Judaism's Encounter with American Sports (review)

Jeffrey S. Gurock of Yeshiva University is one of the outstanding scholars of American Jewish history, having written widely about Jewish faith, and how its practitioners, mainly Orthodox, deal with the dominant society and its culture. A former varsity lacrosse player, an avid marathoner, and an assistant Yeshiva University basketball coach, he long avoided writing about sports because, in his scholarly circle, it was not considered an appropriate topic of academic inquiry.

Gurock did not set out to write a book about Jews and American sports but a book about sports and American Judaism, primarily emphasizing the Orthodox Jews of metropolitan New York. He seeks to use sports to understand an arena of Jewish resistance and accommodation to America. Most researchers studying American Jews and sport focus on people whose identity is primarily ethnic rather than faith-based, but Gurock emphasizes the role of religion, primarily among the Orthodox. He studies the defensive strategies of leaders in response to the challenge of sports to Jewish identity. Jews have used synagogue centers with gymnasiums and swimming pools to draw in Jews who are interested in sports. He sees that even today the conflicts between the Orthodox and other Jewish options are regularly played out through sports, dividing Jews rather than bringing them together. Today, Jews can be fully assimilated if they wish, or they can maintain their faith in a tolerant society that makes allowances for their religious needs.

The book's first chapter surveys the Jewish struggle with sport from ancient times through the early modern era, and a chapter on the nineteenth century follows. All along Gurock focuses on sport and religion, purposefully giving little attention to Jewish sports heroes like boxing champion Daniel Mendoza or Jewish sports entrepreneurs. His examination of sport in the late-nineteenth-century U.S. emphasizes how the question of athletes reconciling their religious and sport affiliations was a private, not a communal matter. He applauded the formation of the YMHA, where young men could enjoy uplifting activities. Certain Reform congregations built temples with adjacent gyms to lure in young, but spiritually disinterested, youth. He claims that, at this juncture, few Jews were into sports, which seems to belie the extent of German Jewish activity in athletics.

The issue of sport became much bigger among the numerous second-generation eastern European Jews, creating a problem of reconciling religious values and identities "with a burgeoning new cultural attraction" (42). Sport was new and threatening to their parents because it took them away from work and education, promoted assimilation, and competed with the Sabbath.

Gurock examined the influence of the Jewish Theological Society and rabbis like Herbert S. Goldstein, who promoted the Jewish Center movement, with attractive, user-friendly Americanized synagogues, combining school, shul, and athletic facilities in one building to meet the Jewish needs of young people and their families. The "shul with a pool" became popular mainly with Conservative Jews. These moved a step beyond the Ys, the JCCs, and the Jewish settlement houses which tried to provide athletes with a good environment, but were less able to promote positive Jewish values. Gurock, unlike previous scholars, examines the role of sports in the yeshivas. In the 1920s, administrators at some yeshivas began to promote sports among their students to make them well-rounded. Young men studying at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary wanted to train for the rabbinate in a more Americanized way, as at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and so they played sports. Yeshiva University's President Bernard Revel supported this perspective, and in 1931 introduced intercollegiate sport to show the institution's modern character.

The struggle over Jewish identity in the suburbs after World War II drew the attention of Reform, Conservative and Modern Orthodox religious leaders. They recognized the assimilating attractions of an open society, and each branch of Judaism fought for supporters. Suburbanites looked to the all-around rabbi to preserve Judaism. His job was to get kids interested in both Jewish culture and religion.

Gurock...