Amar'e Stoudemire Jewish?

Keith Allison's Flickr
via Creative Commons

Last week saw reports that Amar'e Stoudemire, the NBA all-star who just signed a $100 million deal to play for the Knicks, was traveling to Israel to explore his "Jewish roots."  This led to some excitement on the Jewish blogs—if true, it would automatically make Stoudemire probably the highest-profile Jewish athlete in the world. 

But not so fast...  While Stoudemire hasn't ruled out the possibility that he has some Jewish lineage on his mother's side, he says his trip is more about connecting to Jewish history and culture.

Still, I think the press on Stoudemire's adventure has been very positive for Israel.  He seems genuine and respectful, and the Twitter account of his trip (with Hebrew!) has been great.

If you're really interested in this story, you might want to check out the interview (posted below) that Stoudemire gave to an Israeli sports network.  I will forgive him for consistently referring to Omri Casspi—the first Israeli player in the NBA—as "Omar."  I will not forgive the reporter for seeming to define Judaism (at the 2:30 mark) as 1) wearing a yarmulke, 2) not eating bread on Passover, and 3) fasting on Yom Kippur.

I guess Jewish basketball fans will have to keep rooting for Casspi or Jordan Farmar.  And if we're lucky, we may even get to see Jon Scheyer someday soon.