The calendar is at May, but college basketball’s “March Madness,” still lingers. Todd Golden, the 39-year-old coach of the Florida Gators, became the first Jewish hoops coach since 1988 to guide his team to victory.
Golden, the youngest coach to win it all since the tournament was reconfigured in 1985, paid his dues. After playing college ball, he opted to join Maccabi Haifa for two seasons. In 2009 Golden played under Auburn coach Bruce Pearl who coached in the Maccabiah Games and then went on to coach under Pearl at Auburn before becoming boss coach in Florida three years ago. Golden’s Florida team beat Pearl’s Auburn team in the semi-finals before going all the way.
This is the first year I actually watched a full college basketball game during March Madness. Specifically, the game when the University of Michigan was playing with Danny Wolf on its team. Danny is a 20-year-old 7-footer, who is a dual American-Israeli citizen. He had his bar mitzvah in Israel at the Kotel and attended the Chicago area Solomon Schecter Day School through the fourth grade. Danny says he keeps kosher and is expected to be a low first round draft choice in the June NBA draft.
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When Pesach started after Shabbos (as it did a few weeks ago), I originally thought it would be a good thing as we wouldn’t be tired going into the seder. After all, we’d be able to take a long Shabbos nap. However, it was a tiring Shabbos morning. Shacharis started at 7 a.m. and it was a rush home and a rush to eat to finish lunch and split the morning seudah in two parts to accommodate seudah shlishis and finish our obligations well before noon.
After a short conference with my wife, we decided to split our Pesach into two parts. If you’ve been following this column, you’ll recall I remarried last summer and this was our first Pesach together. Since we’ve been married the (several) married grandchildren on her side have invited us to stay over for a full Shabbos, which we did and enjoyed. We drove to Detroit for Succos and opted to also go to my side’s grandchildren for part of Pesach.
We split Pesach between the Jackson suburb of Lakewood for the first three days to stay with my grandson, his great wife and their three little guys – six, four, and thirteen months. Baruch Hashem, everything went well and we went home to our little Lakewood dugout Monday night to sleep and catch up with three days of news and pointed the car to Detroit Tuesday (the first day of Chol HaMoed).
We shared the driving to Detroit and back, and did each way in one day. Each way took about 10 hours of driving and a half hour for some gas stops. We left the day after Pesach and especially on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, saw many cars full of orthodox-garbed folks. We saw two unusual sights. A young man wearing tefillin was davening into a small siddur while pumping gas. About an hour later a man stopped by the side of the road was davening near the passenger door as his tallis was blowing in the wind. We passed wondering why he didn’t daven at the rest stop about 10 minutes back or the next one up ahead.
We’re still wondering.
