(HOST) Sports, politics and religion are often featured in the news, but not always in the same story. Commentator Bill Seamans has a notable exception.
(SEAMANS) The imminence of a new tennis season and threats against President Barack Obama strangely converge to remind me of a story I have not yet told for various reasons. While assigned as the ABC News Bureau Chief in Israel I struck up a relationship beyond the news with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He was an avid tennis player and one day invited me to join him on the court.
"Yes, when?" – my quick surprised answer.
"Saturday morning, ten o’clock."
Did I hear him correctly? "Did you say Saturday, sir?"
"Yes, Saturday morning."
I thought: "On Shabbat, the reverent Jewish sabbath?" Yes, I was surprised.
Thus at the tennis club at one of Tel Aviv’s major hotels, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was seen playing tennis on Saturday mornings with an American foreign correspondent. It became an interesting national talking point. Firstly, the nearby orthodox yeshiva sent over a few students who, davening at a respectful distance across the street, prayed while we played.
Then an intense religious discussion ensued as various rabbis, scholars and politicians considered the propriety of the Jewish nation’s Prime Minister playing tennis on its weekly holy day. The Israel press corps asked, in effect, if the Prime Minister chose to desecrate the Sabbath why not do it with a secular Israeli Jew rather than that "foreign Christian," as I was known. Since it was his rare time off I did not press Rabin with questions but he, himself, brought up Inside News stuff and reminded me that we were "off the record" – which meant that I was pledged not to use anything he told me until he said I could or, as he put it, "Until after I have faded away."
On Nov. 4, 1995, Yitzhak Rabin was shot in the back by a 27-year-old Jewish Israeli right wing political religious zealot in front of 100,000 people gathered for a peace rally in Tel Aviv’s main square. He said he had murdered Rabin "to keep him from giving our country to the Arabs." Thus the life of yet another great man who had fought for peace was taken by the kind of hate-borne political violence we fear today.
Now fifteen years after Prime Minister Rabin "had faded away" I can finish that tennis story. Rabin was a secular Jew who went to synagogue only on special occasions. I asked him during one of our after-game coffee chats why he played tennis on the reverent Jewish sabbath.
"I’ll tell you a special personal secret," he said – "I was asked that very same question by the Chief Rabbi of Israel and I answered – "With my deepest respect, sir. You obviously are not aware of therefore don’t realize that a good game of tennis can truly be a profound religious experience." And Rabin added, "Remember, Bill, that conversation is a state secret."
And I have kept my pledge.