(no subject)
Aug. 12th, 2018 01:23 amTitle of vid: Ein HaNamer
Vidder:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seekingferret
Fandom: Jewish Athlete RPF
Music: Ein HaNamer by Infectzia
Summary: 3000 years of beautiful tradition from Moses to Sandy Koufax
Content notes: Fast cuts
Responsible for lack of consistent title block from vid to vid:seekingferret
Acknowledgements: Thanks tobessyboo for beta and source help and sanguinity for beta help.
I made a fanvid to Idan Raichel's "Ma'agalim" and submitted it to Club Vivid two years ago because it was dancey and fun. And after that I started joking that I should submit a Hebrew language vidsong to Club Vivid every year until Ian gets tired of it. Nobody laughed, but nobody ever laughs at my jokes, so that's okay. It took two years after that for Ian to be so tired of it that he cancelled Vividcon altogether. [There might have been a few other reasons involved, but getting sick of Hebrew Club Vivid vids is clearly the biggest reason] So this is my last Hebrew language Club Vivid vid.
I stumbled into it by accident. I was following Aly Raisman's testimony against Larry Nassar, the doctor who sexually abused many top US gymnasts. Raisman is Jewish and famously did floor routines to Hava Nagila, so in my family we full-throatedly rooted for her when she was competing in the Olympics. It was heartbreaking to see her talk about what she and the other gymnasts had suffered, and yet exciting to see her take a leadership role in speaking up for justice. I was trying to figure out if I could make a vidlet about how awesome she is, situating her activism within the tradition of Jewish activism, but vids that have to handle soaring highs and crushing lows are difficult to navigate and I gave up pretty soon. But the parts of the vid draft that worked most easily were the ones of Raisman flipping and leaping, so I started asking if I could use that in a different vid. Hey, I said, last year I did a multifandom vid about fictional Jews, maybe I can do a multifandom vid about real Jewish athletes. Then I said, wait a minute, making a multifandom vid consumed your life, are you sure you want to do that again? But by the time we got to this point in the conversation my hands had already started vidding.
I laid out about a minute of rough timeline on four different Hebrew songs, all of which had decided musical merits but specific lyrical flaws. Then I thought, maybe I'm going at this wrong. I'm trying to do a Jewish version ofrunawaynun's amazing vid "Stamina", so maybe I should find a Hebrew cover of "The Greatest". I found one, but it was acoustic and not dancey. But this led me to the idea more generally of finding a Jock Jams kind of song in a Hebrew cover. And thus Youtube led me to Infectzia's Hebrew cover of Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger". Which was so clearly the right answer I don't know how i didn't come it it sooner.
I've been a Jewish sports fan my whole life, so there was less research required than I expected. A lot of the players I needed were obvious, and in particular there were athletes I needed to include not because of their broad significance in the world of sports, but because of their personal importance to me. Danny Schayes was the only Jewish basketball player in the NBA when I was growing up, and he meant a lot to me even though he was never that great a player. I was at the NBA draft when Omri Casspi was drafted and the israelis in the crowd starting dancing around Madison Garden with an Israeli flag. I remember the Jewish Jordan hype around Tamir Goodman and what he meant to my community. I felt our own Jewish version of Linsanity when rookie Ike Davis was tearing it up for the Mets. And of course there were usual suspects like Hank Greenberg and Nancy Lieberman and Sid Luckman who couldn't be left out. Wikipedia's list of Jewish athletes helped me fill in the gaps, and the gaps were crucial, because just as with "Might Lead to Mixed Dancing", I wanted diversity, to show all the different sorts of Jews who have been successful in so many different sports. This was a dangerous rabbit hole, though. Pretty soon I was watching the European curling championships and tracking down 20 year old Paralympic videos. Did you know the Paralympics were created by a Jewish refugee from the Nazis? Of course they were, this was the least surprising thing I learned while making this vid. [Ask me about Dr. Ludwig Gottman.] In spite of my efforts, this vid will definitely suffer from recency bias, because I didn't fall quite as deeply down the rabbit hole as I could have and that limited me mostly to what was on Youtube. [I'm also grateful tobessyboo, who made sure her faves were in the vid as well. Jason Zucker's tattoo cracks me up. Just saying.]
