Ricky Michelon–the basketball-playing pride and joy of Highland Park High School–catches the ball, and works it to his right. Out of the corner of his eye he spies two opponents rushing him, so he fakes a pass and leaves his feet to let loose a long, soft jumper.
“We’ve got people coming from all over the world,” says Mark Klaber, head of the Chicago delegation. “The games will run for one week [August 18 to 25]. We figure to have 3,000 competitors. There will be delegations from [about 60] cities all over the country, and countries all over the world”–Israel, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Canada, Ireland, and Australia.
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This is one of the biggest events in the Jewish sporting world,” says Klaber, a local businessman who grew up in Rogers Park, and now lives in Skokie. “A lot of great Jewish athletes got their start in the Maccabi games, like Mark Spitz and Mitch Gaylord, the Olympic gymnast.”
Though outarmed, Maccabee’s forces pushed the enemy soldiers out of Jerusalem, and retook the sacred temple. Their victory spawned Hanukkah, the winter-time festival of lights that celebrates, among other things, religious freedom, Jewish nationalism, and Maccabee’s heroics, which disprove the stereotype of Jews as timid, scholarly creatures.
The Maccabi team, however, wasn’t that hard to recruit. Word of the tryouts was spread through synagogues, Jewish community centers, and high schools. The first tryout drew over 60 participants.
The Maccabi squad, however, features only two kids from Chicago, and neither attends a public school.
That game took place at the court of the Jewish Community Center in West Rogers Park, where the Demons, younger and smaller, jumped to an early lead by virtue of the fact that they were better dribblers.
