Download or read book The Role of Sports in Jewish American Society written by Anja Dinter and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2012-06 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, University of Potsdam (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Jewish-American History and Life, 10 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: It is the aim of the following work to analyze the role of sports in Jewish-American life, mainly concentrating on the time until the end of the World War II. Up to the present day the notion of Jewish culture and tradition emphasizing intellectual accomplishments and the life of the mind and not having place for sport and the physical has been prevalent. Due to the traditional emphasis of learning and an appreciation for sophistication during all of Jewish history, the stereotype view of a general rejection of sports by Jews and the image of Jewish physical weakness seems to have evolved as a consequence. This image has even been misrepresented by anti-Semites, as Henry Ford, to show that Jewish-Americans are "ill-fit to be true Americans". Previously read books dealing with Jewish sports in Germany and an article on the importance of sports within Jewish religion that contradicted the image mentioned above, let an increased interest in the specific mind-set of Jewish-Americans towards physical activities develop. Due to the complexity of the topic and the extent of this paper only certain aspects can be presented in the discourse, unfortunately excluding other interesting ones. The focus will be on the actual participation and achievements as well as attitudes of Jews towards sports and the effects of this field on the integration of Jewish immigrants. The time frame has been limited to the period between the first large waves of immigration and the end of World War II because of the adjustment of Jewish sports to general developments thereafter. Nevertheless, some general tendencies of the post-World War II decades will be discussed. Background information on the general historical co

Download or read book The role of sports in jewish american society written by Anja Dinter and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-06-08 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, University of Potsdam (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Jewish-American History and Life , language: English, abstract: It is the aim of the following work to analyze the role of sports in Jewish-American life, mainly concentrating on the time until the end of the World War II. Up to the present day the notion of Jewish culture and tradition emphasizing intellectual accomplishments and the life of the mind and not having place for sport and the physical has been prevalent. Due to the traditional emphasis of learning and an appreciation for sophistication during all of Jewish history, the stereotype view of a general rejection of sports by Jews and the image of Jewish physical weakness seems to have evolved as a consequence. This image has even been misrepresented by anti-Semites, as Henry Ford, to show that Jewish-Americans are “ill-fit to be true Americans”. Previously read books dealing with Jewish sports in Germany and an article on the importance of sports within Jewish religion that contradicted the image mentioned above, let an increased interest in the specific mind-set of Jewish-Americans towards physical activities develop. Due to the complexity of the topic and the extent of this paper only certain aspects can be presented in the discourse, unfortunately excluding other interesting ones. The focus will be on the actual participation and achievements as well as attitudes of Jews towards sports and the effects of this field on the integration of Jewish immigrants. The time frame has been limited to the period between the first large waves of immigration and the end of World War II because of the adjustment of Jewish sports to general developments thereafter. Nevertheless, some general tendencies of the post-World War II decades will be discussed. Background information on the general historical context and the evolution of American Sports will ensure a better and deeper understanding of the issues discussed.

Download or read book Beyond Stereotypes written by Ari F. Sclar and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades after the Civil War, sports slowly gained a prominent position within American culture. This development provided Jews with opportunities to participate in one of the few American cultures not closed off to them. Jewish athleticism challenged anti-Semitic depictions of Jews supposed physical inferiority while helping to construct a modern American Jewish identity. An Americanization narrative emerged that connected Jewish athleticism with full acceptance and integration into American society. This acceptance was not without struggle, but Jews succeeded and participated in the American sporting culture as athletes, coaches, owners, and fans. The diversity of topics in this volume reflect that the field of the history of American Jews and sports is growing and has moved beyond the need to overcome the idea that Jews are simply People of the Book. The contributions to this volume paint a broad picture of Jewish participation in sports, with essays written by respected historians who have examined specific sports, individuals, leagues, cities, and the impact of sport on Judaism. Despite the continued belief that Jewish religious or cultural identity remains somehow distinct from the American idea of the athlete, the volume demonstrates that American Jews have had a tremendous contribution to American sports and conversely, that sports have helped construct American Jewish culture and identity.

Download or read book Judaism s Encounter with American Sports written by Jeffrey S. Gurock and published by . This book was released on 2005-08-31 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engages the controversial role that sports has played in shaping American Jewish identity.

Download or read book Sports and the American Jew written by Steven A. Riess and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book debunks the conventional stereotype that Jews and sports are somehow anathema and clearly demonstrates that sports have long been a significant institution in Jewish American life. Jews were among the very first professional baseball players and the most outstanding early American track stars. In the 1920s and 1930s they dominated inner-city sports such as basketball and boxing and produced star athletes in virtually all sports. Many Jews were also prominent in the business, communication, and literary aspects of sport. These essays, written by leading contemporary sports historians, examine the contributions of Jewish men and women to American sports. Steven A. Riess's article on this topic is the most comprehensive overview ever written and will doubtless become a standard reference for years to come.

