“I call the Golan the ‘Jewish Montana,’” says 91-year-old Stan Fischler with wry enthusiasm. “We have everything – we’ve got the big sky, we’ve got mountains, and we’ve got cattle all around.”
Fischler, known as “The Hockey Maven,” one of the sport’s most acclaimed writers, broadcasters, and historians, is a household name among North American hockey fans. Growing up in hockey-mad Chicago, I was familiar with his books and articles. His well-thumbed biography of hockey great Gordie Howe graced my bookshelf for many a year.
Hockey fans accustomed to Fischler’s eloquence in describing a great save by the goaltender or a slick one-timer launched into the net may find his fervor in describing the beauty of northern Israel surreal, but it is authentic.
In 2019, Fischler picked up stakes and moved from New York to Kibbutz El-Rom in the northern Golan Heights, where he lives next to his son Simon Fischler, daughter-in-law Lilach, three grandchildren, and several dogs.
Speaking over Zoom from his home in El-Rom, Stan Fischler, with a trimmed white beard, looks far younger than his age.
Born in Brooklyn in 1932, he dates his interest in hockey to a Sunday afternoon in 1939, when his father took the seven-year-old Stan to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the Globe Theater on Broadway.
Upon emerging from the subway onto a rainy, windy street, the senior Fischler, lacking an umbrella, decided instead of crossing the street to the Globe Theater to take young Stan to his first hockey game at Madison Square Garden, which happened to be on the same sidewalk as the subway. The boy’s disappointment at missing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs soon turned to delight as he became enthralled by the fast-paced hockey action. He was hooked.
After graduating from Brooklyn College, Stan Fischler became the assistant publicist for the National Hockey League’s New York Rangers, wrote for the Brooklyn Eagle, and later the New York Journal-American from 1955 through 1966, covering such disparate fields as sports, politics, and show business. His first hockey book on Detroit Red Wings superstar Gordie Howe was published in 1967, and since then he has authored or co-authored close to 100 books on hockey and baseball, in addition to two books about the New York City subway system.
His most recent work, Tales of Brooklyn, describes growing up in Brooklyn during the Depression and World War II.
Fischler entered the world of sports broadcasting in 1973 with the World Hockey Association New England Whalers. Two years later, he joined what is today known as MSG/MSG+. This relationship lasted more than 40 years and covered the three NHL teams in the New York City metropolitan area, including the New York Rangers, New York Islanders, and New Jersey Devils.
HOW DID Fischler, a New York sports fixture who has covered hockey for over 50 years, end up in Israel?
In 1967, after the Six Day War, he visited Israel for the first time, and the impression he got was positive.
“I began vaguely thinking about moving to Israel,” he says.
“They were not serious thoughts at the time because I was immersed in my journalistic work. You would call me a subdued Zionist.”
A year later, he married Shirley Walton, who became a top hockey writer and co-authored more than 20 books with her husband. They have two sons, Ben and Simon. In June of 1993, Simon was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy and underwent a heart transplant. Five years later, in 1998, Fischler took Simon to Israel to show him the country. “He wound up loving it,” he says of his son.
Simon returned to Israel the following year to study at the World Union of Jewish Studies Institute in Arad (WUJS), which, his father says, “solidified his love for Israel.” He returned to Israel after graduating college, became an English teacher, married Lilach, and moved to the Golan a decade ago.
Fischler senior was still deeply immersed in his hockey work in the US, working in broadcasting and writing books.
“I had absolutely no intention of leaving. But as I got older, I could tell that my TV days were going to be numbered. But by that time, Simon had moved here. And when Simon moved here, my wife would visit, and she loved it.”
Fischler and Shirley, who had retired, built an annex next to their son and daughter-in-law’s home in the Golan and decided to live in Israel permanently. But it was not to be. On a trip to Israel, Shirley discovered that her earlier breast cancer had recurred. She died in May of 2014.
Fischler continued working for several more years before his aliyah in 2019. He says that leaving New York after spending 87 years in the city was not difficult because “I had done everything I wanted to do. How many times can I enjoy riding the subway?” he chuckles.
“I love Israel. I didn’t know how much I would love it.”
He readily admits, though, that there are things that he doesn’t like about it.
“When you’re up here in the Golan, it’s like being in the third world. Potholes don’t get filled in, and mail comes twice a week.” The distance from his home to the airport is also a source of some distress. “The other day, my son flew to New York. What a shlep to get to the airport.” He dislikes the limited public transportation, which he says doesn’t come frequently enough to El-Rom.
On the other hand, Fischler says, “There’s a lot of things that I like. The air is just great! When I was a kid, my parents used to send me to a summer camp, and I always marveled when I got to Sussex, New Jersey. The air was different.” He enjoys the air of the Golan and the pleasant demeanor of his neighbors. “I like the conviviality,” he adds. “People say ‘Shalom.’”
Fischler’s biggest regret is that he never mastered the Hebrew language. He studied Hebrew from a textbook when he first arrived but didn’t attend the ulpan classes in Katzrin.
“I can understand, and I can say a few words and phrases like ‘Labriut’ and ‘Ma koreh?’ but I can’t speak. There are English-speaking neighbors, and I can get by, but I am not happy [with it].”
For some, retiring to Israel means no longer working, but Fischler still watches hockey and continues to write about it.
He writes weekly historical articles for nhl.com that appear every Wednesday, and regular features for The Hockey News on the New York Rangers, the New Jersey Devils, and the New York Islanders – taking pride in the witty ledes and headlines that he writes for his articles.
Fischler will soon be starting a hockey podcast. His busy schedule keeps him going, he says, and when the weather allows, he rides his bicycle around the kibbutz, reads, and takes walks with the family dogs.
WHAT ARE his thoughts on the current situation?
“I’m not happy about the war, though it’s necessary, of course,” he says. “If there were no war going on, this would be a nice quiet place. We’ve been extremely fortunate. We’ve only had two or three occasions when there were sirens, but nothing happened. We’ve been lucky.”
Fischler is turning 92 this month. On the mornings following Rangers, Islanders, or Devils games, he gets up between 5 and 6 a.m., checks scores and videos, and then writes and files his stories. Daily prayers are at 8 a.m., and he returns to writing again three hours later. The secret to his longevity comes, in part, from his enthusiasm.
“In a sense, I’m a 14-year-old kid at heart rooting for the 1946-47 Maple Leafs to win every game. Part of the enthusiasm comes from my dad, who was an energetic, ‘rah-rah’ kind of guy who always ran up our two flights of stairs to our third-floor apartment. Plus, most of my life, I’ve worked with younger people.
“A year ago, I watched a Rangers-Islanders game alongside my older son, Ben, and emotionally I could have been the same kid who walked out of Temple Sha’arei Zedek in Brooklyn in April 1945 and [had] just got bar mitzvah-ed.” Recalling that special day, he adds his hockey postscript: “My first move out of shul was to run across Kingston Avenue to the candy store and get last night’s playoff score, Leafs vs Detroit.
“PS, we won!” ■
Stan Fischler From New York to Kibbutz El-Rom, 2019