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How Arnold Horween, an unsung Jewish Harvard hero, changed American sports
(JTA) — Decades before Sandy Koufax sat out the first game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur, and 18 years before Greenberg chased Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record in the late 1930s, a college athlete made some overlooked Jewish sports history.
Arnold Horween, a burly Chicagoan, became the first Jewish captain of the Harvard University football team in 1920 — an achievement that sent ripples through American culture.
Horween, who would later play and coach in the early years of what would become the NFL, was born to Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. He became a star player at Harvard, helping the Crimson go undefeated in both 1919 and 1920 after returning from serving in World War I. (His brother Ralph also played at Harvard and in the NFL, and they were the first and only Jewish brothers to play in the NFL until Geoff and Mitchell Schwartz.)
But it was Horween’s unanimous selection as the team’s captain, and more importantly, his appointment in 1926 as the team’s coach, that would prove unprecedented.
“In American Jewish culture, the only thing greater than being the captain of the Harvard Crimson, the only higher station in American culture might have been the president, or the coach of Harvard, which he eventually becomes,” said Zev Eleff, the president of Gratz College and a scholar of American Jewish history.
Eleff explores Horween’s story and its impact in his recent book, “Dyed in Crimson: Football, Faith, and Remaking Harvard’s America,” released earlier this year. He traces the history of Harvard athletics in the early 1900s, exploring how Horween, along with Harvard’s first athletic director, Bill Bingham, altered the landscape of America’s most prestigious college.
Horween’s ascendance came at a time when Harvard instituted quotas to limit the number of Jewish and other minority students it accepted — a practice the school would employ throughout the 1920s and 30s. His story also took place amid a political landscape that featured the rise of Father Charles Coughlin, the antisemitic “radio priest,” and the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan.
As Eleff underscores in the book, Horween did not fit the model of a “Boston Brahmin,” the class of elite, Christian, aspirationally manly men whose supremacy was unquestioned at Harvard Yard. Horween broke that mold, instead instilling a team culture where a love of the sport was almost as important as winning — the Ted Lasso effect, if you will.
“Dyed in Crimson” also uses early 20th century Harvard as an allegory for the broader theme of how sports can change society.
“The theme of the book, something that’s uniquely American, is how the periphery can influence the mainstream,” said Eleff. “How people on the sidelines can really make an influence.”
Eleff spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about how Horween’s story fits into the pantheon of Jewish American sports legends and what it says about Jews’ ability to succeed in America.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Let’s dig into Horween’s story. I liked the idea of him as like an earlier version of Koufax or a Greenberg, but to be honest, I had never heard of him. Why do you think his story isn’t as well known as other Jewish athletes?
I think it has everything to do with the emergence of Major League Baseball. College football was America’s sport in the 1910s and 1920s. It was a big money sport, when there was very little money outside of the New York Yankees. And I think that Horween’s star started to sort of decline with Harvard football, but also the emergence of other sports.
The other reason is because the idea of the Jewish ballplayer loomed large. The New York Giants, for decades, tried to identify a Jewish superstar. They actually passed on Greenberg. There was a thought after Greenberg that there was Jewish DNA for baseball, and the signing of Koufax was directly linked to this notion. It was this eugenics-like link that you need a Jewish ballplayer. For the Giants, it was ticket sales. So the commotion about Greenberg and Koufax is more about Jewish identity. And baseball is, as a professional sport in New York, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, different than college football, particularly in New England at this time. Frankly, Jews lived near the Polo Grounds, they didn’t live near Harvard Yard.
Arnold Horween shown in The Baltimore Sun on November 16, 1927. (Wikimedia Commons)
For Horween, obviously he’s not at the level of a Greenberg or Koufax talent-wise, but he also didn’t seem to care as much personally about his Jewish identity. You write in the book that there were some Jews who took issue with the fact that Horween was not practicing, but there were also many Jews who were simply proud he was Jewish. What do you think about that dynamic?
