Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Israeli Sledder Follows His North Star to the Arctic

There’s rarely snow in Israel. But if an outdoorsman from the West Bank settlement of Efrat gets his wish, he will become the first of his countrymen to participate in a polar sledding competition, traveling hundreds of miles between Norway and Sweden next April.

“I’ve always had a penchant for adventure and crazy ideas,” Erik Claster told the Times of Israel, explaining the rationale behind his desires. “I moved to Israel because I figured that growing up as a Jewish person, I had to give Israel a try, at least,” the Midwest native told the newspaper. “Has it ever been easier in the course of our 3,000 years to live here? And it’s the ultimate adventure.”

In order to get on the Arctic race, all expenses paid by the Swedish athletics company Fjällräven, Claster will have to garner at least 30,000 votes in an online competition, a goal that he thinks he can meet on the strength of his Jewish and Israeli connections.

Claster told the Times of Israel that he has an adventurous spirit, regaling the newspaper with tales of hiking around Africa and rebuilding vintage motorcycles. He thinks that his participation — and hopeful victory — in the sledding competition will help Israel.

“It’s an amazing feat,” he said. “An Israeli going to do dogsled competition and we will have won out over every other country in the world? We’re known for a lot of things, but most people I’ll be in contact with will know nothing about Israel. It will be great PR for Israel.”

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter (@DanielJSolomon](www.twitter.com/DanielJSolomon)

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.