A building, book, park, or street; an ambulance, a hospital wing, room, or equipment: Those are what one usually thinks of to dedicate in someone’s memory. But a flying disc tournament? Probably not – until now.
On Friday, October 18, the first of Sukkot’s intermediate days, Jerusalem was host to a novel and inspiring Ultimate frisbee competition at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Givat Ram track and field stadium, dedicated to the memory of one of the sport’s beloved local players – and one of hundreds of soldiers who fell in battle defending Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Sgt.-Maj. Yosef Malachi Guedalia, zt’l, was killed defending the Gaza border community of Kfar Aza on that tragic day. As described in the Magazine’s special “Women of the War” issue (“An angel’s light,” March 8, 2024), the Duvdevan special forces soldier had come home to celebrate that fateful Simchat Torah with his family, friends, and community. No one knew that it would be his last.
After dancing and celebrating on Friday night, Yosef got the call at 8 a.m. on Shabbat morning to “get ready” to suddenly return to his army post, his widow Senai said.
“Ten minutes later, a siren went off. He reassured me, saying ‘It’s OK, it’s OK.’ Then he called his friend Guy, who was also in the Duvdevan special forces unit, to find out what was happening. When Guy told him he was going, Yosef decided on his own to go with him.”
The comrades in arms headed back to Yehuda and Samaria in the North. Yosef told Senai that he would be back after Shabbat, but he ended up going to the South.
AS HIS older brother and flying disc partner Asher explained to the more than 200 players and spectators before the tournament began last Friday: “For those who don’t know – Yosef fought in Kfar Aza for three or four hours. They evacuated wounded soldiers and civilians, including one who is in a body cam video and who later said that Yosef and his team saved his life. Then they went back in to keep fighting.”
They saw an RPG aimed at them, but it was fired before they could stop it. The team managed to get out of the vehicle, but then two grenades were thrown at them.
Yosef yelled “Grenade!” jumped toward the gate, and was shot.
“We only found out a week ago what happened after that,” said Asher, who was wearing shorts and sports shoes and had a rifle slung over his shoulder, since he is still on active duty. “We heard that soldiers didn’t leave the battleground but guarded him until they could bring his body back.”
THE BROTHERS had been a flying disc duo for many years. “We used to play in the street,” Asher said. “I don’t remember who started it. Then one day, our friend Sam Lipsky told us to go to an Ultimate frisbee game here at Givat Ram. ‘We don’t need that – we have our own game,’ I said. ‘Come on, come,’ he urged, so we came.” The Guedalia brothers connected to the Jerusalem game right away and started going most Fridays, looking forward to it all week.
“We usually played Ultimate or basketball on Fridays – or both,” he recalled. “The best times we had were when we came out here to Givat Ram, played for two or three hours, then went to Bell Park, got shakes at Rebar, and played another two hours of basketball. Then we went home and worked out. At night, we talked about what happened during the day: who won, who lost, who was better.
“We were running, jumping, throwing, catching: playing very competitively,” Asher said. “Then we heard there was a Passover tournament coming up, so we made a group called the Dream Team. We played in the tournament, and that was one of the best days of my life. Our family also came to watch. We lost every game except the last one, which we won.”
In an effort to redeem themselves, they regrouped, adding some new members and forming the Redeem Team (which garnered a chuckle from the attentive and appreciative audience). They did better at a later competition, coming in fifth place out of eight.
“We continued for a few years, and then Yosef went into the army,” his currently serving brother said. “Sometimes he would come home after not having had any sleep. We would say, ‘You won’t go to play Ultimate tomorrow,’ but he would always make an effort to come anyway.”
According to the Friday disc group chat, Yosef had gone to the game on September 29. Senai explained what happened on that final Friday of October 6.
“Yosef came back from the army Thursday night, and we went to a Simchat Beit Hashoeva party with friends,” she said. “On Friday, the day before Simchat Torah, he played basketball with Asher, then we went on a nice bike ride near Beit Shemesh. On the way back to Jerusalem, we went to a nice cafe, so we weren’t there for the Ultimate frisbee game.” He celebrated the holiday that night with everyone else.
“I met him in the sukkah before they went back home,” Asher said, “and that’s the last time I saw him.”
Memory honored through Ultimate
EVERYONE KNEW about the flying disc brothers’ love for Ultimate, so it was only natural that a tournament in Yosef’s memory would be a fitting tribute. “This is an opportunity to be able to appreciate his memory and do something he loved,” one of the family organizers told In Jerusalem. “The extended family celebrates together and mourns together.”
“I didn’t arrange it,” Yosef’s mother, Dina, said. “It was done by one of my husband’s cousins. David has a large extended family, and we’re very close.” The family also produced a moving three-minute video of interviews with friends and family that was shown on the large scoreboard behind the central tent.
“Yosef was light,” his mother said in the video.
“Everything he did, he did it to the maximum,” his father, David, said.
Yehuda, his friend since childhood, said, “Yosef was an amazing and exceptional athlete – and there was a dissonance between his athletic ability and his modest nature. He could just jump so high – higher than anyone else.”
