Blog Archive

Bears #1 Pick: Gabe Carimi!



A Pick that should make both Badger & Kristin Cavallari happy:

1. Kristin gets protection for her future husband
2. For Badger, someone to root for- a fellow badger and, like Scarlett Johansen, a fellow member of the tribe:

From Wikipedia:

Carimi is Jewish and very committed to his religion, and found time as a youth to both go to his football practices and to attend Madison's Temple Beth-El, a Reform synagogue. By the time of his Bar Mitzvah, he was already so tall that while blessing him, and even with Carimi bending down, the synagogue’s education director had to put his hands on Carimi’s shoulders rather than atop his head. For his Bar Mitzvah project, he helped build a house for Habitat for Humanity while he was in seventh grade. Carimi continued his Jewish studies even after his Bar Mitzvah.
In his freshman year of college in 2007, when Yom Kippur (the holiest day of the year in Judaism; a fast day that is the "Day of Atonement") fell on a Saturday, he fasted until an hour before the Big Ten Conference opener against Iowa started that night. Carimi said, "Religion is a part of me, and I don't want to just say I'm Jewish. I actually do make sacrifices that I know are hard choices.” At the 2011 NFL combine, when asked whether he would play on Yom Kippur in the NFL, he responded: "I already looked out over the next 15 years, and Yom Kippur doesn't fall on a Sunday."
He is nicknamed "The Jewish Hammer" or "The Hammer". He explains that as The Hebrew Hammer was taken "they had to come up with something else", and that the "hammer" aspect refers to his penchant for throwing opposing players down on the field. One of his favorite Jewish football players was a former Badger, Matt Bernstein, and he looks to 49ers former offensive linesman Harris Barton as a role model.


So far, he seems like a great fit for da Bears!