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ESPN broadcaster Chris Berman among International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame’s 11 inductees for 2023

(JTA) — Renowned broadcaster Chris Berman and a German Jew who once said hockey “saved me and my family from the Holocaust” are among the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame’s annual class of inductees.

The 2023 class, shared exclusively with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, includes athletes and sports figures from across sports and around the world — from water polo to fencing, and from the United States to Hungary.

Jed Margolis, president of the hall of fame, told JTA that the 11 inductees were selected from a list of 150 nominees submitted through an open process throughout the past year. A confidential election committee of around 20 athletes, past award winners and sports experts voted on a smaller list of approximately 30 finalists.

“I’m first of all impressed with how there’s no shortage of qualified people — world record holders, people who’ve been at the highest level of their sport and voted into their particular sport hall of fame,” Margolis said. “You would think that we may run out of people, but we’re getting great nominations all the time.”

Margolis added that honoring Jewish athletes can help push back against stereotypes that Jews may not be athletic — most infamously depicted in the 1980 film “Airplane!”

“If you take a look at the numbers of who we represent worldwide, what are we, about 0.02% of the world population, and we’ve won about 0.03% of the Olympic medals. So we’re boxing above our weight, so to speak,” Margolis said.

The 2023 class brings the hall’s total to 448 members since its inauguration in 1981. Shoe designer and Maccabiah athlete and philanthropist Stuart Weitzman is also being honored, as are the recently retired editors of the Jewish Sports Review magazine.

The Hall, which is housed at the Wingate Institute for Physical Education and Sport in Netanya, Israel, will recognize this year’s honorees at its next induction ceremony in July 2025. Inductees are announced annually, but the ceremony itself is held every four years, when the Maccabiah Games take place.

For now, here’s what you need to know about this year’s honorees.

Rudi Ball, ice hockey

Rudi Ball, center, scores a goal in December 1931. (ullstein bild via Getty Images)

A member of the International Ice Hockey Hall of Fame, Ball (1911-1975) was one of two Jewish athletes to represent Germany at the 1936 Winter Olympics, held in Germany six months before the Berlin summer games that drew the world’s attention to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.

During Ball’s playing career, which spanned from 1928 to 1952, the right winger won eight German championships and a bronze medal in the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid.

When the German Olympic Committee threatened to remove Ball from the team because he was Jewish, his teammates threatened to boycott the Games. According to The Guardian, Ball may have struck a deal with the Nazi regime, agreeing to play for Germany if his parents were allowed out of the country. He later said, “I am the one who owes hockey. It saved me and my family from the Holocaust.”

Chris Berman, broadcaster

ESPN anchor Chris Berman speaks during the Pro Football HOF Centennial Class of 2020 enshrinement ceremonies in Canton, Ohio, Aug. 7, 2021. (MSA/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Award-winning broadcaster Chris Berman has been an anchor for ESPN’s flagship program “SportsCenter” since 1979, a month after it launched. Berman, 67, has primarily been the face of the network’s football coverage, but he has also anchored the U.S. Open golf tournament and the NHL Stanley Cup Finals and has done play-by-play for Major League Baseball games as well.

Nicknamed “Boomer,” Berman was raised in a Jewish family in Irvington, New York. He is a six-time recipient of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association’s National Sportscaster of the Year award, an inductee of the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame and has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

David Blatt, basketball

David Blatt coaching during a Turkish Airlines Euroleague match between the Olympiacos and Bayern Munich in Athens, Greece, March 19, 2019. (Ayhan Mehmet/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

David Blatt is a decorated former basketball player, coach and executive whose career has included playing at Princeton University; professional basketball leagues in Israel, Italy, Russia, Turkey and Greece; and a stint as head coach of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers.

Blatt, 63, who was born in Boston and grew up attending a Reform synagogue, moved to Israel in 1981, where he served in the military and played professionally for more than a decade before turning to coaching.

Blatt won championships and coaching accolades throughout his career, and has also played in the Maccabiah Games and coached in the Olympics. He led the Cavaliers to the 2015 NBA Finals in his first season as coach, and received a ring for the team’s championship the following year, despite being fired halfway through the season.

