Field Doctor

In fact, the mysterious kippah-clad fellow conferring with the heads of FIFA was none other than a frum South African doctor, considered the world’s expert on both disaster and sports medicine.

Professor Efraim Kramer is the retired head of Emergency Medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and professor of Sport Medicine at Pretoria University. In 2018, he was appointed Chief Medical Officer of the FIFA World Cup — but that was really just the culmination of 35 years in the trenches as a mass casualty/disaster medicine authority, having directed international rescue teams in earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, and volcanic eruptions. And while he’s traveled to 78 different countries and has served on the medical team at seven World Cups, the place he’s truly at home is the Johannesburg Kollel, where he spends his mornings learning Torah.

In a way, it’s coming back to his roots.

In the early part of the 20th century, Lithuanian Jewry began to emigrate by the thousands to more hospitable environs (and not just politically, but a place that was warmer and sunnier than the freezing, dark north). Among those hordes were the Kramers. Efraim’s grandfather was a talmid of the Slabodka yeshivah and his father of the yeshivah in Shavel. Like the great waves of immigrants to America at the turn of the century, for these newcomers faced with adjustment and the rigors of finding a livelihood, religion fell to the wayside.