Judaism's Encounter with American Sports (The Modern Jewish Experience)

This illuminating study uses sports as a prism through which to examine internecine and intergenerational conflict within the American Jewish community since the late nineteenth century.94 2007

Taking a broad historical approach, Gurock (history, Yeshiva Univ.) examines the intertwining of sports and Jews but ranges far beyond the typical recounting of Benny Leonard, Hank Greenberg, Sid Luckman, and Sandy Koufax. Drawing on a vast array of research materials, the author explores the antipathy, ambivalence, or exultation concerning athletic competition that has long characterized Jews. Gurock discusses the reactions of Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative rabbis to social clubs, student societies, synagogues, and community centers that offered sports activities. Parents, Gurock notes, desired that their sons work with their minds and not with their muscles. Nevertheless, inside and outside the Jewish shtetl, the ba'al guf (Jewish tough guy) emerged but hardly served as the model archetype. Still, immigrant children considered physicality a fundamental American trait. By the early 20th century, Jews participated more regularly in sports programs, notwithstanding continued opposition by their parents. Eventually, leading religious as well as secular Jewish figures supported such involvement, albeit in the face of embittered criticisms from other noted Jews. Gurock's largest contribution involves this very examination of the internecine battles in the Jewish community pertaining to the Young Men's Hebrew Association, physical education, and athletics. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and up.July 2006

Sports would seem to be an uncomplicated way to encourage the goal of a society of equals, except that in Judaism, athletics reveals basic social values and may conflict with traditional beliefs. Gurock frames the problem in a well-researched, provocative, balanced way. He conveys how sports provide a vehicle for understanding society's changes and how these changes impact not only the Jewish community, internally, but its relations within the larger society, as well.

Gurock has provided a useful correction for scholars of sport who focus on Jewish ethnicity rather than Jewish religiosity. 92.3 2004

This exceptionally well-researched book sheds new light on a timelessly old question: how can a smaller group assimilate itself into a broader culture without misplacing its identity in the process? As Jeffrey Gurock skillfully shows, Judaism's Encounter with American Sports is the rare 'contest' that yields two winners.

Jeffrey S. Gurock, Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University, is author or editor of 13 books, including A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community: Mordecai M. Kaplan, Orthodoxy and American Judaism, which received the Saul Viener Prize from the American Jewish Historical Society. Gurock has served for the past 25 years as assistant men's basketball coach at Yeshiva and has run the New York City Marathon 12 times. He lives in New York City.