World Series ignites passions in Israeli villages

KARNEI SHOMRON — The Chicago Cubs were facing the Cleveland Indians this week in a historic World Series, and most of Israel could not care less. This Jewish town is different.

The Neve Aliza neighborhood of Karnei Shomron is overwhelmingly American. Among the some 200 families from the United States or Canada that live here, about two dozen have roots in Chicago and Cleveland, according to residents. A main street is even nicknamed “Chicago Road.”

These families left behind their lives in the United States to participate in the Israeli dream. But seeing their home teams in Major League Baseball’s deciding series stirred old American passions.

“I think there’s something about baseball more than any other sport that transcends generation to generation,” Doug Mandel, who has been waking up in the wee hours of the morning to watch the World Series live from his house in Neve Aliza, told JTA. “There’s nothing more exciting than a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth.”

Neve Aliza was originally part of a separate settlement called Ginot Shomron that was founded by American and Canadian families in 1985. The leafy suburban-looking neighborhood merged into the municipality of Karnei Shomron, located north of Jerusalem in the Samaria region, in 1991.

Karnei Shomron, home to about 7,000 Jews, is among about 120 settlements in Judea and Samaria that are recognized by the Israeli government and that together house about 60,000 American Jews, 15 percent of their population, according to a forthcoming book by Oxford University historian Sara Hirschhorn.

“Americans do not abandon their history, culture and values in moving to create a city on a hilltop, whether that be a baseball mound or a settlement,” she told JTA in a nod to her book, “City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement.”

Rabbi Sidney Gold’s values brought him to Neve Aliza from Chicago in 1985, along with his wife and four children. They have since had three more. It is important to him that his family be in the Judea and Samaria during these “pre-messianic times.”

“I always wanted to be part of Jewish history, not just a footnote of Jewish history,” Gold told JTA. “By living in Samaria, I’m trying to influence Jewish history in a direction I believe in, and I want to lead others to do the same.”

For Gold and his wife, that has meant being educators. After leading the local Young Israel shul for 15 years, Gold, 60, stepped down this year and is teaching at a local elementary school and providing counseling. His wife, Karen, teaches English at a high school in Kfar Saba. Their children followed a typical path for Modern Orthodox Israelis.

Cubs baseball may be a world apart from his family’s life in Israel, but it’s part of Gold’s personal Jewish history. He grew up going to games, sitting in the bleachers and betting on the outcome of each inning. He has been watching the World Series live at 2 or 3 am when it airs on Israel TV because of the time difference. Since the only TV set is in the bedroom, Karen Gold has been watching, too.

“When the screen is 42 inches and blaring in your face and your husband is screaming, you don’t have much choice,” she said, laughing.

The children are spared watching the games live. But the sons have to be ready to take part in postgame analysis. His son, Harel, a 26-year-old electrician who was born in Israel and was wearing a Cubs T-shirt Friday, said he is following the series mostly for his father.

“Talking about the Cubs gives us quality bonding time. I support his passion,” Harel Gold said in Israeli-accented English.

Asked if he thought Cubs fandom would survive another generation in his family, Harel Gold said he would try to inculcate the sons he expects to one day have with his new fiance. If that failed, he said, they could always bond over soccer.

Around the corner from “Chicago Road,” Mandel, a 64-year-old retired podiatrist, has been spending nights rooting for the Indians. Fortunately for his wife, Iris, the TV is in the living room.

The couple settled in Neve Aliza with their four children in 1993. Three years earlier they had left their spacious house in Cleveland for a trailer in a West Bank immigration center. Iris Mandel, an English teacher who works with Karen Gold, said they were attracted to the neighborhood’s tight-knit English-speaking community.

“Our attitude was that making aliyah was a huge sacrifice. We left our family. We left our culture. We left everything we knew,” she told JTA. “We didn’t have to be 100 percent Israeli, but we were proud our children were 100 percent Israeli.

“It didn’t even didn’t even cross my mind that we were going across the Green Line, because in my mind it’s just Israel.”

The Mandels’ son, Mitch, has been watching the World Series from bed on his smartphone. He is living in his parents’ house with his wife and two sons until his apartment in one of the Karnei Shomron’s new housing developments is finished.

Mandel was 8 when the family made aliyah, by which time a love for Cleveland sports, and the Indians in particular, had already taken hold. In Israel, he grew up playing in the Israel Baseball Association. He anticipates his sons, aged 5 and 2, will one day do the same. They have already learned to shout the Indian’s rallying cry, “Go Tribe.”

A block away, Michael Rich has been recording the World Series games. A 76-year-old retired math professor, he and his wife made aliyah with their four children in 1990. They “fell in love with Israel” during a year they spent in the country while he taught at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, he said.

Having grown up selling newspapers and scorecards at Wrigley Field, he never stopped being a Cubs fan, which he said is like being a Zionist, “a bug that gets you.” But he did not pass on his obsession to his four children, and his grandchildren and great-grandchildren don’t know a balk from a bunt.

“Baseball is not holy to me, and there’s absolutely no reason why I should impose it upon them,” Rich said. “It’s a craziness of mine. I don’t have to pass on my craziness to other people.”