Deena Kastor, track & field

Deena Kastor attends an ASICS event, Feb. 27, 2020. (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images for ASICS)

A Boston-area native, Deena Kastor is an eight-time national champion in cross country who won a bronze medal at the 2004 Olympics and holds U.S. records for the 10-mile, 15-kilometer and 8-kilometer women’s road races. She previously held the U.S. record for women’s marathon and half marathon.

Kastor, 49, is a member of the National, New York and Southern California Jewish Sports Halls of Fame, and has also earned various honors from USA Track & Field.

Ilona Elek-Schacherer, fencing

The Hungarian fencer Ilona Elek-Schacherer wins in foil fencing during the Olympic Games, Aug. 1936. (Austrian Archives/Imagno/Getty Images)

Born in Budapest to a Jewish father and Catholic mother, Ilona Elek-Schacherer (1907-1988) would go on to become perhaps the greatest woman fencer of all time.

Elek-Schacherer competed in three Olympics for Hungary between 1936 and 1952, winning two gold medals and one silver medal. She also won 10 gold medals, five silver medals and two bronze medals in World Championships spanning 1934 to 1956. (It is unclear how she spent the war years.)

She won more international fencing titles than any other woman.

John Frank, football

John Frank, center, during a game at Candlestick Park on Dec. 7, 1990, in San Francisco, California. (Andrew D. Bernstein/Getty Images)

John Frank is a two-time Super Bowl champion tight end with the San Francisco 49ers who has enjoyed a successful second career as an otolaryngologist (ear, nose and throat doctor) with a focus on hair restoration surgery.

Frank, 60, also played football at Ohio State University, where he set a school record for receptions by a tight end and was twice honored as an Academic All-American. He was the team’s most valuable player his senior year.

Frank also co-founded the Israeli bobsled team and is a member of the Ohio State Athletic Hall of Fame, the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and the Western Pennsylvania Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

Merrill Moses, water polo

Merrill Moses during a match between the United States and Russia in Kazan, Russia, July 27, 2015. (Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

Merrill Moses is a three-time Olympic water polo goalkeeper who earned a silver medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and won the 1997 NCAA water polo championship with Pepperdine University.

Moses, 45, also played for the U.S. team in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, and won gold medals at three Pan American Games in 2007, 2011 and 2015. He was inducted into the USA Water Polo Hall of Fame in 2021 and is also a member of the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

Moran Samuel, rowing

Moran Samuel competes during the 2022 World Rowing Championships in Racice, Czech Republic, Sept. 21, 2022. (Adam Nurkiewicz/Getty Images)

Moran Samuel is an Israeli world champion paralympic rower and basketball player. After suffering a spinal stroke in 2006, Samuel became paralyzed in her lower body.

Samuel, 40, played for Israel in the 2013 European Wheelchair Basketball Championship in Frankfurt. As a rower, she represented Israel at the Paralympic Games in 2012, 2016 and 2020. She won bronze and silver medals, respectively, in the latter two tournaments. Samuel also won a gold medal at the 2015 World Rowing Championships.

In 2012, Samuel won a race in single scull competition at a rowing tournament in Italy, but the event organizers were unable to play the Israeli national anthem — so she sang it herself.

Mordechai Spiegler, soccer 

Mordechai Spiegler, far left, and the Israeli national soccer team lines up before a friendly match against Australia, May 25, 1970, in Mexico City. (Staff/AFP via Getty Images)

Considered among the best Israeli soccer players ever, Mordechai Spiegler’s crowning achievement was helping Israel qualify for the 1970 FIFA World Cup, the last time the country did so. He scored Israel’s only World Cup goal in history.

Spiegler, 78, was captain of the Israeli Olympic team that reached the quarterfinals at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, and his 32 national team goals were a record until 2021. Spiegler also coached for many years in Israel. He is a member of the Israeli Football Hall of Fame.

Outside of Israel, Spiegler played for the vaunted Paris Saint-Germain club and for the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League, where he was teammates with the Brazilian soccer legend Pelé, who died last month.

