sports
Thibodeaux isn’t exactly known as fertile ground to find people looking to move to Israel, and Mike Wagenheim didn’t seem like someone who was likely to take that step. A Philadelphia native, Wagenheim had been in Louisiana for a decade, broadcasting sports for the University of New Orleans and Nicholls State. Two years ago, he got off a plane in Israel, a place he had never even visited, wearing a hat that said “Living the Dream,” which Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organization that helps Americans move to Israel, gave to all of the new immigrants on that flight. Though he initially thought the hat was “the cheesiest thing,” he could not have predicted Just before umpiring the World Maccabiah Games baseball gold medal match, Mike how true it would be just two years later. Wagenheim graduated from West Virgin- Wagenheim (right) interviews U.S. Ambassador David Friedman for i24 News. ia University, where he was sports director at WWVU-FM. He did play-by-play for baseball but somehow they hired him, and “it was a won- so he stayed at Nicholls and started looking for and soccer, then was director of broadcasting derful four years.” He did men’s and women’s other overseas opportunities. Wagenheim doesn’t remember the exact for the Southwest Michigan Devil Rays in Battle basketball, baseball and volleyball, and in 2008 Creek. He also spent four months touring as the won the inaugural Sun Belt Conference Broad- words he used in a Google search — he figures it was something like “easy place for an American public address announcer for the Harlem Am- caster of the Year Award. Still, the program struggled, and his posi- to move” — and he came upon an unfamiliar bassadors. After a year as assistant director of broadcast- tion was eventually eliminated. He wound up term: Aliyah. Wagenheim grew up in a Reform household ing for the Inland Empire 66ers in San Berna- at Nicholls State, “which was an even better dino, Calif., Wagenheim decided he missed the experience.” More than any game he called, he that was “holy three days a year.” He went to religious school, and after his Bar Mitzvah he visited the Hillel a couple of times while in college, “and that was it.” He hadn’t made any effort to identify Jewishly Former Nicholls State sportscaster charts new course in Israel while in New Orleans, let alone Thibodeaux, but “for whatever reason I got hooked on the concollege athletics atmosphere, so he started look- remembers the hospitality and opportunity he cept of Israel,” though he had never been there. “The more I researched, I knew I had to do it.” ing to see what positions were open. After Hur- had there. He soon became executive producer and lead He had to do the paperwork at the closest ricane Katrina and the levee failure, the devastation on the University of New Orleans campus on-air talent for Nicholls’ Colonel Sports Net- Jewish Agency/Nefesh B’Nefesh office, which was Miami, a trip that was impossible due to his and drastically lower enrollment “almost killed work. Eventually, he had the sense that something Nicholls State schedule. Instead, when Nicholls the athletic department.” To save scarce resources, they looked to bring in his life “was lacking,” but he couldn’t pinpoint had a basketball game at UCLA, he was allowed in someone as a contract worker “until they what it was. He soon realized that he had done to do his paperwork at the Los Angeles office. “The process was smooth,” he said. could get back on their feet.” Wagenheim said what he wanted — do Division I sports, “and I He needed a letter of reference from someone he had never called a basketball game before, got to do it for 12 years.” But now it was time to do something more with his life. in the Jewish community, so he turned to Arnie He tried to join the diplomatic corps, passed Fielkow, who had been president of the New the first level but did not have enough inter- Orleans City Council. national experience to get through the second Fielkow said he got to know Wagenheim as level of screening. To remedy that, he was urged they battled a decision by the UNO leadership to apply for the Peace Corps, and was granted a to downgrade their athletic program from Diviposition in Ukraine. sion I to Division III. “About two months before I was supposed to After a year, Wagenheim boarded a Nefesh go, Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea” in 2014, B’Nefesh flight and arrived in Israel, not knowand the Peace Corps withdrew all personnel ing anyone, without any family or a job. from Ukraine. “There was really nothing else He soon was introduced to an Orthodox couthey were offering” that resonated with him, ple that “became my adopted family, and they
From Thibodeaux to Tel Aviv
46 Southern Jewish Life • September 2017