"Yes, they were sports stars," he says, "but that's not why they're heroes. Being a sports star means they're good at a child's game on a professional level. I'm a sportsman, I appreciate that, but it's not heroic. They're heroes because of what they did outside sports. Perez was in Auschwitz where, among other courageous deeds, he saved scores of lives by supplying stolen food rations to his fellow Jews. [Barney Ross] was active in the Bergson Group, working to save European Jews during the Holocaust. [Tal Brody], a huge sports star, gave up his NBA career in the US, made aliya and dedicated his life to Israel, working with Israeli kids. You shouldn't be eliminated from being a hero just because you're involved with sports - it's what you do with your life that counts."

"At the end of the one-year program, the class travels to [Yoni Netanyahu]'s grave site on Mount Herzl for a very moving ceremony. [Michael Levin] wept as he spoke. 'It's not enough to just honor his memory,' he said. 'I have to do something to live up to the example he left, to protect Jews and Israel.'

If there is a weak spot in [Yossi Katz]'s book, it may be that at times it's overly pedantic. It shouldn't be necessary to define the word "aliya" each and every time it's used. For that matter, the constantly repeated redundancy "he made aliya to Israel" should be dropped. After all, there's no other place to which one could make aliya.