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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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US and Iran Agree to Friday Talks in Oman but Still at Odds Over Agenda
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, Feb. 1, 2026. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
The US and Iran have agreed to hold talks in Oman on Friday, officials for both sides said, even as they remained at odds over Washington’s insistence that negotiations include Tehran’s missile arsenal and Iran’s vow to discuss only its nuclear program.
The delicate diplomatic effort comes amid heightened tensions as the US builds up forces in the Middle East and regional players seek to avoid a military confrontation that many fear could escalate into a wider war.
Differences in recent days over the scope and venue for the talks have raised doubts whether the meeting would take place, leaving open the possibility that US President Donald Trump could carry out his threat to strike Iran.
Asked on Wednesday whether Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should be worried, Trump told NBC News: “I would say he should be very worried. Yeah, he should be.” He added that “they’re negotiating with us” but did not elaborate.
After Trump spoke, US and Iranian officials said the two sides had agreed to shift the talks’ location to Muscat after initially accepting Istanbul.
But there was no indication they had found common ground on the agenda.
Iran has pushed to restrict the negotiations to discussing its long-running nuclear dispute with Western countries.
But US Secretary of State Marco Rubio presented a different view on Wednesday. “If the Iranians want to meet, we’re ready,” Rubio told reporters. But he added that talks would have to include the range of Iran’s ballistic missiles, its support for armed proxy groups around the Middle East, and its treatment of its own people, besides nuclear issues.
A senior Iranian official said, however, that Iran’s missile program was “off the table.” A second senior Iranian official said Tehran would welcome negotiations over the nuclear dispute but that US insistence on dealing with non-nuclear issues could jeopardize the talks.
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was due to take part in the talks, along with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, officials said.
CHANGE OF VENUE
While the talks were originally slated for Turkey, Iran wanted the meeting to take place in Oman as a continuation of previous talks held in the Gulf Arab country that had focused strictly on Tehran’s nuclear program, a regional official said.
Iran says its nuclear activities are meant for peaceful, not military purposes, while the US and Israel have accused it of past efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
A Gulf official said the talks could be mediated by several countries, though Iran has indicated that it wants a two-way format limited to Washington and Tehran.
The diplomatic efforts follow Trump’s threats of military action against Iran during its bloody crackdown on protesters last month and the deployment of more naval power to the Gulf.
The US has sent thousands of troops to the Middle East since Trump threatened Iran last month – including an aircraft carrier, other warships, fighter jets, spy planes, and air refueling tankers.
After Israel and the United States bombed the Islamic Republic last summer, renewed friction has kindled fears among regional states of a major conflagration that could rebound on them or cause long-term chaos in Iran.
Trump has continued to weigh the option of strikes on Iran, sources say. Oil prices have risen on the tension.
NUCLEAR DISPUTE
Trump has warned that “bad things” would probably happen if a deal could not be reached, ratcheting up pressure on the Islamic Republic in a standoff that has led to mutual threats of airstrikes.
Iran’s leadership is increasingly worried a US strike could break its grip on power by driving an already enraged public back onto the streets, according to six current and former Iranian officials.
Trump, who stopped short of carrying out threats to intervene during last month’s crackdown, has since demanded nuclear concessions from Iran, sending a flotilla to its coast.
Iran also hopes for an agreement that could help lift Western sanctions over its nuclear program that have ravaged its economy – a major driver of last month’s unrest.
BALLISTIC MISSILE STOCKPILE
Iranian sources told Reuters last week that Trump had demanded three conditions for the resumption of talks: zero enrichment of uranium in Iran, limits on Tehran’s ballistic missile program, and an end to its support for regional proxies.
Iran has long said all three demands are unacceptable infringements of its sovereignty, but two Iranian officials told Reuters its clerical rulers saw the ballistic missile program, rather than uranium enrichment, as the bigger obstacle.
An Iranian official said there should not be preconditions for talks and that Iran was ready to show flexibility on uranium enrichment, which it says is for peaceful, not military purposes.
Since the US strikes in June, Tehran has said its uranium enrichment work has stopped.
In June, the United States struck Iranian nuclear targets, joining in at the close of a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign and Iran struck back at Israel with missiles and drones.
Iran said it replenished its missile stockpile after the war with Israel last year, warning it would unleash its missiles if its security is under threat.
Adding to tensions, on Tuesday the US military shot down an Iranian drone that “aggressively” approached the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, the US military said, in an incident first reported by Reuters.
In another incident in the Strait of Hormuz, the US Central Command said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had approached a US-flagged tanker at speed and threatened to board and seize it.