I watched the documentaries "Jews and Baseball: an American Love Story" and "The First Basket", respectively histories of Jews in baseball and basketball. And they both to a certain extent ascribe cultural significance to the presence of Jewish athletes at the top rungs of the game. Hank Greenberg meant something, Dolph Schayes meant something, Sandy Koufax meant something, because they testified to the ways in which early 20th century American stereotypes about Jews as bookish and wimpy nerds were wrong. They told the world that Jews could be tough and strong and sexy. I'm not certain I want to gainsay those claims, because I think to the post-war generation of Jews that was an important cultural testimony, but I don't want this vid to just exist as a supplement to that testimony, which is less relevant to my generation.
I want to say in this vid that Jews do sports because all people do sports, and some Jews are paragons because that's how things work. And that these people mean something to me and I admire them, both when they do and don't conform to cultural narratives that are convenient. I don't think Kerri Strug's triumph in Atlanta matters because she's Jewish, I think it matters because she's a fucking badass and an incredible gymnast. Shortly after I submitted the vid to the con, my sister shared an article with me about the day this June when five Jewish major leaguers all hit home runs. It made the Jewish papers, but it ultimately wasn't some sort of huge watershed moment. At a certain point, the stereotype is debunked and all that matters is sports.
But it's also unavoidable when making a vid like this to run into the ways in which being a prominent, public Jew means encountering and negotiating anti-semitism- to this day. I couldn't not rewatch the Muslim judokas forfeiting rather than compete against an Israeli. I couldn't not rewatch Denis Leary's bizarre rant about Kevin Youkilis. I couldn't not see all the anti-semitic chants Hank Greenberg faced. I had to look again at all the unnecessary obstacles the basketball world put up to prevent Tamir Goodman from playing college basketball at the level he was capable of. I couldn't miss the way the Austrian Swimming Federation banned some of its greatest swimmers for sixty years for the sin of refusing to compete at the '36 Olympics in Nazi Germany. This is not a vid about those things, but the fact that those things happen in sports is part of why I needed to celebrate these athletes.
This vid is not encyclopedic. It does not contain the best Jewish athletes of all time or even necessarily all my favorite Jewish athletes. It just exists as a celebration of the people it does include, who are awesome.
Athletes in the vid, in order of first appearance. All told it's about 75 athletes. I am happy to talk at length about any of them if you ask. I have lots of feels.:
( list )
Vidder:
seekingferretFandom: Jewish Athlete RPF
Music: Ein HaNamer by Infectzia
Summary: 3000 years of beautiful tradition from Moses to Sandy Koufax
Content notes: Fast cuts
Responsible for lack of consistent title block from vid to vid:
seekingferretAcknowledgements: Thanks to
bessyboo for beta and source help and sanguinity for beta help. I made a fanvid to Idan Raichel's "Ma'agalim" and submitted it to Club Vivid two years ago because it was dancey and fun. And after that I started joking that I should submit a Hebrew language vidsong to Club Vivid every year until Ian gets tired of it. Nobody laughed, but nobody ever laughs at my jokes, so that's okay. It took two years after that for Ian to be so tired of it that he cancelled Vividcon altogether. [There might have been a few other reasons involved, but getting sick of Hebrew Club Vivid vids is clearly the biggest reason] So this is my last Hebrew language Club Vivid vid.
I stumbled into it by accident. I was following Aly Raisman's testimony against Larry Nassar, the doctor who sexually abused many top US gymnasts. Raisman is Jewish and famously did floor routines to Hava Nagila, so in my family we full-throatedly rooted for her when she was competing in the Olympics. It was heartbreaking to see her talk about what she and the other gymnasts had suffered, and yet exciting to see her take a leadership role in speaking up for justice. I was trying to figure out if I could make a vidlet about how awesome she is, situating her activism within the tradition of Jewish activism, but vids that have to handle soaring highs and crushing lows are difficult to navigate and I gave up pretty soon. But the parts of the vid draft that worked most easily were the ones of Raisman flipping and leaping, so I started asking if I could use that in a different vid. Hey, I said, last year I did a multifandom vid about fictional Jews, maybe I can do a multifandom vid about real Jewish athletes. Then I said, wait a minute, making a multifandom vid consumed your life, are you sure you want to do that again? But by the time we got to this point in the conversation my hands had already started vidding.
