Engagement at the Garden

Israeli coach ejected at eventful charity game for Migdal Ohr at MSG

By Mayer Fertig Issue of Oct. 23, 2009 / 5 Cheshvan 5770 Robert Shimonov didn’t plan to go to the Migdal Ohr charity basketball game. He had just finished teaching Hebrew school on Sunday when a friend called to say she had a ticket for him to join her at Madison Square Garden to see the New York Knicks play Israel’s best team, Maccabi Tel Aviv. “Like Hashem made sure that I see it happen,” he later wrote in a Facebook message to his friend, Robert Nowbakht. Just as he was settling into his seat during the third quarter he looked up at the scoreboard in time to see the words, “Sara will you marry me?” Then, he saw Nowbakht, 28, of Great Neck, on bended knee and holding a rose and a ring, propose marriage to Sara Abdyan, 26, also from Great Neck. She said yes, to great applause. It was significant to Shimonov, 26, of Fresh Meadows, Queens, because the shidduch was originally his idea. “Six years ago [Nowbakht] and I went on birthright and we became really good friends. I told him I have this friend Sara and I think you and her could really hit it off,” Shimonov said Monday. Nowbakht, perhaps conveniently for a new groom, works in the pearl business, and is also a part-time cantor at several shuls in Great Neck. He confirmed that Shimonov first suggested the match to him when they returned from Israel in winter 2003. He was Shimonov’s counselor on the trip. “I don’t know why I didn’t follow up,” he said. The couple has been dating for six months. Robert Nowbakht, who was born and raised in Germany, said they planned to get engaged around now, but the holidays and Sara’s busy schedule have been difficult to work around — she’s currently taking courses toward her second Masters degree. He is a big fan of Maccabi Tel Aviv. “I said to myself, let’s give it a try.” The Migdal Ohr people liked the idea and agreed to help. “They told me originally [the cameras would come to them during] a fourth quarter time out. At the last second they changed it to the third quarter. I sent them my seat number so they would know what we looked like.” Abdyan, a fifth grade teacher at North Shore Hebrew Academy who lived in Iran until age 7, knew the big moment was coming — she just didn’t know when or just how big a moment it would turn out to be. “Yeah right,” she said she thought at the time. “No way, come on. I was just shocked” and “lost her composure. I wanted to stand up and I fell.” “When I go back to that moment,” Abdyan said Monday, when more than 14,000 Migdal Ohr supporters and basketball fans — and, she later learned, a worldwide television audience — saw her accept Nowbakht’s proposal and spontaneously kiss him, “It’s so not who he is. He is such a shy individual. I never thought in a million years that this would be such a public thing.” Bride and groom both described the kiss as spontaneous and uncharacteristic of their shomer negiah relationship; Abdyan laughed and said, “I hope G-d can forgive us.” “It was a little embarrassing because, never mind that it was in front of thousands of people — when he said, ‘By the way, sweetie, our family and friends were in the audience, I thought, ‘Greeeeaaaat.’ “He really went all out,” Abdyan said of her husband-to-be. “Baruch Hashem, he is definitely very special.” The basketball game was special, too, though for an entirely different reason: it is a rare charity exhibition game in which a coach is ejected by the referees. Still more rare is one in which a prominent rabbinical figure appears on the court to attempt to mediate. Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Grossman, the founder of Migdal Ohr, had already appeared on Madison Square Garden’s famed hardwood floor during halftime to lead the crowd in reciting “Shma Yisroel,” and sing, “Am Yisroel Chai.” He came out again, this time sans hat, to try to convince the referees to not eject Maccabi coach Pini Gershon from the game for arguing over fouls. Rabbi Grossman was unsuccessful, but unwittingly did succeed in ensuring that the charity game made news around the world, garnering millions of dollars of free publicity. Migdal Ohr operates nearly a dozen schools in Migdal Haemek, and what is said to be the largest orphanage in the world, serving 6500 Israeli children. Maccabi Tel Aviv was able to maintain a respectable margin against the NBA team for most of the game but when it was all over the Knicks won, 106-91. Maccabi travelled to Los Angeles to play a second benefit game for Migdal Ohr, against the LA Clippers. A spokesman for the organization called the fundraisers a “big success” and said, “Considering the economy it more than met our expectations.”