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New York City Teen Arrested on Terrorism Charges Following Alleged Threat to ‘Rise Up and Kill All the Jews’
Illustrative: Police control the scene after a car repeatedly slammed into Chabad World Headquarters in Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The driver was taken into custody. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Police in New York City arrested an unnamed 17-year-old boy at Renaissance Charter School in Jackson Heights, Queens, following a 911 call warning of a violent threat targeting Jews sent via email to more than 300 students.
Administrators informed law enforcement that the student had allegedly sent an email at 12:30 pm which read, “At 2pm we will rise up and kill all the Jews in this school and the city. F**k the Jews.” The suspect was taken into custody at approximately 3:30 pm. The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident.
The student faces charges of making a terroristic threat and aggravated harassment as a hate crime. The date of his initial arraignment remains pending.
“A violent, antisemitic threat made today at Renaissance Charter School is deeply disturbing and unacceptable,” New York State Sen. Jessica Ramos wrote Tuesday on X. “Hate and threats of violence have no place in our schools or our community.”
Ramos stated that she was “relieved that no one was harmed and that the student is in custody. This must be fully investigated by the Hate Crimes Task Force. Our Jewish neighbors, students, and families deserve safety, dignity, and protection. We will continue working with school leaders and law enforcement to keep our community safe.”
Moshe Spern, president of United Jewish Teachers, thanked Ramos for highlighting the crime.
“Unfortunately Jew hatred doesn’t just live in NYC public schools, it lives in Charter schools as well,” Spern posted on X. “This is scary for all Jewish New Yorkers and I’m calling on Renaissance Charter Schools to invest time and money to root out Jew hatred!”
The StopAntisemitism advocacy group commented that “this is yet another example of what ‘globalize the intifada’ looks like. Yet NYC has a mayor that won’t condemn this call to violence against Jews.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and avowed anti-Zionist who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career, was sworn into office on Jan. 1.
According to newly released figures from the New York City Police Department (NYPD), anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city spiked by 182 percent in January during Mamdani’s first month in office compared to the same period last year.
New York City hate crime investigators reviewed 58 incidents in January 2026, compared to 23 in January 2025, an increase of 152 percent. Of that total, there were 31 anti-Jewish hate crimes last month, which accounted for more than half of all the hate crime incidents, compared to only 11 anti-Jewish hate crimes in January 2025. Last month’s hate crimes targeted Jews more than any other group — Muslims were victimized the second most times with seven incidents.
Despite the increase in antisemitism, the NYPD reported an overall decrease in violent crime.
“The January data underscores a clear reality. Even as overall crime continues to fall, antisemitism remains the most prevalent form of hate crime in New York City, surging sharply at the outset of a new mayoral administration,” the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) said of the data.
CAM highlighted multiple examples of antisemitism in the city last month, including a description of how “in one incident, two teenagers were charged after scrawling 73 swastikas on a playground used by Jewish children. In another, a rabbi was assaulted in Queens on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Separately, a driver rammed a vehicle into an entrance of the Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn.”
Ramos wrote on Wednesday morning of another antisemitic threat at the school in Queens: “An adult caller made a violent, antisemitic threat against Renaissance Charter School this morning. This is unacceptable and will be taken seriously.”
Explaining an increase in security at the school, Ramos added that “the 115th Precinct will maintain a police presence today while the incident is investigated. Our Jewish students and families deserve safety, dignity, and peace of mind, and we will continue working with school leaders and community partners to ensure their protection.”
New York City Council Member Shekar Krishnan — who represents District 25, which includes Jackson Heights — commented on the situation.
“Antisemitism and hate have no place in New York City, especially in our schools,” Krishnan wrote Wednesday on X. “There have been two antisemitic incidents at a school in Jackson Heights this week. We are deeply concerned and are working closely with the school and the NYPD to investigate these matters.”
The incidents come amid a broader surge in antisemitic hate crimes across New York City over the last two years, following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
Jews were targeted in the majority (54 percent) of all hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024, according to data issued by the NYPD. A recent report released in December by the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism noted that figure rose to a staggering 62 percent in the first quarter of 2025, despite Jewish New Yorkers comprising a small minority of the city’s population.
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New Coalition Forms to Protect Israeli Businesses in New York From the Mamdani Administration
New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani holds a press conference at the Unisphere in the Queens borough of New York City, US, Nov. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
Business groups in New York have announced a new coalition to protect Israeli and Jewish businesses amid concerns that the administration of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani will unfairly target them.