Dwight Stones, track & field

Dwight Stones competes in the men’s high jump final during the 1984 United States Olympic Track and Field Trials in Los Angeles, June 1984. (David Madison/Getty Images)

Los Angeles native Dwight Stones is a two-time Olympic bronze medalist in high jump, including at the 1972 Munich Olympics, which was marred by the terrorist attack that killed 11 members of the Israeli delegation.

Stones, 69, won 19 national championships in his 16-year career, and still holds multiple world records. In 1984, he became the first athlete to both compete and be an announcer at the same Olympics. He has since served as a television analyst, including at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Stones is a Maccabiah Games alum and is a member of the U.S. Track Hall of Fame, the California Sports Hall of Fame and the Orange County Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

Ariel Ze’evi, judo

Israel’s Arik Ze’evi in action against France’s Frederic Demontfaucon in the Men’s -100kg class in Beijing, 2008. (Tony Marshall/PA Images via Getty Images)

Ariel Ze’evi is a retired Israeli judo champion.

Nicknamed “Arik,” the 45-year-old Bnei Brak native won a bronze medal at the 2004 Olympics as well as four European championships and a silver medal at the 2001 World Championships.

He also competed in the 1997 Maccabiah Games, two International Judo Federation Grand Slams (including a 2011 win) and two IJF Grand Prix.

Other honorees

Stuart Weitzman served as the U.S. team’s flag bearer. (Courtesy Maccabi USA)

The IJSHOF is also honoring shoe designer Stuart Weitzman with its lifetime achievement award and longtime co-editors of the Jewish Sports Review Ephraim Moxson and Shel Wallman with an award of excellence.

Weitzman is a Maccabiah pingpong medalist who has supported Maccabi USA with millions of dollars of support.

Moxson and Wallman recently concluded a 25-year run producing the Jewish Sports Review, a bimonthly magazine identifying Jewish athletes from college through professional sports.

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AUDIO: Scholar Ruth Wisse describes her collaboration with songwriter Leonard Cohen

אין אַ גאָר אינטערעסאַנטן אינטערוויו אויף דער ייִדישער ראַדיאָ־פּראָגראַם „דאָס ייִדישע קול“, גיט די אָנגעזעענע ייִדישע ליטעראָטור־פֿאָרשערין רות ווײַס איבער אירע זכרונות פֿון אַ צאָל באַקאַנטע ייִדישע פֿיגורן.

זי דערציילט ווי אַזוי זי האָט געזאַמלט געלט פֿאַר אַ בוך שריפֿטן פֿונעם קאַנאַדער לידער־שרײַבער און זינגער לענאַרד כּהן, מיט וועמען זי איז געבליבן גוטע פֿרײַנד ביזן סוף פֿון זײַן לעבן, נישט געקוקט אויף די גאָר אַנדערע ריכטונגען פֿון זייערע קאַריערעס.

ווײַס גיט אויך איבער אירע זכרונות פֿון צוויי ייִדישע שרײַבער: איציק מאַנגער, וואָס האָט אָפֿט זיך אויסגעדריקט אַ סך בעסער בײַם רעדן מיט אַ גלעזל משקה אין דער האַנט, און יצחק באַשעוויס, וואָס האָט געדינט ווי דער כּהן בײַ איר זונס פּדיון־הבן.

זי לייענט אויך אויסצוגן פֿון איר בוך (אויף ענגליש), „פֿרײַ ווי אַ ייִד“ וועגן אירע שמועסן מיטן פּאָעט אַבֿרהם סוצקעווער און דעם גרינדער פֿון ייִוואָ, מאַקס ווײַנרײַך, ווען זי איז נאָך געווען אַ סטודענטקע. ביידע האָבן זי געפּרוּווט איבערצײַגן צו ווערן צווישן די ערשטע דאָקטאָראַנטקעס פֿון דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור אין קאָלאָמביע־אוניווערסיטעט.

