Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Gold-medal skater embraces her Jewish roots
The Olympic gold medalist Oksana Baiul, 29, skated across a plastic ice runway in the lobby of a posh condominium near Wall Street. She wore a Hasidic fur hat and a jacket made from black and white prayer shawls while holding a prayer book. For a moment, she posed playfully before the audience, looked into the Hebrew pages and skated backstage.
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/feb/28/goldmedal_skater_embraces_her_jewish_roots/?neapolitan
The Olympic gold medalist Oksana Baiul, 29, skated across a plastic ice runway in the lobby of a posh condominium near Wall Street. She wore a Hasidic fur hat and a jacket made from black and white prayer shawls while holding a prayer book. For a moment, she posed playfully before the audience, looked into the Hebrew pages and skated backstage.
As klezmer music played in the background, sylphs pranced down the runway in designer Levi Okunov's orange and teal lace garments. More than 500 people watched, many standing in the back or sitting on the floor, as Baiul returned to the runway, wearing a sequined wedding dress and performing her signature number from "Swan Lake."
Baiul's routine wasn't as graceful as when the then unknown 16-year-old Ukrainian seized the Olympic gold medal from the favored Nancy Kerrigan in 1994. The balletic style of the blue-eyed blonde that had so awed judges back then is stiffer 13 years later, although Baiul is still lithe.
But for Baiul, this exhibition carried a deep spiritual significance. The show was a celebration of her recently discovered Jewish roots.
"The show was a way of connecting to my heritage, and it was a tremendous success," Baiul said. "I already heard that people were upset that I wore the strimal" the traditional hat " but I wanted to do it because Levi said, 'Oksana, it's meaningful.'"
The performance was the brainchild of Okunov, Baiul's close friend and religious mentor, a 21-year-old aspiring fashion designer from the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn and the son of a Lubavitch rabbi. Baiul affectionately calls the younger Okunov "my rabbi" for the guidance he has provided in Orthodox Judaism and mysticism.
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/feb/28/goldmedal_skater_embraces_her_jewish_roots/?neapolitan
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