Ellis Island to Ebbets Field: Sport and the American Jewish Experience [Paperback]

Peter Levine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 9, 1993 | ISBN-10: 0195085558 | ISBN-13: 978-0195085556

Filled with marvelous stories, anecdotes and personality profiles, this book explores the importance of sport--both watching and playing--as a middle ground for a minority culture actively determining for itself what it meant to be an American Jew. Photos.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Levine, a professor of history at Michigan State, here composes a valuable footnote to American sports history. He begins by pointing out that Eastern European Jews traditionally honored scholarship and learning over athletic prowess; in his apt phrase, they were "people of the book rather than people of the hook, right cross, or home run." Arrived in America, the immigrant generation found their sons enchanted by sports, to the shock of most and the horror of some. By the 1920s, city-dwelling Jewish athletes had all but taken over the urban game of basketball, and they soon made their mark in boxing with long-time champion Benny Leonard. Stardom in baseball came later, but Hank Greenberg, the quintessential Jewish sports hero, made it all worthwhile in the 1930s. A chapter on Jews in intercollegiate sports between the world wars and other minor concerns seems unnecessary, but taken as a whole this book makes a major contribution to the field.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Sport has played an integral role in American Jewish identity. Levine examines three generations of 20th-century American Jewish life through numerous interviews and studies of Jews in both amateur and professional baseball, basketball, and boxing. The heart of the book concerns the second generation and the interwar era of the Twenties and Thirties. Ironies abound. Jews used sports to strengthen ethnic pride; sports also eased assimilation into American culture. Jewish sports stars like the muscular Hank Greenberg were not often ritually observant Jews, but they were nevertheless a point of great pride. This book also tries to challenge the myth of the physically inept Jew. Levine was inspired to write this study by the memory of his father, a college athlete at the City College of New York. This unusual and scholarly work will definitely fill a niche in libraries with strong Judaic and sports holdings.
- Paul Kaplan, Dakota Cty. Lib., Eagan, Minn.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (September 9, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195085558
• ISBN-13: 978-0195085556
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #956,581 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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