צו הערן דעם אינטערוויו, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ. איר קענט עס אויך הערן אויף „ספּאָטיפֿײַ“ אָדער אויף „עפּל פּאָדקאַסט“

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A little‑remembered Gilded Age millionaire helped make milk safe for American kids through his ‘retail giving’

The 1844 edition of the widely used schoolbook written by William H. McGuffey, “Newly Revised Eclectic Fourth Reader,” includes a dialogue about the difference between “true and false philanthropy”:

Mr. Fantom: I despise a narrow field. O for the reign of universal benevolence! I want to make all mankind good and happy.

Mr. Goodman: Dear me! Sure, that must be a wholesale sort of a job: had you not better try your hand at a town or neighborhood first?

As the discussion continues, the lesson becomes clear. Mr. Fantom’s approach is too ambitious to accomplish much, while Mr. Goodman’s, if narrower in scope, was likely to be more useful in practice.

Donor with mundane objectives

Andrew Fisher’s biography of a Gilded Age New York department store magnate, “Nathan Straus: From Macy’s Magnate to International Humanitarian,” suggests that Mr. Goodman would likely have applauded Straus’ approach to philanthropy.

This black and white photo is a portrait of a man in an old-fashioned suit.
Nathan Straus made his mark in philanthropy after a successful career running the Macy’s department store. Library of Congress Image by

Many of Straus’ contemporary philanthropists were setting lofty goals for their giving. In oil magnate John D. Rockefeller’s case, it was promoting “the welfare of humanity throughout the world.” For steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie, it was “to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding.”

Straus pursued more mundane objectives that included championing milk pasteurization. Although his efforts are not as well known today as those of his more ambitious – and wealthier – counterparts, they accomplished a lot and showed that what might be called “retail giving” can have far-reaching effects.

Successful immigration story

The Straus family came to the United States from Germany in the 1850s during the first big wave of Jewish immigration. Lazarus Straus, Nathan’s father, followed a familiar path for Jewish immigrants at the time, beginning as a peddler and eventually establishing his own store in the small town of Talbotton, Georgia, where the members of his family were the only Jews.

He prospered, became a respected citizen and saw that his children received good educations, including in their religion.

Then the Civil War upended the family’s life, first by reviving antisemitic prejudices and then, eventually, by destroying the family’s business.

Starting anew in New York City, Lazarus and his older sons, Isidor and Nathan, began to sell imported china, glassware and other crockery to retailers in the Northeast and South. One was Rowland H. Macy, who had founded an eponymous store that was on the cutting edge of what Fisher calls a “retailing revolution.”

Macy’s innovations included stocking large inventories of many kinds of merchandise, competitive pricing, extensive advertising and providing a variety of services like public restrooms and a cafeteria to make shoppers’ experiences more pleasurable.

Aided by the rapid urban and economic growth of the late 19th century, the model flourished. Department stores displaced smaller, specialty shops. Other retail powerhouses, such as Bloomingdale’s and Lord & Taylor, soon competed with Macy’s.

The Straus family sold their wares at Macy’s. After Rowland H. Macy died, the Straus family became partners with its new owners. By 1896, the Strauses owned the store outright. And Macy’s was expanding: It bought another department store in Brooklyn and created a flagship building on Manhattan’s Herald Square, which Macy’s still occupies.

The big Macy's store in Manhattan is seen in a black-and-white photo.
The landmark Macy’s department store in New York’s Herald Square opened in 1902 while Nathan and Isidor Straus ran the retailer. Library of Congress Image by

His philanthropy journey begins

While Isidor Straus oversaw the store’s internal operations, Nathan focused on the company’s external activities, such as purchasing, marketing and dealing with government and business leaders.

A third brother, Oscar, pursued a career as a politician and diplomat, eventually becoming secretary of commerce and labor under President Theodore Roosevelt and the first Jewish member of a presidential cabinet. Perhaps inevitably, this led to a series of public appointments for Nathan Straus.

However, as they became wealthier, Nathan and his wife, Lina, increasingly devoted their attention to a series of philanthropic projects.

In 1893, the U.S. entered a four-year economic depression, its worst until the 1930s. As unemployment in New York City rose, Nathan Straus used his merchandising skills to address the needs of the jobless and poor.

