“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”
— Jewish proverb
Basketball players get used to standing out. They are often the tallest kids in their class. They draw stares walking through airports. They hear jokes about “How’s the air up there?” A spinal surgeon named Robert Bray once summed up the anatomy challenge this way: “The world ends at 6 foot 5. You can’t fit in a plane seat. You can’t drive certain types of cars. … Your accessibility across the board is limited.”
Imagine then being 7 feet. In college. And, on top of all that, being a practicing Jew, which, in big time basketball, puts you in a group that really could fit inside a car.
It’s lonely at the … top.
“I would hear it growing up, that noise about me being Jewish and (so) you don’t expect much from me as a basketball player,” says Danny Wolf, the terrific 7-foot Michigan transfer (from Yale) who’s helped lead the Wolverines to 22-8 record, a certain good seed in the NCAA tournament, and a showdown Sunday in the regular-season finale at Michigan State. “When I was younger, I kind of looked at (being Jewish) as an opportunity to prove myself.”
Wolf is not “accidentally” Jewish, i.e. the non-practicing son of a mixed religious marriage, or someone Jewish by birth who can’t tell you where a synagogue is.
Quite the contrary. Wolf, whose parents are both Jewish, attended a Solomon Schechter Jewish day school until fifth grade, where Hebrew and biblical lessons were part of the curriculum. He keeps kosher at home and on the road. He and his two brothers had their bar mitzvahs in Israel, at the historic Western Wall, which dates back more than 2,000 years.
Wolf even received Israeli citizenship a few years ago and played for their under-20 national team in the European Championships.
“The most beautiful thing about Judaism,” he says, “is the way it connects me with my family. It transcends other things and brings us together.”
Now let’s be honest. It’s common in sports to hear Christian athletes speak loudly of their faith, cite its influence, point to the heavens, credit Jesus before issuing postgame comments.
But how often do you hear testimonials from a Jewish player? It’s not only rare, but in today’s climate of ever-growing antisemitism, it’s also brave.
Wolf doesn’t look at it that way. He’s just being who he is.
Big advantages
“Danny takes a lot of pride in (his religion),” Dusty May, the Michigan basketball coach, told me recently. “His ultimate goal is the NBA and that’s in the future. But I think he’s really gonna take pride representing his family and his faith in the highest levels of basketball.
“Danny plays for a lot of the right reasons. His heart is the right place.”
True. It’s just a little higher up than most people’s. Wolf says he got used to being bigger very young.
“My father is tall. I have two brothers who are 6-foot-10. I was always tall in school, but never the tallest. So I played guard growing up, and then in high school, the first two years, I was a wing player.
“And then I hit a growth spurt.”
What kind of spurt, he is asked?
“I think I went from like 6-6 to 6-9.”
Oh.
Most people don’t start their growth spurts at 6-6. But Wolf, with sandy hair and a boyish countenance, is as matter of fact about his height as he is about his talent. Both have made a huge difference in the Wolverines’ fortunes this season. Under May, the Wolverines have whiplashed from last year’s abysmal 8-24 finish (the last under coach Juwan Howard) to a Big Dance-bound 22-8, and an assured double-bye in the Big Ten tournament.
Wolf was integral to the turnaround.
“We had a plan,” May said about his quick rebuild. “We felt from day one we can’t come in and do what everyone else does and beat them at their own game. So we have to be different.
“Danny, with his connection to Michigan (his mother, sister and cousins attended U-M) and him being a quality player, we felt like we needed to devote a lot of time recruiting him. It was almost like if we didn’t get him, there was a chance we could only be OK.”
Instead, by pairing Wolf with another transfer, 7-foot-1 Vlad Goldin, the Wolverines were more than OK. They invented a new Twin Towers persona.
And the wins started coming.
The internet is now full of highlight plays between Goldin and Wolf. Fans marvel at Wolf’s fluidity at 7 feet, making behind the back passes and smooth 3-point jumpers. He leads the Wolverines in rebounds and blocks, which you might expect from a big man, yet is also second in assists, points and field-goal percentage, making more than half of his shots.
