By Rick Kardonne
Tribune Correspondent
Canada placed third in the 2005 Maccabiah Games in Israel, behind Israel and the US.
ALLEN GERSKUP
But Allen Gerskup, the new president of Maccabi Canada, is not content to rest on the Canadian team’s laurels. This Toronto accountant is determined to create a fresher, younger face to the Maccabi Canada organization whose prime purpose is to raise funds for the Canadian contingent to the Jewish Olympics, which usually takes place once every four years.
Gerskup’s own background is sports-oriented, both as an athlete and as an organizer. After playing baseball in the B’nai Brith league beginning in 1977, he took over the baseball league in the early 1980s, when there were more than 100 teams. Already he was an innovator.
“I made sure that everybody could play by having the league initiate Slow Pitch Softball,” which ensured that batters did not have to fear getting beaned in the head by incompetent pitchers hurling fast-speed major-league-regulation hardballs. “In 1981, during the major league baseball strike, Al Sokol, Toronto Star sportswriter, wrote an article about me and the league,” said Gerskup, who also initiated the first B’nai Brith sports banquet in the early 1980s at Shaarei Shomayim Synagogue
In 1984, Alan Gerskup was approached to organize the Canadian Maccabiah softball team. “I had a good ‘in’ to secure a facility for the softball team, in Toronto. I went to Israel in 1985 with the team. This was my first visit to Israel.”
With each successive Maccabiah Games, Gerskup rose up the ranks of the Maccabi Canada fundraising apparatus, which includes sending the athletes to the games, even though to this day the athletes must pay part of their expenses. Maccabi Canada experiences a fundraising crisis before each games, and 2005 was no exception.
However, in 2005, some of Toronto’s leading corporate magnates, thanks to the initiatives of long-time Maccabi fundraiser Sid Greenberg, collectively managed to have the games break even before they went to Tel Aviv. Big givers included Barrick Gold CEO Peter Munk, Onex CEO Gerald Schwartz, Ned Miller, Alliance-Atlantis CEO Robert Lantos, and others.
He had high praise for Sid Greenberg and Tom Bacher for their fundraising efforts not only in Toronto but across Canada. “Montreal, Winnipeg and Vancouver did very well.”
Gerskup wouldn’t discuss the acrimony within the previous Maccabi Canada organizational ranks.
When asked whether Greenberg was successful in raising large sums of money from the UJA and CIJA people on condition that he curtail his activities with B’nai Brith Canada, Gerskup – although he said he is close to Greenberg – told the Jewish Tribune that he knew nothing about this.
The most important change that Gerskup plans to implement in the Maccabi Canada organization is to have “a much younger board of directors. They will all be in their 30s and 40s. The older veterans’ advice is needed, but it is time for the young folks to take charge.”
While Gerskup has good reason to be proud of Canada’s medals tally in 2005, he noted that most of the medals were in team sports such as basketball, softball, rugby and girls’ baseball, rather than by individuals. He noted that the Canadian swim team in 2005 was small. “I would like to build up the swim team,” both in terms of quantity and quality, he said.
“Some fine athletes didn’t go to the 2005 Maccabiah Games because they were afraid to go to Israel. We missed a few people,” he lamented. But by the time of the next Maccabiah Games in 2009, he feels that such fears will be long gone and that nobody will think twice about going to Israel to compete in the Jewish Olympics.
For further information regarding Canada’s proud participation in the Maccabiah Games, and how this participation can be enhanced in the future, visit Maccabi Canada's website at: www.maccabicanada.com.
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