Sandy Koufax 1961 Just in: Koufax was a baller of more than one kind Apparently Brooklyn Jewish baseball legend Sandy Koufax had short legs but also ups. He played basketball for Lafayette High School in Bath Beach, Brooklyn in the early 1950s, setting himself apart as an extraordinary player on the court before going on to his career as an all-star pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers. As an early teenager… Read More »Sandy Koufax
On Tuesday,November 26.2012, a great Bronx-born but Brooklyn-bred American Jewish hero, Marvin Miller died. The Malach Hamoves (Angel of Death) claimed him at age 95. His daughter Susan cited liver cancer as the cause but, denied elevation to Baseball’s Hall of Fame, Miller, an outstanding economist and labor leader, may have succumbed to a broken heart.
Several years prior, at the Workmen’s Circle building, I shared a podium with this protean figure. Deeply honored and almost speechless, I greeted him in Yiddish. Why? According to my late mother, at the Workmen’s Circle — home of mame loshen (mother tongue) –one must speak Yiddish. Moreover, I pointed out that baseball’s peerless union leader, Marvin Miller owes his success to the Golden rule, that is to say the Harry Golden rule. Dress British. Think Yiddish.
To this paradigm, add a social conscience, rooted in trade union culture, grounded in prophetic tradition, and leavened with core values — and you have an unbeatable force. Marvin Miller recalled that his father worked in lower Manhattan dispensing tsadaka (charity) and wisdom in Chinese, English, and Yiddish.
Posted on July 30, 2013 by Jewish News – JNS.org.
(Jewish News – JNS.org) Oscar “Ossie” Schectman, a Jewish player who scored the first basket in the history of what evolved into the National Basketball Association (NBA), died Tuesday at age 94.
Schectman’s historic field goal came on Nov. 1, 1946 for the New York Knicks of the Basketball Association of America (BAA)—the precursor to the NBA—against the Toronto Huskies. The Knicks won the game, 68-66.
“Playing for the New York Knickerbockers in the 1946-47 season, Ossie scored the league’s first basket, which placed him permanently in the annals of NBA history,” NBA Commissioner David Stern said in a statement. “On behalf of the entire NBA family, our condolences go out to Ossie’s family.”
Schectman’s basket would later inspire the title of “The First Basket,” a 2008 documentary about Jews and basketball from executive producer David Vyorst.
Read More »Jewish NBA player who scored league’s first basket dies at 94
By Dr. George Eisen – published in International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
The following list of Jewish Olympic medalists was compiled by Dr. George Eisen, Executive Director and Associate Vice-President at Nazareth College of Rochester, New York.
Dr. Eisen is the author of many books, studies and articles, including the award-winning Children and Play in the Holocaust, Games Among the Shadows (University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), which has been translated into a multitude of languages; and Sport and Physical Education in Jewish History(Wingate Institute, Israel).
Dr. Eisen compiled the Bibliography of Sport and Leisure in Jewish History and Culture, and was primary consultant to the National Holocaust Museum (Washington, D.C.) special exhibition, The Nazi Olympics/Berlin 1936.
Gold
Alfred Flatow, Germany
gymnastics, parallel bars
gymnastics, team parallel bars
gymnastics, team horizontal bar
Gustav Felix Flatow, Germany
gymnastics, team parallel bars
gymnastics, team horizontal bar
Alfred Hajos-Guttman, Hungary
swimming, 100-meter freestyle
swimming, 1,500-meter freestyle
Paul Neumann, Austria
swimming, 500-meter freestyle
Silver
Alfred Flatow, Germany
gymnastics, horizontal bar
Otto Herschmann, Austria
swimming, 100-meter freestyle
Perhaps the most famous of all modern Olympics was the 1936 “Nazi” Olympics, held in Berlin. Hitler tried to use the Olympic Games to demonstrate the superiority of “pure Aryans” over nations that allowed Jews, blacks and other “mongrel” races to compete on their behalf. Jesse Owens and other African-American track stars embarrassed the Fuhrer by winning most of the gold medals in the men’s track sprints and relays, defeating their German rivals easily.
Less remembered about the Nazi Olympics is the saga of two American Jewish sprinters, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller. The 18-year-old Glickman starred in track and football at Syracuse University while Stoller competed for the University of Michigan. The two young men made the U. S. Olympic squad as members of the 4×100-yard relay team. Glickman and Stoller traveled to Germany and prepared diligently for the relay race. The day before the race, however, the U.S. track team coaches replaced Glickman and Stoller with two other runners, Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe.
