Ian's Draft Reactions

Ian's Team
Baruch Spinoza
Martin Buber
Sigmund Freud
J. D. Salinger
Karl Marx
Louis Brandeis
Theodore Herzl
Simon Wiesenthal
Alfred Dreyfus
Phillip Roth
Jonas Salk
Yitzhak Rabin
Paul Wellstone
Allan Ginsburg
Moe Berg
Shimon Peres
Bernard Malamud
Andy Kaufman
Leo Frank
Natalie Portman

about my team:
My goal for this first annual Jewish draft was to acquire as many influential Jews as possible. Whether they knowingly and purposefully influenced their society or did just by happenstance. My first two picks, Baruch Spinoza and Martin Buber, I wanted because of their importance to not only the Jewish people, but to the world as a whole. For my third pick I was hoping for Bar Khokba (who led a revolution against the Romans in 123 CE) but unfortunately that dirty gentile, Mike, stole my pick, and thus I had to settle for Sigmund Freud--tapping into my desire for influential people. I picked Karl Marx, Louis Brandeis, and Theodore Herzl to keep with my plan of choosing people who have made a great impact all across the globe. I also chose some of my favorite authors, because I like writing and stuff, thus that is where Salinger, Roth, and on down the line to Ginsberg and Malamud came into the picture.

Sometimes people become influential just because of misfortunes that come upon them and two of my draftees fell into this category: Alfred Dreyfus and Leo Frank. They both were accused of crimes they did not commit and both were accused because they were Jews. I wanted Jews who represented something of what our people had to go through at that is why I chose them and Simon Wiesenthal a Holocaust survivor turned Nazi-hunter.

My other picks just dealt with rounding out my team such as my pick of Moe Berg because I wanted an athlete and Andy Kaufman because I wanted an entertainer and Natalie Portman because I hadn't yet picked a woman. And why not Jonas Salk he cured polio that's good, I think.

I'm upset with a few people I missed out on such as Moses Mendelson, an influential Jewish thinker of around the 17th century and Max Baer, the man that fought Max Schmelling and James Braddock. I would have maybe left Shimon Peres off my team, but he won a Nobel Peace Prize and I hear those things make you look good. I'm pretty happy with my other two politicians Yitzhak (my Hebrew name) Rabin and Paul Wellstone who both happened to die while still in office, that's always a plus, right? Maybe not. But anyway I'm quite happy with most of team I drafted and am sure to win whatever prize the person wins who has the best team.