Berihun is Maccabiah 10K champ!

From Team Berihun

Family friend Berihun Webee won the Maccabiah 10K last night in an exciting race in hot and muggy Tel Aviv. Full coverage at http://teamberihun.blogspot.com/

Also, Nicki Pines is here in Israel for a Yad Vashem seminar. She lamented that Danielle Schwartz isn't competing in tennis, the only sport in Jerusalem. Danielle easily could have done it and told Nicki she regrets not having come. If she makes it to the 19th Maccabiah in 2013, all the cousins promised to attend.

The Maccabiah, it should be noted, are decidedly not the Olympics. A few examples prove this:

1. During the 10K last night, kids walking across the track as Berihun and the other racers approached. The race officials got up and started yelling at the kids to scoot.
2. Halfway through the 10K race, the stadium sprinklers went off in the infield, dousing the race officials, the timer clocks, and getting everyone frantic before the sprinklers were shut off a minute or two later. Oops, forgot there was a track meet on the calendar!
3. So funny and humiliating it's painful: The Maccabiah's big coup was getting Jason Lezak, America's #2 champion swimmer to compete. Lezak, Jewish swimmer extraordinaire, lives in Michael Phelps's shadow and gave up on an important summer competition to join the Maccabiah. For that he was given the distinct honor of lighting the Maccabiah torch at the opening ceremony. As he gets up to light the torch, the stadium announcer calls out in Hebrew, "And here to light the torch is Michael Ph... Jason Lezak." You could not make this up. It's the worst possible thing she could have said. Check out the faux pas on youtube.