There becomes a sort of disconnect between lived religion and the perception and what they come to represent — the mantle that they wear almost towers above the practice. Horween eschewed the opportunity to claim the mantle of Jewish leadership, Jewish celebrity. But we do see in its moment that he is the topic of rabbinic sermons, that The American Hebrew and other Jewish press are reporting on him. They are elated. In American Jewish culture, the only thing greater than being the captain of the Harvard Crimson — it’s hard for people to realize, but in the moment when they were part of the big three [alongside Princeton and Yale] — the only higher station in American culture might have been the president, or the coach of Harvard, which he eventually becomes.
One of the parts of this book that I enjoyed learning about is the extent to which college football in the early 20th century was all about honor, masculinity, gentlemanliness. And at the time, that kind of stands in contrast to how Jews were viewed — that Jews were not masculine, Jews couldn’t fit into that mold of the “Harvard man.”
Being on the sports team, that was probably far beyond Jewish expectations. Not to say that Jews could not be athletic, but very often the varsity players weren’t picked for their talent but rather their surnames. What the sea change at Harvard is, [within] gentlemanly culture — in which “gentlemanly” is a Protestant, Christian masculinity — Horween is not Protestant. What allows him a pathway into that elite group is that drive to win. And as a player, he’s good luck. He never loses. He becomes a signature player for victory who even wins the Rose Bowl.
But as a coach, he subverts that. What he and Bill Bingham do is their campaign isn’t necessarily for winning, it’s for having fun, it’s for enjoying the game.
In the 1910s and 20s, college football was the peak of American sports, but that’s certainly not the case anymore. What do you think would be the modern comparison for someone like Horween?
Is Becky Hammon with the Spurs, the first woman [to act as] head coach in basketball, something like that? Or the very important discussions about people of color as coaches in the NFL? Sports and education are, for some reason or another, where change is made in American life. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 ends, at least officially, segregation. Title IV, what is basically American law for anti-discrimination based on sex, is based on women’s college sports. You have the breaking down of color barriers and Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and Vietnam. You have the first [openly] gay athletes, you have questions of breaking the glass ceiling for women and Serena Williams.
It’s absolutely 100% true that sports doesn’t matter. Who wins the World Series is of no great consequence to most people’s lives. Although it’s interesting, if you drive up I-95 on a Sunday, you will see that the bumper stickers and the flags change. There is some sort of passion, obviously, about sport. But it’s absolutely true that for some reason or another in the 20th century and 21st century in American sport, really important social and cultural decisions, and political decisions, are made in American sport.
Zev Eleff, president of Gratz College and author of “Dyed in Crimson.” (Courtesy)
Another main topic in the book is that the goal for immigrants, especially Jews, was Americanization, assimilation — that to become part of the mainstream was the marker of success. But that seems to be the case for Jews in a very different sense than it is for Catholics and for Blacks.
The major contribution of this book to American Jewish history beyond telling this story is to complicate notions of Americanization. Jews and Catholics in particular view Americanization very, very differently. The Catholic experience is to create parallel systems. If you’re a good Catholic boy with immense football talent, play for Notre Dame, play for Boston College. Don’t play for the Protestant mainstream. Cream them on the football field. Create parallel systems.
The Jewish experience is not so. Outside of Orthodox day schools in the early 20th century, it was anathema, it was considered almost heretical, for American Jews to [go] to private schools. To the contrary, the so-called golden citadels of the public schools — that is the agent of Americanization. Jews don’t establish their own educational systems. They somehow Americanize and acculturate into the mainstream. We don’t compete with Harvard, we get into Harvard.
Thinking about the antisemitism of that time — the quotas, Father Coughlin, all of that — how do you think that compares to what we’re seeing today?
Historians disagree about the 1920s. Was it a time of great prominence of American Jews? There was affluence in the roaring ’20s. There were institutions that were created, there was creativity, from the Orthodox and Mordecai Kaplan certainly, across the board, the Jewish Theological Seminary. American Judaism was at a certain high point in the 1920s. At the same time, there were quotas, and there was rising antisemitism. I think today we also have to deal with the tension of, on the one hand, there are great opportunities for Jews in the United States; at the same time, there is antisemitism. And so from the 1920s to the 2020s, 100 years later, you see a model for how to grapple with those tensions.
