Israeli Sledder Follows His North Star to the Arctic
Image by Getty Images
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)
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
