Redwood City Rugby Player Competing for Team USA In Israel

Words By Joshua A. Berkman
Video by David Broder 

Sporting a six-inch gash on his right forearm, rugby player Jared Braun, 22, walked off the field after a tough result. His American side gave up a last-minute score to South Africa for a draw in its first Rugby 7’s match of the 2013 Maccabiah -- sponsored in part by The Jewish Agency for Israel.

“We would have liked to get the ‘W’ but it’s great to play in Israel,” said Braun, who patched his wound with a large Band-Aid and took the field for a second match, 45 minutes later, in the rugby 7s round-robin, which Braun and his fellow Yanks eventually won.

“Maccabiah is a chance for Jews to come together and represent the strength and passion that Jewish people have. It’s not every day we can do that,” he said.

Braun, born to South African parents, grew up with the game in Redwood City, California. He now plays varsity rugby for legendary collegiate powerhouse Cal-Berkeley. Playing the sport in Israel -- on team of young Jewish men -- is an opportunity he relishes. Careful not to diminish the intense bond and friendship he shares with his Cal teammates, he described the Maccabiah experience as unique in the sense that it reinforces his connection to the Jewish people and his heritage.

“Everyone in Israel is dedicated to the ideal that one belief is everything,” Braun said. “The connection that everyone in Israel has is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before,” he said.

At the same time, being a proud Jewish Zionist at Cal-Berkeley is in many ways also a unifying experience, if not quite as intense as a rugby scrum in Israel. The campus is home to arguably the most rabid anti-Israel movement of any university in the world. For example, during its self-proclaimed “Israel Apartheid Week,” the anti-Israel community often erects mock checkpoints that block students from getting to class or to their dorms. And last April, the Student Senate passed a resolution calling on the university to divest from Israel. Despite the provocations, or possibly because of them, Braun said that he and many other Jewish students share a desire to stand with the Jewish state.

“Jewish life on campus is its own little world,” Braun said. “At Berkeley everyone has their own opinion. But you come together as Jews. You just push the hostility toward Israel aside and you come together for yourselves, for your culture, and for the State of Israel.” 

During these two weeks, however, campus politics and debates are thousands of miles away. It’s all about experiencing Israel and celebrating the global Jewish family in its homeland.  A few “mauls” and a lot of “tries” are nice too.