Last week, 19 Israeli high school basketball players from the Hapoel Eshkol team, displaced from the Eshkol region near the Gaza Strip, visited New York to play again.
At a game against Manhattan’s Jewish Ramaz School that ended in a 45-45 tie on Thursday, Guy Moses Auerbach, the team’s 19-year-old captain, told the New York Post: “Each and every one of us evacuated from different places.”
“All the team split up. We haven’t played at all this season,” he said.
Team members lost family members, a coach and their homes. Hamas kidnapped some of the players’ relatives, and player Noam Or was held hostage in Gaza for 50 days. Following his liberation, Or learned of the murders of both his parents.
The Project 24 nonprofit organized a 10-day trip to bring together Israeli student basketball players in New York. The group’s founder, Daniel Gradus, said the students “need something else, they need healing, they need hugging. When they play basketball, it clears their minds,” he said.
“Sports has healing power. These kids have had their lives upended, including their vision for how their season would turn out,” Natan Cohen, the director of marketing for NCSY, told JNS. “It may seem trivial at first glance, but to these kids, it has special meaning. The court, from tipoff to final buzzer, is a place where the war isn’t happening.”
Moses Auerbach’s grandfather, Gadi Moses, remains a captive of the Hamas terrorists. Moses Auerbach called basketball his “way of life” and where he goes when he wants “to be disconnected from the world,” according to the Post.
The trip featured seven games and scrimmages with other youth.
“It’s really fun to get the whole team together and play basketball once again,” Moses Auerbach said.
The trip also included such diversions as a Knicks playoff game, a Yankees game, a WNBA game between the New York Liberty and Chicago Sky, and a performance of “Lion King” on Broadway.