Ayelet Ben Zion organizes Ultimate tournaments for the Israeli Flying Disc Association (IFDA), which represents Israel in the World Flying Disc Federation, the international sports organization responsible for world governance of flying disc sports.
A representative of the family asked whether “we could do a tournament in Yosef’s memory,” she told the assembled crowd before it started. “I hope that this will become a regular event: that we can all meet and play in his memory.
“So many players and spectators – we are not used to that!”
And many there were. More than 130 players had signed up to play, and at least 100 extended family members came to watch and share the spirit. Players ranged in age from 14 to 63, and family members present ranged in age from Yosef’s baby nieces to his grandfather Harris Guedalia. Family members were easily identifiable (if they chose to be) by wearing their official light blue tournament T-shirts. Players also had official shirts – with different colors according to their assigned team.
The design on the back of the shirts is a blue silhouette of Yosef throwing a disc next to a blue and off-white, jagged-edged Israeli flag under the IFDA logo, and above the Hebrew words for “Tournament in memory of Yosef Malachi Guidalia, Hy’d [May God avenge his blood], Hol Hamoed Sukkot, 5785 (2024).” And on the front, top right, one of his many memorable sayings is printed: “Kama koach yesh lanu” – “How much power we have!”
THE USUAL long field had to be divided up into three short adjacent fields. Nine teams of up to 15 players were split into three groups of three, with every team playing the other two teams in their group. Three new groups were then made for a second round, composed of teams that had achieved similar results in the first round.
The game of Ultimate involves throwing a flying disc to a teammate until one of the team members catches it in the end zone. There are no referees; an important aspect of play is called spirit of the game (SOTG), a highly developed concept of fair play where disputes are resolved by the players involved. “Yosef was always trying to keep the peace on the field, saying: ‘Let’s move on and keep playing,’” Senai said. “It was so like him.”
The tournament ran from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., with six round-robin games of 25 minutes each in two rounds. It was run very smoothly thanks to Ben Zion and volunteers from Jerusalem’s national league team, who distributed shirts, water bottles, and fruit, and kept score and timing. As it turned out, the teams coming in 1st, 2nd and 3rd were the Reds, Whites, and Blues!
A WHOLE team’s worth of family members didn’t just watch the action but also joined in – on various teams. Among them were Yosef’s father-in-law, Shmuel Weglein; Yosef and Asher’s aunt Allison Kupietzky; and cousins Lavi, Benaya, Matanel, and Talia Kupietzky; Hagai, Yishai, Ayelet, and Judah Guedalia; Chezki and Avigail Corn; Akiva and Ephraim Bendheim; and Ma’ayan Zakheim.
“I think this is a beautiful thing to do in his honor,” 19-year-old Ma’ayan said. “He was amazing at this sport.” In Jerusalem asked if she plays the game other than here. “No,” she laughed. Her 18-year-old sister, Keira, explained: “Joseph is bringing out some new sports within her!”
“Joseph is our second cousin,” Keira continued. “Today is really beautiful, and it shows the energy and joy that you all have for the sport, just like he had. We’re all meeting a ton of new people – and it’s all because of him.”
“We played every Friday with him here,” his cousin Hagai, 24, said after the tournament, adding that he hasn’t played here since Oct. 7.
“I’ve been in the reserves – for 240 days. And I’m going back up north tomorrow because of the war. I was super excited that I could make it to the game, to see everyone come and see all of the support. The games were really played with Joseph’s spirit: People were just coming to play without fighting or bickering, just to have fun and be nice to each other.”
But being in the army was not the only reason Hagai hadn’t played since then. “I just couldn’t come back again – it brought back too many memories” of his fallen cousin. “But because this was something in memory of him, I came – and it is really special for me to be here.”
ASHER ALSO hasn’t played since he lost his brother. “I don’t want to erase the memories: to replace them with new ones,” he said. “It was hard for me to come here today, but they asked me to speak, so I came. I’m very happy that the tournament is happening – for sure.”
“I feel like the spirit of Yosef is here,” his mother said.
“I had a thought yesterday,” she said, after the tournament. “I understand that he had a very long disc throw. He always said that he wanted to hasten the redemption. We have to change our consciousness and our frequency to realize that’s where we’re headed. He is still sending us that energy in his long throw, and it’s up to us to catch it and change our consciousness to one of redemption – and do what we have to do to help bring it faster. This gives me consolation.”
“Watching a flying disc tournament played in Yosef’s memory was a surreal experience,” Senai told In Jerusalem.
“I found myself looking for him on the field. I would come to watch Yosef play in Givat Ram every Friday, and I haven’t been back since he was killed. Coming back to a stadium full of people who love Yosef, playing the sport he loved, was not an easy thing to do – I missed him the entire time.”
But his presence was strongly felt there – in everyone’s joy for the game and love for him, she said.
“It was also a special opportunity for me to speak with so many people who love and miss Yosef, sharing memories and getting to hear the ways they have memorialized him during this past year. Yosef continues to connect people and spread light.”
Until the next Ultimate frisbee tournament in Yosef’s memory, may we continue to catch his light, realize how much power we really have, and use it to help bring the ultimate redemption.■