What do you hope, more than anything else, someone takes away or learns from your book?
It’s a book that begins like a punch line: a working class Protestant, a Catholic and a Jew walk into a football field. But it ends with something I think a lot more pronounced, which is, it’s a story about change. As a historian, I study change, particularly in American Judaism, broadly in American religion and Jewish Studies. Change is the best asset that a historian has to study. I wasn’t interested in just finding another Sandy Koufax story, replicating that story. This is a story that isn’t just about a Jew who happened for his moment to become quite successful and quite famous, or a Catholic or a former mill hand turned first athletic director in college history. It’s really about how people on the periphery influence the mainstream.
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Israeli Restaurant Owned by Syrian Repeatedly Attacked in Germany
Illustrative: Graffiti reading “Kill All Jews” was discovered on a residential building in Berlin-Pankow on April 26, 2026, part of a wave of antisemitic vandalism reported across the German capital over the past week, including swastikas and other hate-filled slogans scrawled on multiple sites. Photo: Screenshot
An Israeli restaurant in Germany has been repeatedly attacked while its Syrian Kurdish owner has been subjected to relentless harassment, underscoring a broader climate of hostility faced by Jews and Israelis across the country.
Restaurant owner Billal Aloge, a Muslim from Syria, has been subjected to escalating hatred and violence after publicly expressing support for Jewish life in his city by opening restaurants aimed at fostering dialogue and coexistence.
Shortly after opening his Israeli restaurant “Jaffa” in Freiburg, a city in western Germany, Aloge faced immediate hostility and a wave of online abuse.
Even after filing multiple police reports, the harassment did not stop, with unknown individuals continuing to target the restaurant. This included incidents of vandalism such as throwing rotten eggs at the premises, prompting the owner to repeatedly seek police intervention.
Then last Tuesday, the restaurant’s newly deployed food truck was vandalized after being parked for just a single day in Colombipark in the heart of the university town, according to German media.
The food truck was extensively damagd, with paint thrown across its exterior, Israeli symbols defaced with Palestinian flag stickers and antisemitic slogans, and its door kicked so forcefully that it was left visibly dented.
Three days later, Aloge and his wife were preparing to open the food truck for Labor Day, when they discovered a broken side mirror.
“The food truck was brand new. I bought it for the new season and had it lovingly refurbished,” Aloge told the German newspaper Bild.
“Once again, I had to file a police report and now I estimate the total damage from the two attacks at approximately 30,000 euros,” he continued.
Freiburg Mayor Martin Horn strongly condemned the attacks, stressing that the city would not tolerate such acts of hatred and would take them seriously, with full efforts to ensure accountability and protection for those targeted.
“There is no place in Freiburg for antisemitism, anti-Muslim racism, or any other form of hatred and incitement,” the German official said in a statement.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Germany has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to recently released figures, the number of antisemitic offenses in the capital city Berlin reached a record high in 2025, totaling 2,267 incidents, including violence, incitement, property damage, and propaganda offenses.
By comparison, officially recorded antisemitic crimes were significantly lower at 1,825 in 2024, 900 in 2023, and fewer than 500 in 2022, prior to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Officials warn that the real number of antisemitic crimes is likely much higher, as many incidents go unreported.
In one of the latest antisemitic incidents in the country, a synagogue in Cottbus, a city in eastern Germany, was defaced with a swastika painted on its facade, marking the second time in just four days that the Jewish house of worship had been vandalized.
Separately, authorities also discovered antisemitic graffiti across several apartment buildings in Berlin-Pankow, including messages reading “Kill all Jews,” a swastika, and the statement “Only a dead Jew is a good Jew,” in a series of disturbing incidents over the week.