The New York-Israel Chamber of Commerce (NYICC) Coalition, announced on Monday, is a nonprofit partnership designed to protect Israeli-associated and Jewish-owned companies operating across New York State amid concerns of what organizers describe as discriminatory policies and a deteriorating security climate.
“Israeli companies bring innovation that improves the quality of life for New Yorkers and facilitates secure commerce for thousands of companies in almost every vertical industry,” Al Kinel, president of the NYICC Coalition, said in a statement. “The free enterprise system that made New York City strong and encouraged many Israeli founders to select New York City for US operations is at risk.”
Coalition leaders argue that recent municipal policy shifts, combined with an increase in antisemitic incidents, have created an environment that discourages investment and places employees and customers at risk. While Mamdani denies harboring any anti-Jewish bias, coalition members fear that Israeli-linked businesses could be disproportionately affected as his administration settles in.
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career, has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid” and refused to recognize its right to exist as a Jewish state.
He has also been an outspoken supporter of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination. Leaders of the BDS movement have repeatedly stated their goal is to destroy the world’s only Jewish state.
Such positions have raised alarm bells among not only New York’s Jewish community but also Israeli business owners and investors, who fear a hostile climate under Mamdani’s leadership.
On his first day in office, Mamdani revoked a series of executive orders enacted by his predecessor to combat antisemitism. Among the measures he nullified was an order that opposed the campaign to boycott Israel.
The NYICC Coalition’s formation comes as Israeli-founded firms play an increasingly central role in New York’s economy, particularly in the technology and innovation sectors.
A study released by the United States-Israel Business Alliance in October revealed that, based on 2024 data, 590 Israeli-founded companies directly created 27,471 jobs in New York City that year and indirectly created over 50,000 jobs when accounting for related factors, such as buying and shipping local products.
These firms generated $8.1 billion in total earnings, adding an estimated $12.4 billion in value to the city’s economy and $17.9 billion in total gross economic output.
As for the State of New York overall, the report, titled the “2025 New York – Israel Economic Impact Report,” found that 648 Israeli-founded companies generated $8.6 billion in total earnings and $19.5 billion in gross economic output, contributing a striking $13.3 billion in added value to the economy. These businesses also directly created 28,524 jobs and a total of 57,145 when accounting for related factors.
From financial tech leaders like Fireblocks to cybersecurity powerhouse Wiz, Israeli entrepreneurs have become indispensable to the city’s innovation ecosystem. The number of Israeli-founded “unicorns,” privately held companies with a valuation of at least $1 billion, operating in New York City has quadrupled since 2019, increasing from five to 20.
The NYICC Coalition includes major business such as the New York Israel Chamber of Commerce, the Business Council of New York State, the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, and the Israel-America Chamber of Commerce, along with more than a dozen other partners.
Business leaders backing the initiative framed the effort as both economic and moral. Heather Mulligan, president and CEO of the Business Council of New York State, emphasized that New York’s prosperity depends on openness and equal treatment.
“New York City’s strength and growth have always come from its diversity and welcoming of entrepreneurs from around the world,” she said in a statement. “Like all employers, Israeli-founded businesses are an equally important part of our economy, creating jobs, leading innovation, and contributing to the economy of the communities where they operate. Prosperity and growth should be for everyone — regardless of race, gender, or creed — and there should be no place in the city or elsewhere for discrimination against any business or entrepreneur based on who they are or where they come from.”
The coalition outlined a three-part agenda focused on restoring fairness and competitiveness: advocating immediate policy corrections to protect business safety and security; promoting clear, predictable regulations that allow Israeli-founded firms to invest and grow; and providing coordinated support for Israeli tech and startup companies navigating regulatory challenges.
Mark Jaffe, president and CEO of the Greater New York Chamber and a coalition board member, warned that economic discrimination could carry long-term consequences.
“Israel is a strong friend and ally of the United States. Against all odds, Israel maintains a dynamic and capitalistic economy that provides billions of dollars and thousands of jobs here in NY,” Jaffe said.
Coalition members stressed that the initiative is not about special treatment, but about preserving New York’s reputation as a global hub for entrepreneurship. Galit Meyran, CEO of the Israel-America Chamber of Commerce and a board member, said coordinated action is necessary when political pressures translate into real-world threats.
“When political agendas lead to an economic environment where antisemitic threats and actions become the norm, immediate collective action is required,” she said.
The NYICC Coalition is inviting business owners, civic organizations, and concerned New Yorkers to join what it describes as a broader effort to restore safety to the city’s economic climate, arguing that protecting Israeli-founded businesses ultimately protects New York’s competitiveness itself.