Duquesnes Chaim Galbut embarking on rare path as Orthodox Jewish Division I basketball player
The best way to understand what makes Chaim Galbut different — and, more than that, the two lives he’s trying to live — is to travel back to April.Galbut was in Pittsburgh at the time, visiting the campus of Duquesne University.
There, he met with the head basketball coach, Dru Joyce III.He toured the gym and the locker room.
He spoke to some players and had dinner with the staff.Everything felt right.Galbut, a high-flying, 6-foot-7 teenager from Miami, accepted a scholarship offer for the following season.
In the fall, he’d be playing basketball for a Division I program.All the work he’d put in, all those hours on the court and in the weight room, had paid off.“A dream come true,” is how he’d describe it.Galbut celebrated with his family.
He shared the news with friends.A few days later, he was back at his yeshiva in Jerusalem, where he was spending a gap year after high school and studying Talmud eight hours a day, hunched over a desk in a room surrounded by rabbis, learning about the various tort laws that can be found in the tractate of Bava Kamma.“I also pounded out Maseches Makkos in one z’man,” Galbut said, referring to a separate Talmudic tractate and the amount of time it took him to do so.This fall, Galbut will become the first yarmulke-wearing, Sabbath-observing player to suit up for a Division I men’s basketball team since Tamir Goodman at Towson in 2001.That means that whenever Duquesne plays on a Friday night, Galbut will be sitting out.
It also means he’ll become the rare person to swap a room in an Israeli yeshiva for one on the campus of a Catholic school.Galbut isn’t just embarking on a rare journey.He’s pursuing a life that many — rabbis from his past, Division I coaches who declined to be part of his future — say ends with him falling short in both worlds.“I’ve had some people tell me I’m not going to be learning [Torah] as much as I should, and others saying that if I really want to chase this basket...