As practically everyone in the Israeli and/or Jewish blogosphere has joyfully noted, Gal Fridman brought home a gold Olympic medal in windsurfing on Wednesday. I confess that under normal circumstances I'd rather read a handbook on modern accounting methods than watch any kind of sporting event (except figure skating), but even I got a little caught up in the excitement. After all, this is history – it's the first time Israel has won an Olympic event.

For those of you non-Hebrew speakers who are wondering about the unusual spelling of his last name, which in English is usually spelled Friedman, all I can say is that there seem to be no standardized methods for transliterating the names of Israelis into Latin letters. Shai is also spelled Shay; Greenberg could be Grinberg or Grinburg; Yishai is variously transcribed as Yishay, Ishay and Ishai…

For those of you who do speak Hebrew, I apologize – really – for the jejune pun in the title of this entry (Gal means “wave” in Hebrew).

In a post-victory interview, Gal said that he plans to dedicate his victory to the 11 Israelis killed in the Munich massacre at the 1972 Olympics, and to visit their memorial to show them his medal.

I guess it's a Jewish tradition, this remembering of sad historical events at joyous occasions – like breaking a glass at the end of a wedding ceremony to symbolize the destruction of the ancient temple. Or, as the popular tongue-in-cheek saying goes, “They tried to destroy us, we survived, let's eat.”