avid Groverman lettered in soccer, lacrosse
and wrestling at The Haverford School and
helped lead its wrestling team to three consecutive
Inter-Academic League championships from
1968-’70. So, as he put it, you can imagine how
he felt about Judaism when his religious parents
told him he couldn’t play in a Haverford soccer
game on Yom Kippur during his senior year.

Groverman was the team’s captain.

A few years later, though, he decided to try
out for the U.S. wrestling team for the 1973
Maccabiah Games in Israel. Groverman, who also
wrestled at the University of Pennsylvania, made
the team and wanted to go. It was a free trip to
Israel for being a good wrestler, he explained.

But the trip helped him understand why his
parents hadn’t allowed him to play that day.

Groverman met survivors of the Munich mas-
sacre at the Summer Olympics in Germany the
year before. He met Holocaust survivors and
visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to Shoah
victims, for the first time. The wrestler won the
gold medal in his 125-pound weight class at
that competition. But decades later, Groverman
doesn’t remember the wrestling as well as the
awakening. “Judaism became real to me,” he said.

Ever since, the Blue Bell resident has worked
to help other Jewish athletes make the same
connection. In the 1981 Maccabiah Games, Groverman
coached the U.S. team that included four Jews
who hadn’t had bar mitzvahs. The team threw
bar mitzvahs for them at the Wailing Wall. It
became a tradition.

Three years later, he organized the first
“Philadelphia Youth Maccabiah team to par-
ticipate in the first North American Maccabiah
Games,” according to his bio on the Philadelphia
Jewish Sports Hall of Fame’s website. Philadelphia
sent 50 to 60 athletes to Detroit for the games
that year and sends hundreds today.

And this year, the 50th anniversary of the
Munich massacre, Groverman helped organize
“The Peace Tournament” in Israel. Sanctioned
by United World Wrestling, the tournament wel-
comed athletes from North America, Europe and
Asia. It included a team from Morocco, the first
time that an Arab country participated in an ath-
letic competition on Israeli soil.

“The success is measured by the fact that the
national team of Morocco came to the tourna-
ment,” Groverman said.

As an athlete, Groverman understands what’s
expected of them. Athletes a lot of times, espe-
cially successful ones, are recognized as leaders
in the community, he explained. This is true for
Jewish athletes, too, and the expectation from
a young age often motivates young people to
work as hard in life as they do in sports.

The 70-year-old credited his commitment to
wrestling for shaping him into a successful busi-
nessman. As a commercial real estate developer,
the Blue Bell resident builds shopping centers in
North Philadelphia, West Philadelphia and the
suburbs, among other places.

This is why Groverman works so hard to build
the connection between sports and Judaism. A
successful athlete is likely to become a success-
Photo by Larry Slater
D Dave Groverman, back right, red shirt, posing with the U.S. wrestling teams for the 2022 Maccabiah Games in Israel
4 DECEMBER 15, 2022
THE GOOD LIFE
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM