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Baltimore | Two shul friends were
shmoozing after Friday-night services
at a small Orthodox synagogue here
last week.
"So," said one middle-aged man to
his friend, a teacher, "are you going
tomorrow night?"
The teacher thought for a few
seconds. Going where? A lecture? A
synagogue dinner?
Then it occurred to him -- Towson.
That's Towson University, a liberal
arts college in a Baltimore suburb
where the men's basketball team
had a home game against Drexel
University Saturday at 8 p.m.
Towson, where Tamir Goodman, a
freshman, a product of a Baltimore
Jewish day school, is the starting point guard.
Two years ago Tamir -- he's identified by first name only in the Jewish
community and on campus -- became a national media figure whose
story sounded at times like a Jewish soap opera.
A top player, he made a verbal commitment to play at the University of
Maryland, a national power, then backed out when the school
expressed reservations about his Shabbes (Sabbath) requirements. He
transferred from the Talmudical Academy of Baltimore to a Seventh Day
Adventist institution because his Orthodox day school was
uncomfortable with the increasing basketball attention. Then he
received an athletic scholarship from Towson.
Tamir is perhaps one of the more prominent Jews in Baltimore. His
outspoken Jewishness, his refusal to play or practice on Shabbes, his
omnipresent yarmulke -- not to mention his no-look passes and radar-like
alley-oop assists -- draw Jewish and non-Jewish fans.
And Towson, with about 1,000 Jews in a student body of 16,000, has
become a de facto Jewish institution.
There's a kosher concession stand at Towson Center games and
"Towson University Basketball" yarmulkes for sale. Ballboys wear yarmulkes.
Coach Mike Jaskulski does weekly interviews on the "Shalom
Baltimore" radio show and notes Friday sundown times on his desk
calendar. Courtside seats are offered as a premium by the Baltimore
Jewish Times. There are three "Jewish Community Nights" this season
and an exhibition game against an Israeli team.
"All because of a skinny, red-headed 18-year-old," says Sports
Information Director Peter Schlehr, who credits Tamir's arrival for
drastically higher season ticket sales and bigger crowds on the road.
Tamir, who turned 19 last month, is listed at 6-foot-3 and 155 pounds
in the Towson media guide. Though he has spent long hours in the
weight room, he has added no visible bulk since high school.
For Towson, whose basketball team plays in the shadow of nearby
University of Maryland, Tamir has been a marketing-public relations
boon. A frum (religious) kid with schoolyard moves isn't a novelty now -- but that
Tamir's doing them against NCAA Div. I opponents is. The Tamir file in
Schlehr's office has recent stories from Newsday, The Washington
Post, The Boston Globe and The Maine Telegram.
"Unless the No. 1 high school player in the country last year came
here," Schlehr says, "we wouldn't get this much attention."
"He understands that he is a wonderful story," says Phil Jacobs, editor
of The Baltimore Jewish Times, which has covered Tamir extensively.
Prospective fans began calling Towson as soon as Tamir signed. The
stands at home games -- this season's seven Saturday games are
scheduled to start a few hours after Shabbes ends -- hold scores of
Jewish fans, both non-Orthodox and many with black hats and sheitls,
or wigs. "There really isn't a lot of interest in watching a gentile team
running up and down the court," says Schlehr, who is not Jewish.
"The average frum person loves it," says Larry Cohen, host of "Shalom
Baltimore."
"A lot of learning," Schlehr says of the conversations and of his
encounters with Tamir. "I learned about the menorah."
Tamir, in a room with no windows, lit his in Schlehr's window on a road
trip during Chanukah. "I was aware of the Sabbath, but did not know
that it is different" -- the time it begins and ends -- "in Newark and
Baltimore and ...
"We're becoming aware of it," Schlehr says.
"We are trying to make it pleasant for ... the Orthodox Jewish fans,"
says Larry Martin, who handles marketing for the Towson team. The
final regular-season home game, Saturday, Feb. 24, will feature free
workout jerseys, each with the number 18 -- chai. "Someone clued me
about 18 being a ‘lucky' number," he says.
"Towson has done everything right in terms of serving the Jewish
community," Cohen says. "They realize that they can serve the needs
of a segment of the community and it's good for them.
"It's just going to get bigger and bigger," he says, "because we're
going to have something to build on."
The Tigers, with only one senior in the starting lineup, are 10-12
following Saturday's loss to Drexel. With more experience and the
hoped-for addition of top recruits, the team, which will qualify for the
America East Conference playoffs next month, can contend for the
league championship over the next few seasons, observers here say.
One key, Jaskulski says, is Tamir, who has been a starter since his
third game. "It became evident that we needed him on the floor," the
coach said.
Tamir brings the ball upcourt and is the main passer. A 20- to
30-point-a-game scorer in high school, he now averages under six a
game but ranks among the conference leaders in assists.
"He's gone beyond my expectations," says Jaskulski, who first saw
Tamir play three years ago and contacted him after Tamir decided not
to attend Maryland. "We were in need of some help in the backcourt.
He had the special gift to make everyone better around him."
First, the coach talked to the team. He told his players about Tamir's
potential. And he told them about likely accommodations on Fridays
and Saturdays. Game times, practice times, travel times might have to
be changed.
"I had a couple of guys stand up and say ‘Coach, we would love to
have him on our team,' " Jaskulski says.
Besides missing Saturday practices, which Tamir watches in street
clothes, he is treated like any other player, "which is just how he likes
it," the coach says.
On campus, where Tamir was a Dean's List student last semester, his
religious identity is less important than his sports savvy. "In the Jewish
community he's probably known because he is an Orthodox Jew," says
a sportswriter for the student newspaper. "Here he is known as a
freshman point guard, except that the games on Saturday end at 10
o'clock instead of eight hours earlier."
When Tamir leaves practice on Friday afternoons, the other players
send him off, in the style of team cheers, with a shout of "One, two,
three, four, Good Shabbes!"
That pleases Tamir.
"My goals are to be the best basketball player I can be and the best
Jew I can be," he says.
Tamir wears the perpetual smile of a kid who's living his dream, and a
new knit yarmulke, in the team yellow-and-black colors, brought back by his
mother from Israel last month. "I like the kiddush Hashem
[sanctification of G-d's name] I can make."
His father, Karl, knows what it's like to be an isolated Jew at times. A
sailor in the U.S. Navy during the Cuban missile crisis, he says he was
the only Jew on his ship. "When you're the only Jew it makes you a
stronger person," he says.
Karl Goodman flies to nearly every road game, "especially to sit with
Tamir in the hotel room and to spend Shabbes with him" when there is
no Jewish community in the area. He watches the games from a seat in
the rafters. His wife, Chava, when she goes, paces in the hall or reads
Psalms for her son's health.
"I don't watch," she says.
Tamir, recovering from a sprained foot that kept him out of the
previous game, was on the bench at the start of the Drexel game. He
played six minutes in the first half and most of the second, feeding his
teammates for a game-high five assists, streaking down the left side
for a twisting bank shot, missing three long shots and stealing the ball
once.
Tamir's performance brings a smile to Terry Martin, the Tigers'
marketer, who says he is grateful to Gary Williams, the Maryland coach
who reneged on his early agreement to Tamir.
Tamir's performance this season will help next year's Tigers, Martin
says. "He's a great recruiting tool. Williams did us all a
favor."
Steve Lipman is a staff writer with the
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