'JEWISH JORDAN' HELPS

Former basketball star Tamir Goodman, aka the ‘Jewish Jordan,’ helps kids understand dyslexia

Goodman brought his new children’s book about overcoming dyslexia to the Shefa School, a Jewish day school for kids with language-based learning disabilities.

Tamir Goodman, a former pro basketball player in Israel, visited the Upper West Side's Shefa School to talk about overcoming dyslexia

By Joseph Strauss, jta.org

Wearing Nikes, a hoodie, jeans with tzitzit and a kippah, Tamir Goodman weighed the basketball in his hands. He towered over nearly everybody in the gym — the 11-to-14-year-old students especially, but at six-foot-three, he had a few inches on the teachers and guests who came to see him, too.

“Hands ready, feet ready, mind ready,” Goodman repeated during a drill. He’d just run layup lines and given the boys’ and girls’ basketball teams at the Shefa School a lesson on the jump shot. But naturally, the kids wanted to see Goodman — who was once dubbed the “Jewish Jordan” by Sports Illustrated as a top-25 high school player in the country — in action.

“I can’t move no more,” he told one of the team’s coaches. Goodman’s professional career in Israel ended in 2008 after a series of injuries, and it had been 25 years since his anointment by Sports Illustrated.

So during the school visit, FINISH READING HERE

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