I laid out about a minute of rough timeline on four different Hebrew songs, all of which had decided musical merits but specific lyrical flaws. Then I thought, maybe I'm going at this wrong. I'm trying to do a Jewish version of
runawaynun's amazing vid "Stamina", so maybe I should find a Hebrew cover of "The Greatest". I found one, but it was acoustic and not dancey. But this led me to the idea more generally of finding a Jock Jams kind of song in a Hebrew cover. And thus Youtube led me to Infectzia's Hebrew cover of Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger". Which was so clearly the right answer I don't know how i didn't come it it sooner.I've been a Jewish sports fan my whole life, so there was less research required than I expected. A lot of the players I needed were obvious, and in particular there were athletes I needed to include not because of their broad significance in the world of sports, but because of their personal importance to me. Danny Schayes was the only Jewish basketball player in the NBA when I was growing up, and he meant a lot to me even though he was never that great a player. I was at the NBA draft when Omri Casspi was drafted and the israelis in the crowd starting dancing around Madison Garden with an Israeli flag. I remember the Jewish Jordan hype around Tamir Goodman and what he meant to my community. I felt our own Jewish version of Linsanity when rookie Ike Davis was tearing it up for the Mets. And of course there were usual suspects like Hank Greenberg and Nancy Lieberman and Sid Luckman who couldn't be left out. Wikipedia's list of Jewish athletes helped me fill in the gaps, and the gaps were crucial, because just as with "Might Lead to Mixed Dancing", I wanted diversity, to show all the different sorts of Jews who have been successful in so many different sports. This was a dangerous rabbit hole, though. Pretty soon I was watching the European curling championships and tracking down 20 year old Paralympic videos. Did you know the Paralympics were created by a Jewish refugee from the Nazis? Of course they were, this was the least surprising thing I learned while making this vid. [Ask me about Dr. Ludwig Gottman.] In spite of my efforts, this vid will definitely suffer from recency bias, because I didn't fall quite as deeply down the rabbit hole as I could have and that limited me mostly to what was on Youtube. [I'm also grateful to
bessyboo, who made sure her faves were in the vid as well. Jason Zucker's tattoo cracks me up. Just saying.]I watched the documentaries "Jews and Baseball: an American Love Story" and "The First Basket", respectively histories of Jews in baseball and basketball. And they both to a certain extent ascribe cultural significance to the presence of Jewish athletes at the top rungs of the game. Hank Greenberg meant something, Dolph Schayes meant something, Sandy Koufax meant something, because they testified to the ways in which early 20th century American stereotypes about Jews as bookish and wimpy nerds were wrong. They told the world that Jews could be tough and strong and sexy. I'm not certain I want to gainsay those claims, because I think to the post-war generation of Jews that was an important cultural testimony, but I don't want this vid to just exist as a supplement to that testimony, which is less relevant to my generation.
I want to say in this vid that Jews do sports because all people do sports, and some Jews are paragons because that's how things work. And that these people mean something to me and I admire them, both when they do and don't conform to cultural narratives that are convenient. I don't think Kerri Strug's triumph in Atlanta matters because she's Jewish, I think it matters because she's a fucking badass and an incredible gymnast. Shortly after I submitted the vid to the con, my sister shared an article with me about the day this June when five Jewish major leaguers all hit home runs. It made the Jewish papers, but it ultimately wasn't some sort of huge watershed moment. At a certain point, the stereotype is debunked and all that matters is sports.
But it's also unavoidable when making a vid like this to run into the ways in which being a prominent, public Jew means encountering and negotiating anti-semitism- to this day. I couldn't not rewatch the Muslim judokas forfeiting rather than compete against an Israeli. I couldn't not rewatch Denis Leary's bizarre rant about Kevin Youkilis. I couldn't not see all the anti-semitic chants Hank Greenberg faced. I had to look again at all the unnecessary obstacles the basketball world put up to prevent Tamir Goodman from playing college basketball at the level he was capable of. I couldn't miss the way the Austrian Swimming Federation banned some of its greatest swimmers for sixty years for the sin of refusing to compete at the '36 Olympics in Nazi Germany. This is not a vid about those things, but the fact that those things happen in sports is part of why I needed to celebrate these athletes.
This vid is not encyclopedic. It does not contain the best Jewish athletes of all time or even necessarily all my favorite Jewish athletes. It just exists as a celebration of the people it does include, who are awesome.
Athletes in the vid, in order of first appearance. All told it's about 75 athletes. I am happy to talk at length about any of them if you ask. I have lots of feels.:
( list )