Download or read book Judaism s Encounter with American Sports written by Jeffrey S. Gurock and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2005-08-31 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Judaism's Encounter with American Sports examines how sports entered the lives of American Jewish men and women and how the secular values of sports threatened religious identification and observance. What do Jews do when a society -- in this case, a team -- "chooses them in," but demands commitments that clash with ancestral ties and practices? Jeffrey S. Gurock uses the experience of sports to illuminate an important mode of modern Jewish religious conflict and accommodation to America. He considers the defensive strategies American Jewish leaders have employed in response to sports' challenges to identity, such as using temple and synagogue centers, complete with gymnasiums and swimming pools, to attract the athletically inclined to Jewish life. Within the suburban frontiers of post--World War II America, sports-minded modern Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis competed against one another for the allegiances of Jewish athletes and all other Americanized Jews. In the present day, tensions among Jewish movements are still played out in the sports arena. Today, in a mostly accepting American society, it is easy for sports-minded Jews to assimilate completely, losing all regard for Jewish ties. At the same time, a very tolerant America has enabled Jews to succeed in the sports world, while keeping faith with Jewish traditions. Gurock foregrounds his engaging book against his own experiences as a basketball player, coach, and marathon runner. By using the metaphor of sports, Judaism's Encounter with American Sports underscores the basic religious dilemmas of our day.

Download or read book Jewish Jocks written by Franklin Foer and published by Twelve. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays by today's preeminent writers on significant Jewish figures in sports, told with humor, heart, and an eye toward the ever elusive question of Jewish identity. Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame is a timeless collection of biographical musings, sociological riffs about assimilation, first-person reflections, and, above all, great writing on some of the most influential and unexpected pioneers in the world of sports. Featuring work by today's preeminent writers, these essays explore significant Jewish athletes, coaches, broadcasters, trainers, and even team owners (in the finite universe of Jewish Jocks, they count!). Contributors include some of today's most celebrated writers covering a vast assortment of topics, including David Remnick on the biggest mouth in sports, Howard Cosell; Jonathan Safran Foer on the prodigious and pugnacious Bobby Fischer; Man Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson writing elegantly on Marty Reisman, America's greatest ping-pong player and the sport's ultimate showman. Deborah Lipstadt examines the continuing legacy of the Munich Massacre, the fortieth anniversary of which coincided with the 2012 London Olympics. Jane Leavy reveals why Sandy Koufax agreed to attend her daughter's bat mitzvah. And we learn how Don Lerman single-handedly thrust competitive eating into the public eye with three pounds of butter and 120 jalapeño peppers. These essays are supplemented by a cover design and illustrations throughout by Mark Ulriksen. From settlement houses to stadiums and everywhere in between, Jewish Jock features men and women who do not always fit the standard athletic mold. Rather, they utilized talents long prized by a people of the book (and a people of commerce) to game these games to their advantage, in turn forcing the rest of the world to either copy their methods -- or be left in their dust.

Download or read book When Basketball Was Jewish written by Douglas Stark and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 2015–16 NBA season, the Jewish presence in the league was largely confined to Adam Silver, the commissioner; David Blatt, the coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers; and Omri Casspi, a player for the Sacramento Kings. Basketball, however, was once referred to as a Jewish sport. Shortly after the game was invented at the end of the nineteenth century, it spread throughout the country and became particularly popular among Jewish immigrant children in northeastern cities because it could easily be played in an urban setting. Many of basketball’s early stars were Jewish, including Shikey Gotthoffer, Sonny Hertzberg, Nat Holman, Red Klotz, Dolph Schayes, Moe Spahn, and Max Zaslofsky. In this oral history collection, Douglas Stark chronicles Jewish basketball throughout the twentieth century, focusing on 1900 to 1960. As told by the prominent voices of twenty people who played, coached, and refereed it, these conversations shed light on what it means to be a Jew and on how the game evolved from its humble origins to the sport enjoyed worldwide by billions of fans today. The game’s development, changes in style, rise in popularity, and national emergence after World War II are narrated by men reliving their youth, when basketball was a game they played for the love of it. When Basketball Was Jewish reveals, as no previous book has, the evolving role of Jews in basketball and illuminates their contributions to American Jewish history as well as basketball history.

Download or read book Ellis Island to Ebbets Field written by Peter Levine and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1993 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Ellis Island to Ebbets Field, Peter Levine vividly recounts the stories of Red Auerbach, Hank Greenberg, Moe Berg, Sid Luckman, Nat Holman, Benny Leonard, Barney Ross, Marty Glickman, and a host of others who became Jewish heroes and symbols of the difficult struggle for American success.From settlement houses and street corners, to Madison Square and Fenway Park, their experiences recall a time when Jewish males dominated sports like boxing and basketball, helping to smash stereotypes about Jewish weakness while instilling American Jews with a fierce pride in their strength andability in the face of Nazi aggression, domestic anti-Semitism, and economic depression. Full of marvelous stories, anecdotes, and personalities, Ellis Island to Ebbets Field enhances our understanding of the Jewish-American experience as well as the struggles of other American minoritygroups.