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North Africa Signals New Openings for Jews as Morocco Weighs Citizenship Reform, Tunisia Sees Pilgrimage Return
Jews from Tunisia and other countries of the world complete the annual Jewish pilgrimage to the El Ghriba Synagogue, which is considered one of the oldest Jewish places of worship in Africa and has a history of approximately 2,400 years, in Djerba Island, Tunisia on May 4, 2026. Photo: Hasan Mrad/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Jews are seeing cautious but notable signs of renewed inclusion in North Africa, as Morocco advances a landmark citizenship proposal for descendants abroad while pilgrims begin returning to Tunisia’s historic religious sites under tight security.
Last week, a Moroccan citizen submitted a legislative petition to the country’s House of Representatives to grant citizenship to the children and grandchildren of Moroccan Jews living abroad, marking a renewed push after a similar 2024 effort failed to secure enough support.
Supporters of the initiative argue that many Moroccan Jews emigrated for economic, religious, or other reasons, gradually losing their citizenship over generations even as they preserved strong cultural ties, underscoring that Jewish identity remains deeply embedded in Morocco’s history and monarchy.
Opponents of the proposal argue that Jews are already Moroccan citizens with equal rights regardless of religion, adding that existing legal frameworks sufficiently guarantee access to nationality without the need for new legislation.
Among the most vocal opponents, Jacky Kadoch, president of the Jewish Community of Marrakech — a major city in western Morocco — told Sky News Arabia that descendants of Moroccan Jewish emigrants face no real obstacles in obtaining citizenship or passports, and dismissed supporters of the initiative as “simply trying to stir chaos.”
Under current law, individuals of Moroccan Jewish origin can claim citizenship through lineage up to the fourth generation, reinforced by a 2011 constitutional amendment recognizing Judaism as a core component of the country’s heritage.
The newly introduced proposal focuses on simplifying the application process by establishing dedicated services and launching a national online portal to manage applications, while promoting the integration of descendants into Morocco’s economic, political, cultural, and social life.
The measure also seeks to strengthen ties with the diaspora by allowing Hebrew to be used alongside Arabic and Amazigh, creating an independent national body for Jewish religious affairs, and introducing safeguards to protect Moroccan Jewish communities from discrimination or attacks.
While Morocco’s Jewish population today numbers around 2,000, an estimated 500,000 to 1 million people of Moroccan Jewish descent live in Israel, where they form one of the country’s largest ethnic groups.
Meanwhile, Tunisian authorities are expecting a gradual return of international pilgrims to the island of Djerba for the annual Jewish pilgrimage, under heightened security and an atmosphere overshadowed by memories of violence.
In the past, the pilgrimage to the El Ghriba Synagogue — one of the oldest synagogues in North Africa — drew thousands of visitors from Europe and beyond, serving as both a religious and cultural attraction.
However, since the 2023 deadly attack on the synagogue that killed two worshippers and three police officers, attendance has dropped significantly and authorities have imposed tighter restrictions on the event.
Perez Haddad, who oversees the synagogue, noted that while religious services have continued, public celebrations remain suspended as fear still keeps many from returning, and in memory of the victims of the terror attack, whose loss is still deeply felt.
René Trabelsi, the pilgrimage organizer and former tourism minister, said confidence is slowly returning as more visitors arrive from abroad despite regional tensions.
“This year, there has been a marked return of pilgrims to the island. We estimate that around 200 people have come from abroad,” Trabelsi said in a statement.
This year, the gathering is being held from April 30 to May 6, marking the Lag B’Omer festival, observed 33 days after the start of Passover.
Tunisia is home to one of the largest remaining Jewish communities in the region outside Israel, with about 1,500 Jews living in the country, most of them in Djerba.
About 850,000 Jews were forced to flee or expelled from Middle Eastern and North African countries in the 20th century, primarily in the aftermath of Israel’s declaring independence in 1948.
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Indiana synagogue that shaped Reform movement is sold — and will become a coffee shop, event space
The 1867 synagogue in Lafayette, Indiana — once a laboratory of the Reform movement — has been sold, after a grassroots effort to bring it back into Jewish hands fell short.
In recent months, a small group of local Jews tried to crowdfund roughly $300,000 to buy the building, hoping to turn it into a cultural and educational center preserving the city’s Jewish history. But the campaign ran out of time.
