked with a historian, Werner Skretny, to publish a biography of Hirsch.
A grandchild of Holocaust survivors, Voloj says he doesn’t want to focus overwhelmingly on Hirsch’s death, but instead to honor the life he led. However, it was still important for him to represent the antisemitic reality that Hirsch lived in; in the last part of the book, Voloj said, he will discuss how “the people who celebrated him basically abandoned him.”
Voloj says he believes that exploring Hirsch’s story is especially important today, when soccer is more diverse than ever and the German soccer team has become inclusive of many ethnic minorities. However, prejudice has also increased in many ways.
Voloj told me he sees “a lot of parallels in the experience” between the hatred that Jewish players faced under Nazi rule and what many Muslim players are experiencing today. However, he also said that many lessons could be taken from Hirsch’s early experiences when few fans cared that he was Jewish.
“There is something we can learn about the acceptance of the German Jewish players back then on the national team,” Voloj said. From his work, he hopes that readers can learn both from Germany’s dark past and also “overcome misconceptions about Jewish identity.”
The post Being a soccer superstar couldn’t save him from the Nazis appeared first on The Forward.
