"A Jewish surfer confronts the dark, anti-semitic history of the sport he once found solace in. (But) what happens when your passion conflicts with your heritage?"
The Hebrew surfer doesn’t have to trawl too deep into the BeachGrit archives to find a kindred soul in at least one of the founders.
Read “Israel is the raddest surf trip on Earth!”, “What the Goyim Gudauskas Brothers got wrong about Israel”, “Let’s go schlepping, surfing gets into the 2021 Jewish Olympics!”, “Ozzie Wright sings King of the Jews!”, Movie: “The Hebrew Hammer!”.
Want a book recommendation? Read Revolt by Menacheem Begin for an uplifting account of Israelis taking on the two-faced Brits and winning.
Discrimination, racism? Yeah, the Jews know it better than anyone. The dirtiest and most tortured of histories. A lost people and two thousand orbits jammed with degradation and bestial treatment.
And then, of course, came the Nazis. The greatest war machine in history in their gorgeous, slim-fitting uniforms designed by Hugo Boss (yes!), butchering, starving, gassing and shooting six-and-a-half million Jews by the close of business in July, 1945.
So, as you might imagine, surfing’s flirtation with Nazism, predominantly post-war and notably by Miki Dora and Californian pals, (click here for La Jolla surfers in Nazi uniforms and waving the party flag from a Greg Noll movie circa 1959 and here for one surfer’s defence of the cosplay), don’t sit too well with the Jewish surfer.
Josh Greene, a nebbish Hebe from San Clemente, says he grew up with anti-semitism, his skinny frame he was told made him look like a death camp survivor, and took up surfing “to really carve my own niche and find the confidence, courage and physical strength I needed.”
When his wanted to have his bar mitzvah at a surf museum his parents quietly removed the swastika engraved boards.
Greene got a film camera for the bar mitzvah and just before he graduated from the University of Southern California in May 2022 almost decade later, he released his documentary “Waves Apart”, which pulls back the curtain on surfing’s supreme racism, wild Jew-baiting and historical hard-on for Nazism.
Many inspiring cameos, including from the world champ and backside tube riding pioneer Shaun Tomson who you may not know was Jewish, but whose own bar mitzvah gift was a trip to Hawaii.
“For me, it was a total representation of what a bar mitzvah is — it’s coming into manhood. And here I was, a young boy paddling out in a 25-foot surf in Hawaii, which was a moment for me that changed my life. I came back to South Africa, and my career and my role in surfing changed after that bar mitzvah present.”
Tomson’s own experience with the Jew-haters, interestingly enough, was limited to being called a Jew Boy in the army and not within the surf community.
Watch trailer here.
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Nazi adjacent, is nazi.
The film partially explores historical CA surf culture such as La Jolla surfers dressing up like Nazis in the late 50s and Kathy Kohner’s home being vandalized in the late 60s.
The remainder of the film is more of a spiritual piece following the stories of guys like Shaun Tomson and Israel Paskowitz.
each Cali beach accessable street thought they had a gang of their own. collectively we were pussies and were all bark, no bite…everyone was welcome, ‘cept for the ladies…whom we made sit on the beach and watch us surf.
The Mongrel Mob and Black Power are pretty terrifying. Staunch as.
True, as Tom (Com) said below in the comments, it was some Pacific Systems Homes boards in the trailer, and according to Matt’s EOS, Pacific Systems dropped the Swastika logo in 1937, along with the Boy Scouts, the Coca Cola company, the Ladies Home Journal, and a bunch of others who were ‘all’ using the Swastika symbol in that same time period, as it was a symbol of ‘prosperity and good fortune’ back then, (and also for a hundred years before that).
It’s like Greene is almost purposely trying to make surfers look bad just to get attention for his piece.
And Warshaw or any other on-line sources make no mention of the boards or their makers ever having any ties
with discrimination.
The symbol was even on some Arizona State highway signs as late as 1942.
Pretty unfair of Greene to try and use those boards to ‘try’ and make a connection to discrimination in surfing, when those boards or their makers ‘never’ had any ties to discrimination.
What a kook.
The Swastika Model is simply the first example of a Nazi symbol in surfing. Hitler’s racism was already well-known by the early 1930s.
This film dives deeper into the prevelance of fascist imagery in CA surfing post-WWII. What was the excuse then?
If the board had anything to do with discrimination it might be relevant, but as I pointed out, there is ‘no’ evidence of that, even Mr Warshaw made no mention to that effect on his EOS page.
Why don’t you find the ‘first’ board with a swastika that was used in a ‘discriminatory’ way, then ‘that’ would be relevant to your piece. You are just using this board to try and create some ‘falsely’ perceived discrimination concerning this board and to thusly ‘sensationalize’ your article.
It is very evident in your trailer, you would have to be blind to not see that.
The first Scouting use of the ‘swastika’ was for the Thanks Badge was introduced in 1908 and it continued to be worn in various forms until ‘1935’, and the British Royal Air Force still had it on some of its planes as late as ‘1939’.
Once again, there is no evidence that this board or its makers had anything to do with discrimination.
I hope the relatives of the founders of Pacifist Systems Homes, file a defamation suit against you.
Kook.
