From the Archives | Home (Plate) for the Holidays?
When important baseball games fall on Shabbat or the High Holy Days, what’s a Jewish baseball player to do?
22
Jul
13
Jul
Opinion | You Were Finally a Mensch, Mr. Snyder
In the 1960s, Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan penned inspiring poetic lines, “There's a battle outside and it is ragin'/ It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls,” that still ring true today. Dylan’s concluding musical refrain, “For the times, they are a-changin’,” should be a warning to Dan Snyder, the owner of the Washington, DC football team with the controversial name, that his past declaration to never change the franchise’s name isn’t acceptable anymore as his sponsors are pulling out. Finally today, Snyder said the name would be changed after 87 years of insulting Native Americans with a racist slur.
Snyder had to bow to corporate pressure. Recently, 87 shareholders and investment firms approached important corporate sponsors such as FedEx, Nike and PepsiCo to stop doing business with the Washington football team until it...
26
Jul
Aviva Kempner on ‘The Spy Behind Home Plate’
The Spy Behind Home Plate, the fascinating story of the 1920s-1930s baseball catcher Moe Berg, is the latest film by Aviva Kempner.
12
Jul
The Top 5 Books
We asked experts and aficionados to recommend their top five books on timely and intriguing subjects—from trends in American Judaism to Jewish romance.
27
Jun
The Year Israel Qualified for the World Cup
The Israeli national team has qualified for the tournament only once—the 1970 games held in Mexico.
20
Feb
Winter Olympics 2018: Tracking Israel’s Athletes
Updates on Israel’s progress in the Winter Olympics.
20
Feb
Politics, Propaganda and the Olympics Games
Politics and propaganda are inseparable from the Olympic spectacle—though perhaps never more patently than in Berlin in 1936.
06
Dec
Book Review // When Basketball Was Jewish: Voices of Those Who Played the Game
In Farewell to Sport, published in 1938, the popular New York Daily News sports columnist Paul Gallico, when departing the world of sports to write fiction (The Poseidon Adventure later became one of his best-sellers), reflected on the wide variety of sports and sports figures he had covered.
29
Jul
Going for Gold at the Jewish Olympics
Since 1932, the Maccabiah Games have drawn the finest Jewish athletes to participate in a wide array of events.
16
Dec
Play Hard, Pray Harder
By Gabriel Weinstein
Just two years after leaving the University of Florida facing charges of larceny and theft Auburn University quarterback Cameron Newton was full of gratitude winning the Heisman Trophy. Though Newton thanked his parents, coaches and teammates, he opened his speech thanking someone who has never helped him ice sore muscles or analyze a blitz–God. He proclaimed: “First giving all the honor and glory to God, who is the head of my life. Without him we would not even be here right now. Thank you for that.”
The number of athletes publicly proclaiming their faith has ballooned over the past 50 years through the establishment of sports ministry organizations such as Athletes in Action and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. These ministry organizations have made religious expression more socially acceptable in the locker room and on...