“Including pledges, we had about $60,000,” said Robyn Soloveitchik, one of the organizers. They needed nearly five times that amount. Now, the donations will be returned.
The sale of the building closed May 1 to a new owner, Ed Bahler, a local businessman whose family has worked in construction for decades.
“We hope to make it a super vibey, cool, historic coffee shop and place to have events,” Bahler said. He plans to preserve the exterior, which has landmark status and is topped by a large Star of David, but said it requires repairs to brickwork, gutters and landscaping.
The former sanctuary, with its high ceilings and stained glass windows, will remain a focal point.
Bahler said the project is partly about giving back. “We’re invested in the community,” he said, noting that seven of his children attended Purdue University in neighboring West Lafayette.
Soloveitchik said her group knew from the outset the purchase effort faced long odds. “Of course, it’s not what we wished for,” she said, “but we did know it was going to be an uphill battle.”
The nonprofit she and others formed to purchase the building plans to continue operating, shifting its focus to other preservation efforts in the state. “Hopefully we can find a way to stick around and just do a little bit of good for our community, even if this project didn’t work out,” she said.
Michael Brown, executive director of the Indiana Jewish Historical Society, called the outcome disappointing. “I’m sad that they weren’t able to acquire the building,” he said.
He hopes Bahler will mount a plaque or display photos documenting the building’s history as a pioneering synagogue.
A changing landscape
What happened in Lafayette is part of a broader pattern across Indiana.
In April in Terre Haute, the state’s oldest continuously operating Jewish congregation sold its synagogue building after more than a century. The 1910 structure, known for its sweeping stained glass windows, is expected to become a wedding venue.
“We had to sell in order to continue operating,” said Scott Skillman, president of the United Hebrew Congregation. They now plan to meet at a smaller location, or to rent space from a church.
Like many small towns, Terre Haute has seen its Jewish population shrink for decades. “There’s no amount of programming that’s going to change that,” Skillman said.
Other Indiana synagogues have found more unusual second lives that would have been unimaginable to the people who built them.
When a new baseball stadium was built in 2012 in South Bend, the team owner had to figure out what to do with a 1901 Romanesque Revival–style synagogue on the property that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The team spent $1 million restoring the building, where the team gift shop now operates. A mural on the wall of what’s now known as the Ballpark Synagogue riffs on the Sistine Chapel, depicting God passing a baseball to Adam along with the words “Play Ball.”
Wendy Soltz, a history professor at Ball State University who led the federally funded Indiana Synagogue Mapping Project, has documented 66 purpose-built synagogues across the state dating back to the 19th century. Of those, 24 have already been demolished.
The Lafayette building, she said, had “statewide and national significance.”
A legacy reshaped
The Lafayette synagogue was founded in 1849 as Ahavas Achim.
The congregation was among the early adopters of Reform Judaism in America and is believed to have hosted one of the first egalitarian minyanim in the country. The building it moved into in 1867 stood as a marker of that ambition — a place where a small Midwestern Jewish community helped shape a national religious movement.
Rabbi Julian Morgenstern served the shul, and later rose to lead Hebrew Union College. He helped secure visas for several Jewish scholars fleeing Nazi persecution, including Abraham Joshua Heschel. Several other future luminaries passed through Lafayette’s pulpit.
The congregation moved to a new Lafayette location in 1969. Since then, the old building has housed churches, the Red Cross and other nonprofits.
Lafayette today has two synagogues, one Reform and one Conservative. It also has a Chabad and Hillel connected to Purdue University. The school has roughly 1,500 Jewish students, according to Hillel.
For more than a century, Ahavas Achim’s building anchored Jewish life in the city. Now, it is entering a new chapter, one shaped by a different vision of community.
Bahler said he hopes to open the coffee shop and event space by the third quarter of this year, pending rezoning and renovations.
“We saw a historic building that had a very interesting spirit to it,” he said. “Something that could be brought alive into a place that draws people — a place of connection.”
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