Sports and the American Jew (review)

Abstract

Sports and American Jew, edited by Steven RiessMy father, an American-born son of an immigrant tailor and seamstress, ran with a gang of tough Jewish kids in streets of Harlem where he and his cronies frequently fought with their fists and broomsticks against their Irish neighbors. An outsider -- surely not my grandparents who knew little about values of organized sports -- reasoned that my father might be better off and stay out of trouble if his energies could be effectively channeled as a member of wrestling team at 92nd Street YMHA. He heeded that advice and under tutelage of Nat Osk, a coach whom he revered and about whom he spoke more than he did his own father, learned how to fight according to rules and ultimately won a number of championships. His greatest souvenir from his pugilistic days was a towel that he took away from New York Athletic Club. In 1930s, that was as close as a Jew could get to be a member of that restricted WASP preserve. Interestingly enough, a historian -- or a descendant -- intent on verifying facts of this very minor sports legend would find no record of Jack Gurock's exploits in Yorkville center's archive. He fought under an assumed name, Jack Austin, because he did not want his immigrant mother to know that he was engaged in such an un-Jewish form of activity. It seems that Anna Gurock was toughest Gurock on block.Though wiseacres may claim that volumes on Jewish sports heroes are among the shortest books in world, it seems that so many American Jews have stories to tell, like mine, about how, when, and why Jewish immigrant boys -- or for that matter girls -- discovered organized sports and what their idolization of their coaches -- as opposed to their parents -- meant to their self-image as sons and daughters and as Jewish men and women. Other American Jews -- from immigrant generation until today -- have sagas to relate of religious conflicts they and their ancestors faced when they embraced sports, a secular, assimilatory activity that is governed by clocks and calendars that were often inimical to Judaism. These individual sports sources might also talk of their awareness of, or myopia to, efforts of proponents of Judaism, throughout twentieth century, to somehow reconcile Jewish practices with team practices. Still other Jews in America can recall ruefully their own symbolic or actual purloined towels, emblematic of their personal marginality as they aspired, through aegis of sports, to be so much like other Americans only to encounter imposed limits on their full integration. What serious sports historian has to do is to plow through these sources and to set them in their deserved historical context.In other words, if studied properly and interpreted appropriately -- without excessive concern with lionizing Jewish group's small legion of mega-stars -- story of Jewish sports activity in United States can not only fill volumes but can contribute important dimensions to social history of that group's experience in United States. …