Tamar Runyan – Chabad.org
Shay Shtriks, the Bulgarian-based sports director of the Eurohold Balkan International Basketball League, celebrated a uniquely personal Jewish moment last week when the Hapoel Tel Aviv basketball team arrived in Sofia to play Bulgaria’s Levski club.
Given the opportunity by Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Yosef Salamon to don the prayer boxes known as tefillin, he heartily took part, noting that it was the first time to do so since his Bar Mitzvah.
Salamon, who directs the Rohr Chabad Jewish Community Center in Sofia and provided hot kosher meals for the visiting Israeli team, said later that Shtriks told him that as a soldier in the Lebanon War of 1982, he was approached by some Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis to don tefillin, but every time he started to pull up his sleeve, he was called to duty.
It was like “closing a circle,” said Shtriks.
Yes, #1 beautiful.