Inductees into the MetroWest Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, class of 2008, include, from left, Aaron Chernus, Bruce Beck, William “Doc” Pollak, David Klurman, and Danielle Klurman Hall.
Photo by b wang photo
July 3, 2008
The MetroWest Jewish Sports Hall of Fame just got a little more crowded with the induction of five new members.
More than 250 family members and friends attended a dinner at the Crystal Plaza in Livingston on June 26 to honor Bruce Beck, Aaron Chernus, William “Doc” Pollak, and the father and daughter “team” of David Klurman and Danielle Klurman Hall for their athletic achievements or accomplishments in a sports-related field.
• Chernus, who has won several medals in senior Olympic competition, did not become involved in competitive sports until he hit middle age. In his acceptance remarks, he said he would “keep on doing what I’m doing until my body fails me — or they test me for steroids.”
• Pollak gave up a chance to play professional baseball to become a dentist, but the septuagenarian continues to play as a member of the Livingston Dodgers, defending state champions of the U.S. Over Thirty Baseball League.
• Klurman was selected as one of the outstanding basketball players of the 1950s by The Star-Ledger. His daughter, Danielle, was named New Jersey State Tennis Champion three times during her high school career, winning 100 of 101 matches.
• Beck, a Livingston product who grew up a few blocks from the Crystal Plaza, is a multi-award-winning sports broadcaster. He told the audience his personal highlight was getting an exclusive interview with Gal Fridman, Israel’s first Olympic gold medalist, by belting out his bar mitzva haftara to suspicious security guards to prove he was a fellow Jew.
Beck praised his parents for “setting the example for their sons to embrace a sense of responsibility.” Prior to the dinner, Beck’s mother, Doris, a former mayor of Livingston, told NJ Jewish News, “I was born in Europe, came here as a little girl, and we were rather poor. But my mother always had the pushke — the blue box — and we put pennies in. I think I instilled that in my children because that’s how I grew up.”
Klurman and Pollak are both enshrined in the Newark Athletic Hall of Fame. Many of the guests had attended Weequahic High School. Klurman told NJJN about the extent of his alma mater’s reach.
“When Danielle represented the girls in the Maccabiah games [in 1985], I was jogging in Tel Aviv, and I had my Weequahic T-shirt on…. A guy comes over; I thought I was being mugged.” The man was an alumnus from the Newark school. “He was a retired doctor living [there], and he wanted me to tell him about Weequahic and to tell me what the school meant to him. Weequahic has a tremendous tradition.”
Shira Averbuch of Montclair and Andrew Brown of Kinnelon received the Jewish Student Athlete of the Year Awards. In her remarks, Averbuch thanked “every Jewish athlete that broke the stereotype of who we are and what we should be.”
The program also paid tribute to the gold medalist Maccabi boys’ basketball team at the 2006 games in Vancouver. Ian Eagle, a self-described “Hebrew school dropout” and “proud Jewish sportscaster,” served as master of ceremonies.
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