He created a number of “depots” near tenements and boarding houses that sold coal, food and fuel at discount prices. Fisher, Straus’ biographer, rightly calls these early examples of what is now known as “social entrepreneurship”: the application of business principles to solving social problems.

Making milk less deadly

As these efforts were getting away, Straus also launched what would become his major preoccupation: promoting pasteurized milk.

In New York City in the early 1890s, Fisher writes, “the annual mortality rate among children under five was about 15 percent,” or 18,000 infants and toddlers per year. A main cause was consuming raw milk, which, unless certified by inspectors, was likely not only to contain a variety of pathogens, such as tuberculosis bacteria, but spoil easily going from farm to table.

Although scientists had long known that heating could make milk safer, doctors and public health officials worried that sterilizing milk might also destroy its valuable nutrients.

Straus, who had lost one of his own children to what he believed was a milk-borne infection, built on his projects for the unemployed by working with New York social service agencies to develop pasteurization plants and infant-milk stations near low-income neighborhoods.

They sold sterilized and refrigerated milk at below-wholesale prices, or donated it to those who could not afford to pay. Businesslike efficiency kept costs low, as did donations. Multilingual ads publicized the product’s availability, doctors and nurses advised parents on child-rearing, and careful recordkeeping aimed at assessing the program’s health benefits.

Straus and his wife devoted much of their time and money to this work. In addition to establishing 297 milk stations in 36 cities, they also spoke and wrote widely about the merits of pasteurization.

By 1908, their efforts paid off when the U.S. Public Health Service endorsed pasteurization and state and local governments began requiring that milk sold in their jurisdictions be pasteurized. Raw milk remained available in many states, and debates over its safety continue to this day.

As a result of this and other Progressive Era measures, New York City’s health commissioner estimated that infant deaths dropped by two-thirds
during the first two decades of the 20th century, with similar declines elsewhere in the country.

A beachfront city has some tall buildings.
The coastal Israeli city of Netanya was named after philanthropist Nathan Straus. Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images Image by

Other causes

While most of Nathan Straus’ efforts occurred in the U.S., he used his trips to Europe for Macy’s to promote pasteurization on the continent.

During a 1904 visit, he toured the Mediterranean and stopped in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire. Impressed by the early Jewish settlements and holy sites he saw, Straus became an ardent advocate for creating a Jewish homeland in the Middle East, an unusual position for a Jewish businessman of that era, according to Fisher.

On a subsequent trip, a broken leg kept Straus from returning to New York on the maiden voyage of the Titanic; his brother Isidor and sister-in-law Ida were not so fortunate.

In the U.S., Nathan Straus led Zionist organizations, while in Palestine, his chief contributions involved supporting a variety of health care and economic development activities, including Hadassah, the women’s health and community development organization founded by Henrietta Szold.

The Israeli city of Netanya is named in his honor.

No foundation to be remembered by

Nathan Straus’ achievements as a philanthropist are not widely known today because he did not create a grantmaking foundation that outlasted him, as Rockefeller and Carnegie did.

Instead, by the time of his death in 1931, Straus had donated much of his fortune. Fisher writes that Straus used to invoke an old Hebrew proverb: “Money given in health is gold. Money given in sickness is silver. Money given after death is lead.”

He also didn’t donate heavily to the burgeoning network of communal organizations set up to assist the growing population of Jewish immigrants, as did the financiers Jacob Schiff and Felix Warburg, who were also affluent Jewish immigrants from Germany.

As Fisher notes, this pattern of philanthropy resembles that of Straus’ friend – and pallbearer – Julius Rosenwald, the longtime head of Sears, Roebuck and Co. Both supported Jewish causes as well as major initiatives aimed at helping others: In Rosenwald’s case, it was schools for African American children in the South, while for Straus, it was milk pasteurization in New York City and beyond.

During and after World War I, they worked together to assist Jewish refugees in Europe. Fisher might have added that neither Straus nor Rosenwald sought much recognition for their work.

His thorough account should help give Straus the credit he deserves for his philanthropy. It should also show that donors do not have to aspire to “make all mankind good and happy” to make an important difference.