Download or read book Jews in the Gym written by Leonard Jay Greenspoon and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For some, the connection between Jews and athletics might seem far-fetched. But in fact, as is highlighted by the fourteen chapters in this collection, Jews have been participating in"and thinking about"sports for more than two thousand years. The articles in this volume cover a wide chronological range: from the Hellenistic period (first century BCE) to the most recent basketball season. The range of athletes covered is equally broad. The authors of these essays raise a number of intriguing questions such as: What differing attitudes toward sports have Jews exhibited across periods and cultures? In what sports have Jews excelled, and why? How have Jews overcome prejudices on the part of the general populace against a Jewish presence on the field or in the ring? This volume features a number of illustrations (many of them quite rare). It is accessible to the general reader and contains much information of interest to the scholar in Jewish studies, American studies, and sports history.

Download or read book Muscling in on New Worlds written by Raanan Rein and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Muscling in on New Worlds brings together a dynamic new collection of studies that approach sport as a window into Jewish identity formation in the Americas. Articles address football/soccer, yoga, boxing, and other sports as crucial points of Jewish interaction with other communities and as vehicles for reconciling the legacy of immigration and Jewish distinctiveness in new world national and regional contexts.

Download or read book Imagining the American Jewish Community written by Jack Wertheimer and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2007 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively collection of sixteen essays on the many ways American Jews have imagined and constructed communities

Download or read book When Boxing Was a Jewish Sport written by Allen Bodner and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1997-10-28 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author reports on the many young Jewish fighters who began boxing for the money. In the 1920s and 1930s, "Jews were represented in almost every aspect of the sport, from manufacturing equipment to management."--Jacket.

Download or read book The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex written by Lila Corwin Berman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive history of American Jewish philanthropy and its influence on democracy and capitalism For years, American Jewish philanthropy has been celebrated as the proudest product of Jewish endeavors in the United States, its virtues extending from the local to the global, the Jewish to the non-Jewish, and modest donations to vast endowments. Yet, as Lila Corwin Berman illuminates in The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex, the history of American Jewish philanthropy reveals the far more complicated reality of changing and uneasy relationships among philanthropy, democracy, and capitalism. With a fresh eye and lucid prose, and relying on previously untapped sources, Berman shows that from its nineteenth-century roots to its apex in the late twentieth century, the American Jewish philanthropic complex tied Jewish institutions to the American state. The government’s regulatory efforts—most importantly, tax policies—situated philanthropy at the core of its experiments to maintain the public good without trammeling on the private freedoms of individuals. Jewish philanthropic institutions and leaders gained financial strength, political influence, and state protections within this framework. However, over time, the vast inequalities in resource distribution that marked American state policy became inseparable from philanthropic practice. By the turn of the millennium, Jewish philanthropic institutions reflected the state’s growing investment in capitalism against democratic interests. But well before that, Jewish philanthropy had already entered into a tight relationship with the governing forces of American life, reinforcing and even transforming the nation’s laws and policies. The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex uncovers how capitalism and private interests came to command authority over the public good, in Jewish life and beyond.

Download or read book Jews and American Popular Culture Sports leisure and lifestyle written by Paul Buhle and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 2007 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This three-volume work tells the story of how Jewish Americans overcame anti-Semitism, anti-immigrant biases, and poverty to shape American film, television, music, sports, literature, food, and humor.

Download or read book Sports in American History 2E written by Gems, Gerald and published by Human Kinetics. This book was released on 2017-02-27 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sports in American History: From Colonization to Globalization, Second Edition, journeys from the early American past to the present to give students a compelling grasp of the evolution of American sporting practices.

Download or read book A Fortress in Brooklyn written by Nathaniel Deutsch and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The epic story of Hasidic Williamsburg, from the decline of New York to the gentrification of Brooklyn "A rich chronicle of the Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg. . . . This expert account enlightens."—Publishers Weekly “One of the most creative and iconoclastic works to have been written about Jews in the United States.”—Eliyahu Stern, Yale University The Hasidic community in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn is famously one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy groups of people in the entire United States. Less known is how the community survived in one of the toughest parts of New York City during an era of steep decline, only to later resist and also participate in the unprecedented gentrification of the neighborhood. Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper unravel the fascinating history of how a group of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped, and sometimes fiercely opposed the urban processes that transformed their gritty neighborhood, from white flight and the construction of public housing to rising crime, divestment of city services, and, ultimately, extreme gentrification. By showing how Williamsburg’s Hasidim rejected assimilation while still undergoing distinctive forms of Americanization and racialization, Deutsch and Casper present both a provocative counter-history of American Jewry and a novel look at how race, real estate, and religion intersected in the creation of a quintessential, and yet deeply misunderstood, New York neighborhood.