from Robert Sarner of The Timea Of Israel,

Ask Sherwood “Sherry” Bassin any question about North American amateur hockey and there’s a good chance he’ll know the answer — little surprise given his near half-century in various leagues and positions: team owner, general manager, coach, interim commissioner and elder statesman. In a sport not known for a surfeit of Jews, Bassin, with his open sense of Jewish pride, is an anomaly, especially given the prominent role he’s long played in amateur hockey.

Even growing up in western Canada in the 1940s and early 1950s, hockey and Jewish identity were central facets of Bassin’s life. The two would have an unlikely convergence years later on distant shores.

For all his success in hockey, it was a formerly undisclosed caper Bassin pulled off 36 years ago that earned him a moment of glory in the Jewish world when it was revealed in the media for the first time last winter.

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