“Being able to see over the defense and make passes, like when I have a guard on me, is a big advantage,” he says of his stature. “And, with how I play, and having grown up playing guard, if I have a bigger guy on me, then it kind of opens up those guard skills as well.”
‘Trying to be the bigger person’
Wolf was a kid in summer camp when he heard his first antisemitic joke. It was about the Holocaust. He went home and told his parents.
“I really didn’t understand the magnitude of it,” he recalls. “But my mom and dad explained that there’s all-minded people in the world, and there will always be those who won’t like you. They’ll have it out for you for no other reason than not being happy themselves, or just being hateful, and it makes them feel better when they shed that hate on other people.
“They told me to find ways of being stronger than that. Put it in your back pocket and move on.”
It’s not always easy. Over the years, Wolf has heard plenty of comments about his religion, asides, criticisms, insulting jokes about Jewish players and sports. It is, of course, a stereotype, as hurtful as any other, but one that historically doesn’t get much attention.
That changed after Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel, and the Israeli response, electrocharged college campuses, especially elite universities like Yale, which Wolf had chosen to attend for its academics as well as its basketball.
The anti-Israel and in some cases anti-Jewish sentiment spread across many universities in the months that followed and was, Wolf says, “pretty prevalent on Yale’s campus. And even at one of our games.
“It was against Dartmouth. There were (more than 80) fans who came to the game disguised. And then minutes into the game they broke out chanting and holding Palestinian flags. And it was a small gym, so everyone’s focus turned to that.”
Wolf, who considered it an honor to play for Israel’s under-20 team in 2023, was a social media target. He remains one today.
“Now that I’m on a national stage and in the spotlight, you have ill-minded people that have some not great things to say. It’s all around me, on social media, I get it all the time just in my DM’s and on comments and whatnot.
“But I’ve learned, and I’ve really talked to my parents about this, to push past it. It may be corny to say, but I’m just trying to be the bigger person. Nothing I can do in the moment will be good for me. Anything I say won’t impact me or them, and it might cause more harm than good.
“Honestly, even with non-Jewish hate, there’s a lot of it out in the world. I’d like to use it as motivation just to try and prove myself right and prove other people wrong.”
Or as the Jewish Talmud states: “The highest form of wisdom is kindness.”
Michigan (growing) man
Wolf is still just 20 years old. He has played for an international team and now two college teams. And while he has great respect for the Ivy League (“teams there are more than capable of beating Big Ten teams”) he admits the size, scale and scope of Michigan basketball has been impressive.
“I mean obviously you walk into the gym and it’s like five or 10 times the size of what we’re used to. The fans are crazier, too. In the Ivy League, the gyms were small enough that fans can hear us talking to each other. When Michigan plays Michigan State, you can’t even hear your own thoughts!
“But the resources are the biggest thing. Our nutrition. Our weight room. The managers. The support staff. And the travel.
“At Yale, for our conference games, we would take a bus. And some of those bus rides were over five hours.”
Michigan almost always travels by charter plane. It’s a perk of a big-time program. So is potential entrée to the NBA, which is Wolf’s ultimate dream.
Should he make it, he’d be one of a handful of Jewish players in the league. Deni Avdija, with Portland, is an Israeli Jew who was a first-round draft pick in 2020. Domantas Sabonis, the Sacramento Kings center, is married to a Jewish woman and in the process of converting to Judaism himself.
And a number of professional basketball’s earliest American stars were Jewish, including Dolph Schayes, a 12-time All-Star.
But suffice it to say, should he make it to the NBA — he has been projected to be a mid-to-late first-round pick in a variety of mock drafts — Danny Wolf would stand out. Or rather continue to stand out.
And stand up.
“Being Jewish is something I hold very near and dear to my heart,” he says. “But I’m not going to let it put a limit on what people think of me. I always knew, religion aside, I could achieve what I wanted if I put my mind to it.”
It’s lonely at the top. But for a 7-foot college star who is Jewish and proud of it, it’s rare air indeed.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.
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