First and second generation Jewish immigrants could not understand the American fascination with sports. When their children got involved, incomprehension sometimes followed.
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Mindy Portnoy recounts:Â
One of my favorite immigration generation stories is about football, believe it or not, rather than baseball [here one may detect an allusion to Getsl]. Â Sid Luckman, of Colombia University and Chicago [...]
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When Central- and East-European Jews came to the United States, they encountered quaint native customs. Michel Rosenberg describes how Getsl (the typical Lower East Sider) by chance attends a baseball game. Having learned that a new cantor is performing somewhere in the Bronx, Getsl gets on an uptown train and follows the crowds which he [...]
I am revising my first book, The Church Impotent, and I am including a new section on the struggle  with masculinity that Jews have had in the modern world. For two millennia the Torah scholar was the ideal Jewish man; his exercise was not physical but mental. After the Fall of Jerusalem rabbis regarded sports, [...]
Tags: Judaism · Masculinity · Sports