In many ways, Nathan Straus was an old-fashioned do-gooder, responding to the needs he saw with innovative solutions. As a result, he wound up accomplishing a lot of good.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation

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Many Americans are moving away from congregations, but not necessarily from religion

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“Emma,” a young Jewish woman who we met in 2019, didn’t belong to a synagogue. She didn’t have a Jewish partner. She didn’t observe Jewish rituals regularly. On most surveys about religion, she would not seem very engaged with Judaism.

But as Emma talked about what she did in her free time, a very different picture began to emerge. She visited Jewish websites and enjoyed listening to Jewish music. She read books about Jewish topics and had recently attended a retreat for young Jewish adults to learn Torah while also doing yoga.

She was highly invested in learning about Judaism, but she explored her identity without joining traditional institutions.

Most major surveys about religion ask whether someone belongs to a congregation, how often they attend services, whether they pray regularly and whether belief is important in their lives. Those measures help identify broad shifts, like the growing percentage of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated: the “nones.”

But many Americans’ religious lives, like Emma’s, are not disappearing; they are moving away from membership of traditional institutions. To understand what religion looks like in 21st-century America, researchers may need to ask different questions.

Learning through art

As scholars of Judaism and education, we have been exploring how people learn about religion beyond traditional places like synagogues, Jewish schools and summer camps. Between 2019 and early 2023, we spoke with hundreds of people and explored different leisure time activities to discover what people learn about Judaism and Jewishness through cultural arts.

We interviewed dozens of audience members at Jewish-themed shows on Broadway, such as “Leopoldstadt” and “Parade.” We attended Jewish concerts and asked attendees what they learned. We explored how social media communities offer spaces to talk about different Jewish topics, like what fans learned about ultra-Orthodox Judaism from watching the television show “Shtisel.”

‘Shtisel,’ an Israeli series about an ultra-Orthodox family in Jerusalem, ran for three seasons.

Our research revealed that there is a vibrant ecosystem of people learning about religion in their leisure time. Through the arts, both Jews and non-Jews encounter Jewish history, Jewish religious practices and representations of Jewish communities.

Screen and stage

Most people we spoke with told us that they felt meaningful connections to Judaism during activities that would rarely appear on a standard religion survey.

“Joan,” an unmarried woman in her 50s from Connecticut, told us that she was deeply invested in Judaism, but felt that synagogues and Jewish community centers were not welcoming to single people without families. Instead of joining a Jewish institution, she watched Jewish-themed TV shows and movies on Netflix, and joined social media communities to chat with other fans.

“Luis,” who lived in Boston but was born in Argentina, was a Sephardic Jew, a group that traces their ancestry and traditions to Jewish communities who once lived in Spain and Portugal. His wife was Ashkenazi, meaning her ancestors came from Central and Eastern Europe. She considered herself secular, and so the couple joined the Worker’s Circle, a nonreligious Ashkenazi institution rather than a synagogue.

Yet Luis loved deepening his knowledge of Sephardic culture, and he often attended concerts of music in Ladino, a Sephardic language related to Spanish, with other Sephardic immigrants.

American singer Sarah Aroeste writes and performs in Ladino.

For Joan and Luis, these activities were not peripheral to their Jewish lives. Rather, they were central avenues for learning and community. We interviewed hundreds of Jews who told us that cultural experiences were opportunities to reflect on Jewish practices, explore questions of belonging, connect with family histories and find friends with common interests.

New questions

Some aspects of these patterns were distinctive to Judaism. Historically, many Jews have understood Judaism to be a cultural world, and not only a theological tradition. Learning about cultural dimensions of Judaism has long been part of Jewish education.

The broader phenomenon of informal learning, though, extended far beyond a single tradition. Across America, increasing numbers of people learn about religion through media, cultural productions and digital networks. Christians may study biblical themes through podcasts, online discussion groups or religious influencers. Muslims may participate in online learning communities that connect believers across the world.

The challenge for religion researchers, then, is not simply to determine whether engagement with religion is rising or falling. Rather, it is to develop more nuanced ways of understanding how people explore religious themes and practices, beyond traditional institutions. Only then can we more fully understand how contemporary Americans actually live their religious lives.The Conversation

 

 

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