Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

This week’s theme at Camp Chai is along the lines of sports/body/health. In this spirit I provided a quick overview for the children today about how Jews relate(d) to sports. I did not do it out of my own (limited) knowledge; I read the introduction from Joseph Hoffman’s Jews in Sports instead. It talked about Jewish American superstar athletes, but also covered biblical heroes of might. It even gave a short history of how sports got their bad reputation in Jewish circles, because it was first introduced by Greek occupiers and later, because rabbis found it not permissible to play sports on Shabbat. The introduction ended with modern period, when sports regained its prestige, particularly in the State of Israel.

As several children were interested in baseball I read that section of the book as well. The stories covered how and why Jewish players changed their names and a few anecdotes of Andy Cohen, his brother Syd and even Babe Ruth. There were two pages devoted to the early years of baseball and two to the golden age. Each of the other sports are covered in the same length, including, soccer, basketball, tennis, the Olympics, boxing, football, lacrosse, and the Maccabiah Games. The fun part of the book, however reside din the “where is Waldo?” type of drawings by Janet Zwebner. Every second page is a huge picture describing one of these sports or events where you have to look for hidden objects. In the process you will discover plenty of sports and Judaism related visual jokes as well.

While I am at it I would like to introduce you the other book we have for children about sports. It is Robert Slater’s The Jewish child’s book of sports heroes. It tells the story of 31 of the greatest Jewish athletes on two pages each. There is also a picture of all of them and the book contains a short introduction and a comprehensive index as well. It is great read for 5-8th graders