“During our conversation, I mentioned that somebody, around the time Gidget was published, had burned a cross on the driveway of Kathy Kohner’s Brentwood house, and that anecdote wound up in the Times article.
Except it didn’t happen.
The cross-burning story came to me second-hand, and I should have asked Dan to check with Kathy, but I didn’t, and that’s on me. I’ve apologized to Kathy and her family. I hereby apologize to the Times, to surfing, and to UC Berkeley Prof”
Matt Warshaw
I found this from Matt Warshaw with just a little bit of research.
I bet you are feeling pretty stupid right about now.
In Orange County the Scots Irish, AKA, Irish Presbyterians, are the Nazi sympathizers. They’re not real Irish. They were treated very, very poorly back in the home country, and they were discriminated against by the British. Their land was taken from them. And they were very poor and came to America in the 18th century via chain migration. and because they were rural types, they settled the interior of America, but are now
the “forgotten Americans.” If you go to Kentucky and West Virginia, they say, you’re not from these parts are ya! They like their own kind and are suspicious of ppl who are “outsiders.” Similar mentality to localism.
During the dust bowl the Scots Irish migrants came to Cali and many ultimately settled in OC and the next generation created the mega churches. Their children and grandchildren became surfers and may have brought their fear of outsiders into the water with them. You’re not from these parts are ya? The oppressed become the oppressors.
You’ve heard about the exodus from California. The people that are really leaving California are Mexican Americans and the Scots Irish.They are returning home.
I appreciate the serious journalism!
This production is gay… and by gay… I mean…
The producer is James gay.
does he surf with his yamaka on?
His name wasn’t Mike. It was Miki or Miklos but never fucking Mike.
Auto correct! Too lazy to proof!
That surfing museum likely was displaying some of those early 1930s Pacific Systems Homes boards—the company rebranded and dropped the swastika logo after Nazis started to give the swastika a bit of a bad name in 1938.
So, unlike Rip Curl, this company actually decided to drop a brand icon once it became publicly associated with antisemitism.
https://eos.surf/entries/pa…
That’s correct. Unfortunately, just because that’s the first time a swastika is associated with CA surfing, it surely wasn’t the last time.
Im going to jump in here and Com can reply later if he wants, and say it again, If the board in the trailer had anything to do with discrimination it might be relevant to your piece on discrimination, but as I pointed out, there is ‘no’ evidence of that, even Mr Warshaw made no mention to that effect on his EOS page.
Why don’t you ‘find ‘ the ‘first’ board with a swastika that was used in a ‘discriminatory’ way, then ‘that’ would be relevant to your piece. You are just using this board to try and create some ‘falsely’ perceived discrimination concerning this board and to thusly ‘sensationalize’ your
article.
It is very evident in your trailer, you would have to be blind to not see that.
Hey, Mr Greene, have you checked out BeachGrit lately—it’s been ‘confirmed’—you are a big sensationalizing Kook—with a capital K—as in KOOK!
Nothing discriminatory about that, kooks come in all sizes shapes and nationalities. You’re just a ‘big’ kook.
there’s always sri lanka…
Umm, discrimination is real! I’ve seen it my whole life, but was raised not to give an ish. Everyone has a little persecution in their blood line. Some are just more recent.
As for Honshu. When I lived there, there was about 20 actual surfers on the whole Chiba peninsula. The only time the locals had strength over me was in Roppongi. Gaijin dont f around there…
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
I saw on some Slater documentary clip him asking some old Japanese dude could he surf a certain wave. It all looked so staged I thought it was bullshit. How Nationalistic are they there, I know they have extremely stringent immigration policies
Fukin dip shit So Cal surf Nazis can’t even draw a swastika the right way around.
The old South African army was a fukin shit show of tribalism. The mostly white force was split into two tribes. The Boers and the rest of us.
Referred to as Soutpiel, meaning salty dick, saying we “Englishmen” had one foot in England and one foot in SA, with our dicks hanging in the salt water of the Atlantic. A moniker I embraced.
I got beat up but massive Afrikaners more times than I care to recount during my service just for being an Englishman. Funny thing was, my great grandmother was inturned in English concentration camps and I was holding an American passport.
The only other white tribe (as viewed by the Afrikaner) that got bullied more were the Jewish diaspora. By the time I did my stint, a half decade after Shaun, the SADF had started doing the thing they were so good at with (most of) the Jewish soldiers. Separated them from the rest of us.
They used kosher dietary concerns as the excuse but in reality it was to keep the nationalists Afrikaner youth away from the Jewish servicemen. They knew they were unable to contain their Christian nationalist Afrikaner youth from being racist bullies. Pissing off Israel was not an option as they were helping with military and nuclear projects as well as being a man in the middle for covert US support during sanctions.
Fun fukin times.
Surfers dragging out old religious crap is such a pack of shit.
Who gives a fuck what antiquated weird shit your family has put you through.
If surfing itself isn’t good enough for you you should give it up.
Surfing surpasses any other religion, to think otherwise is to not be a surfer…
To many, being Jewish means belonging to a people. An ethnicity, especially after WWII.
I wouldn’t go see this movie if I was given a free ticket.
What if you could strut your best Hugo Boss attire on the red carpet?
what would Hurley, Rip Curl, Bong, et al. never use as a logo? a beaver!