By Glickman’s account, the last-minute switch was straightforward anti-Semitism. Avery Brundage, chairman of the United States Olympic Committee, supported Hitler’s regime and denied that the Nazis followed anti-Semitic policies. Brundage and assistant Olympic track coach Dean Cromwell belonged to America First, an isolationist political movement that attracted many pro-Nazi sympathizers. Additionally, Cromwell coached two other Olympic sprinters, Foy Draper and Frank Wyckoff, at the University of Southern California and openly favored those two over Glickman and Stoller.
When Walter O’Malley—author Pete Hamill’s choice for the third most evil man in history—pulled the Dodgers out of Brooklyn with the bibulous Horace Stoneham in tow, this baseball tycoon drove a dagger deep into our city’s heart. Our borough minus the Dodgers is like Romeo bereft of Juliet, corned beef on white bread, Abbott less Costello, and Steve Lawrence sans Edye Gorme. As the poet wrote: “After such knowledge, what… Read More »Brooklyn Dodgers, The Ghosts of Flatbush
At 49, the renowned entrepreneur, politician and Brooklyn Nets owner is one of the wealthiest men in the world By: Caitlin Marceau Published: August 27th, 2014 in Business » World Since the dawn of time, Jewish people have contributed greatly to various fields, from sports to entertainment to politics to porn. With our Breakthrough Jew feature, we recognize those who are up and comers in these various industries, identifying those… Read More »Jewish Hall Of Fame: Mikhail Prokhorov
Originally published on The Jewish Voice by JV Staff As the Nets gear up for the third season in their new home in Brooklyn, CTeen, Chabad’s global teen network, is planning its 2nd Annual Jewish Heritage Night which will take place in the Nets’ arena, Barclays Center, on the fifth night of Chanukah. Event organizers are expecting Jewish attendance upwards of 6,000, Brooklyn being a borough that is home to… Read More »Nets to Host Chanukah Jewish Heritage Night at Barclays Center
CAL ABRAMS On November 20, 1980, Eli Wohlgelernter interviewed Cal Abrams and his wife, May. Now housed in the Jewish Division of the New York Public Library, the record of this interview goes beyond statistics, to which British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli disdained in a pungent remark, often quoted and wrongly attributed: “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” With regard to Calvin Ross Abrams, whose lifetime batting average of… Read More »Cal Abrams
By Joe Dorinson
When Walter O’Malley—author Pete Hamill’s choice for the third most evil man in history—pulled the Dodgers out of Brooklyn with the bibulous Horace Stoneham in tow, this baseball tycoon drove a dagger deep into our city’s heart. Our borough minus the Dodgers is like Romeo bereft of Juliet, corned beef on white bread, Abbott less Costello, and Steve Lawrence sans Edye Gorme. As the poet wrote: “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” Who, besides a brainless Supreme Court, argued that baseball was a sport, not a business?
Since 1957, despite the resurgence of Yankee power and the birth of the Mets, there has been a void in New York, New York. That vacuum, which Mother Nature abhors, will be filled when HBO Productions in conjunction with major league baseball airs a documentary film, Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush. This wonderful voyage back in time to our “Glory Days” (the title and the subject of an excellent exhibit that once “played” at the Museum of the City of New York as well) under the aegis of executive producers, Ross Greenburg and Rich Bernstein with able assistance from Brian Hyland, Amani Martin, Ezra Edelman, and Caroline Waterlow evokes another time and a revered place in New York City, no, American history.
Narrated by Liev Schreiber, currently starring in Donovan, this engrossing film opens with a splendid view of Brooklyn’s Great Bridge, which couples art and technology in high fidelity. The camera eye fixes on Manhattan; then retreats into Brooklyn, where the film’s principal narrative charts the heroic odyssey of Jack Roosevelt Robinson and his pilgrim’s progress into mainstream America by way of Brooklyn. Fortified with “talking head” testimony from Dodger teammates Duke Snider, Don Newcombe, Carl Erskine, Clem Labine, and Ralph Branca and enriched by the recollections of Rachel Robinson, his beautiful, articulate, and courageous wife, the film features amazing footage of this “American Samurai,” re: David Halberstam, in action. Before Jackie’s advent into major league baseball, black athletes projected either brute force: Jack Johnson and Joe Louis or gifted clowns like the Harlem Globetrotters. Black stereotypes pervaded film, radio, and graphic arts.