A True Tribe Survivor
From jvibe.com
By David Rosenberg
Meet Ethan Zohn, the only Jewish winner of Survivor–and a professional mensch.
What would you do if you won a million dollars? For Ethan Zohn, the only Jewish winner of CBS-TV’s hit reality series “Survivor”, the answer was easy: become a professional mensch.
The former pro soccer player took his winnings from “Survivor: Africa” and helped to create Grassroot Soccer, an international charity fighting the African AIDS pandemic with a unique approach. Grassroot Soccer finds superstar African soccer players, trains them in HIV/AIDS curriculum, and sends them into small villages and towns to teach middle school children about the dangers of HIV/AIDS.
Ethan’s Judaism played a huge role in how he approached playing the game the first time, and even affected his recent appearance on Survivor: All Stars where he was the eighth person voted out by his tribemates.
“I approached “Survivor AFRICA, filmed in Kenya, from the Jewish tradition of honoring community.† I tried to be as helpful and as supportive to everyone as possible.”† His strategy lead to Ethan remaining one of the more popular players on the program.
“Survivor: All Stars” presented an entirely different set of challenges, the most daunting being the fact that he had won the game before and was targeted from the first episode. “I promised myself I would approach the game differently and do whatever I needed to do to survive: lie, cheat, stab friends in the back… but in the end it just wasn’t in me. I didn’t have the heart.” Still, he lasted longer than all the other Survivor winners and remains proud of his accomplishment.
Ethan’s sense of community and caring for others was instilled early on in his life. His father Aaron always reminded him “to make happiness real for others is the greatest gift.”†† When Aaron passed away from colon cancer when Ethan was fourteen, it was the community of Temple Emunah in Lexington, Massachusetts that reached out and took a broken young man who felt like isolating himself and taught him the power of connecting.
After college, Ethan traveled to Zimbabwe to play for the Highlanders Football Club, in the Zimbabwe Premier League. It was there that the horrific AIDS situation became a personal matter. “We would have practices and young players would suddenly not show up one day. No one would mention it - it was very taboo- until five or six months later when we would find out they had died.” Knowing that by decade’s end over a third of the children in the country would be AIDS orphans, Ethan vowed if he ever had the means, he would make a difference.
That opportunity presented itself when Dr. Thomas Clark, also a former Highlanders player, approached him with the idea to create Grassroot Soccer after his win. With well-known Highlander player Methembe Ndlovu and former player Kirk Friedrich, they began to build the organization. Amazingly, after 9 months from the initial discussions, the (first) pilot project was up and running in Zimbabwe.
For any Jew, the goal of leaving behind a good name is essential. Ethan certainly would have completed that just with his work with Grassroot Soccer. Surprisingly, he does not stop there. Ethan is also the national spokesperson for America Scores, a literacy project that combines the power of creative writing with soccer, colon cancer research, diabetes research, and has even coached the US National Maccabiah soccer team in the Pan American Maccabiah Games in Chile this past winter. He doesn’t see himself as driven, but rather honoring the blessings he has been given. “I hear my father’s voice and I know that as long as I’m in the limelight, I need to do whatever I can to make the world a better place.”†
As for five years down the road, Ethan hopes Grassroot Soccer is a major worldwide organization with widespread use of the curriculum. He also sees himself involved with Major League Soccer in some way. Soccer may be is his passion, but helping people is his heart.
David Rosenberg is a children’s television writer based in Los Angeles, with credits including RUGRATS and THE WILD THORNBERRYS.† He serves on the Advisory Board of Grassroot Soccer.