Riess, Steven A., ed. Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998. 337 pp. $24.95 (USD).
ISBN: 0815627610.
[1] Sports and the American Jew, well edited by Steven
A. Riess, represents an important scholarly contribution to the
growing fields of Jewish studies and sports studies. Covering issues
as diverse as team ownership and the role of Jews in the institutionalization
of the marathon, this collection blunts the stereotype of Jews as
a bookish, non-athletic people. The essays included in this volume
are grouped around the theme of the acculturation and assimilation
of second-generation Jews in America, but as the authors demonstrate,
sports were not just a means of Americanization but of buttressing
Jewish identity as well.
[2] Riess’s opening essay on Jews in American sports
provides historical context for the essays that follow and demonstrates
that there is still much primary material left to be examined concerning
the place of Jews in sports. His article on Jews and boxing illustrates
how, beginning in the last decade of the nineteenth century, a number
of young Jewish males in large cities took up the gloves, “shock[ing]” the
religious sensibilities of their first-generation immigrant parents,
and “surpris[ing]” non-Jews with their accomplishments
(60). However, as he illustrates, with growing economic prosperity
and greater social acceptance, Jews in postwar America moved out
of the ring as fighters and became prominent as “trainers,
managers, and promoters” (104). Riess’s anecdotes
about the prizefighters, especially the great Barney Ross, make
this essay a special delight.
[3] The other contributors rounding out the collection take
up Reiss’s challenge and explore some of these other issues
of Jewish involvement in American sports. Pamela Cooper examines
Jewish involvement with professional and amateur marathon running,
illuminating some of the ethnic tensions and biases that faced Jews
in the first half of the twentieth century; her discussion of the
arguments for and against the decision to participate in the 1936
Olympic Games in Berlin is especially valuable. Gerald Gems’s
analysis of the Chicago Hebrew Institute demonstrates how second-generation
American Jews were eager to be considered equal to gentiles while
at the same time maintaining a distinct religious faith. William
Simons’s article on Hank Greenberg (who goes from being “the
Jewish first baseman” to “Captain Henry,” 206)
illustrates the power of ethnicity in sports, describing how journalists
focused on presumed Jewish qualities: the obsession with learning
and the absence of a tough skin. Donald Fisher’s article
on Lester Harrison, who owned the Rochester Royals immediately following
World War II, chronicles the changing fortunes of professional baseball
as it shifted from a regional to a national sport. Allen Guttmann’s
article on the literature about Jews in sports (by such authors
as Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, and Mark Harris) notes that, while
baseball particularly was once the “central metaphor for Americanization” (243),
as Jews have grown to be part of the larger culture the fixation
on Americanization has waned (253). Finally, Eric Solomon’s
article on Eric Rolfe Greenberg’s novel The Celebrant examines
how the novelist weaves together Jewish, Christian, and pagan elements,
mixing the “myth and fact” of Americanization and baseball
(256), comparable to Malamud’s The Natural.
[4] Only two essays in Sports and the American Jew deviate
from analyses of lower- and middle-class Jewish men. Peter
Levine’s essay examines Jewish country clubs in the decade
following WWI. Prohibited from joining non-Jewish country clubs,
Jews (particularly wealthy Jews from Germany) set out to make themselves
American in spite of discrimination. Traditionally “WASP”-ish
pursuits such as “golf, polo, and yachting” were taken
up by Jewish country clubs, which separated them from the “waves
of east European Jewish immigrants” (165); yet encroaching
anti-Semitism eventually brought them together. Linda Borish’s
article investigates the establishment of athletic institutions—such
as the YWHA and various settlement houses—which were designed
for the “spiritual and bodily well-being of Jewish females” (113)
and which quickened the pace of Americanization. This essay is particularly
important for highlighting cultural and economic differences among
Jewish women. Upper- and middle-class German Jews were the primary
founders of these athletic institutions which were intended for
lower-class—presumably less cultured—Eastern European
Jewish women.
[5] Outside its obvious value to scholars of Jewish studies
and historians of sport, Sports and the American Jew should
appeal as well to those studying immigrant cultures and the tensions
of assimilation that arise between generations. The essays are clear
and concise, and the scholarship is solid. Sports and the American
Jew would make a fine addition to any academic library.
Matthew LaGrone
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
matthew.lagrone@utoronto.ca
