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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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The post How Arnold Horween, an unsung Jewish Harvard hero, changed American sports appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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IDF Warns of Growing West Bank Threat, Presence of Iranian Weapons Amid Major Counterterror Operations
Israeli soldiers walk during an operation in Tubas, in the West Bank, Nov. 26, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is sounding the alarm over a growing terrorist threat from the West Bank, warning that Iranian-backed arms smuggling could spark an Oct. 7-style attack.
Concerns over the presence of significant Iranian-supplied firepower in the hands of Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank has prompted Israeli intelligence and security forces to intensify operations across the territory.
According to a new report from Israel’s Channel 14, a senior IDF official warned that the West Bank presents a growing threat to Israeli communities, with the potential to spark an attack similar to the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“We have to start from the clear fact that weapons in Judea and Samaria [Israel’s preferred name for the West Bank] could upset the current stalemate,” the IDF official told Channel 14.
However, while the military has prioritized preparing for large-scale scenarios, such as an Oct. 7-style attack, the senior IDF official also warned that more attention needs to be paid to “smaller” threats — like a situation in which a small group of terrorists infiltrates a settlement home and kills an entire family — an event he described as “highly probable.”
“We shouldn’t see this scenario only as an attack on dozens of communities. A single deadly strike is enough — we must also prepare for lethal, localized attacks,” the IDF official said. “Our responsibility is to protect both individuals and the broader community.”
He warned that terrorists in the West Bank are believed to possess arms capable of breaking Israeli defenses, including what he called “standard Iranian weapons.” However, he also noted that security forces are actively working to intercept these arms and dismantle any terrorist cell in the area.
On Tuesday, the IDF uncovered a major terrorist infrastructure in the Tulkarem area in the northern West Bank, including three rockets at various stages of assembly, explosive devices, operational equipment, and materials for making bombs.
According to Joe Truzman, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based think tank, Israeli officials should be closely monitoring the West Bank as the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas regroups and rearms in the Gaza Strip after two years of war.
“Hamas and its allied factions understand that igniting violence in the territory would divert Israel’s attention during a critical time of rebuilding the group’s infrastructure in Gaza,” Truzman said last month.
“The release of convicted terrorists to the West Bank under the ceasefire agreement may be a factor in the resurgence of organized violence in the territory,” he continued.
At the time, the IDF completed a three-day, multi-branch military exercise in the West Bank called “Lion’s Roar,” designed to enhance operational coordination and joint capabilities in the region, with scenarios shaped by lessons learned from the Oct. 7 atrocities.
More than 180 Israeli Air Force aircraft supported ground troops during training for over 40 scenarios, including attacks on outposts, simultaneous terrorist infiltrations into multiple communities, urban combat, mass-casualty rescue and medical evacuation, multi-casualty response, intelligence integration, and real-time command and control.
“We have many lessons to implement from this exercise and from Oct. 7,” the IDF spokesperson said in a statement at the time.
“The IDF will continue to conduct regular exercises to ensure high readiness, strengthen cooperation among all troops, and maintain the security of residents in the area and of all Israeli civilians,” the statement read.
According to a survey released earlier this year by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, 70 percent of all respondents — and 81 percent of Jewish respondents — expressed fear of an Oct. 7-style attack coming from the West Bank. In contrast, 53 percent of Arab respondents said they were not worried about such an attack.
“The stipulations of the ceasefire in Gaza, mainly the requirement for Hamas to fully disarm in future phases, should also be applied to the terrorist organization’s operatives in the West Bank,” Aaron Goren, research analyst at FDD, said at the time.
“Otherwise, Israel may face a threat from Hamas, which, unlike in Gaza, where it is relatively contained, is dispersed amongst Israeli communities in the West Bank,” he continued.
Earlier this year, the IDF arrested a Hamas and Fatah terror cell from Ramallah that was planning a bombing attack on a bus in Jerusalem, with investigators saying the group intended to remotely detonate an explosive device smuggled into Israel.
As of February, Israeli security forces had foiled nearly 1,000 terrorist plots over the past year, with senior military officials increasingly worried that the volatile situation in the West Bank could lead to a large-scale attack similar to the Oct. 7 onslaught against Israeli settlements and communities near the security barrier.
In response to these concerns, the IDF has established a special command to address potential threats in the West Bank and launched a nearly unprecedented counterterror operation in the northern part of the territory.
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Brad Lander launches run for Congress against pro-Israel Jewish incumbent Dan Goldman
(JTA) — It’s official: Brad Lander is running for Congress — and he says he won’t be “doing AIPAC’s bidding” in representing his district if he’s elected.
The line from Lander’s campaign launch video was a dig at Rep. Dan Goldman, who has represented the 10th Congressional District since 2023, that underscores the degree to which Israel is likely to play a role in the battle for the seat.
Lander’s announcement tees up a showdown between a Jewish progressive challenger and an incumbent Jewish centrist. He enters the race with support from Zohran Mamdani, following weeks of speculation over whether he or Alexa Aviles — a member of Mamdani’s Democratic Socialists of America who was also weighing a run against Goldman — would get the mayor-elect’s high-profile endorsement.
“I’m running for Congress because we need leaders who will fight, not fold,” Lander wrote on X. (Lander’s X account was subsequently hacked and made temporarily private.)
Lander, the outgoing city comptroller, has day-one endorsements from major progressive names including Mamdani, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, as well as the city’s Working Families Party.
Lander shared a video that touted his ability to fight back against Donald Trump, which featured footage of his ICE arrest. The video took on a gentle tone, with Lander referring to himself as “Dad Lander” and quoting the TV personality Mister Rogers. He talked about his roots in the district, which includes central Brooklyn neighborhoods such as Park Slope, where he served as a three-term City Council member.
But the video also previewed how Israel will play a role as Lander, a self-described liberal Zionist who now calls Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide” and stumped for the anti-Zionist Mamdani, takes aim at Goldman. The incumbent has been endorsed and received funding from the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC; he also refused to endorse Mamdani because of Mamdani’s stances on Israel.
Goldman has become one of the primary targets of progressives looking to replace moderate Democrats with candidates more aligned with their politics in the wake of Mamdani’s victory. Challengers are also emerging against the vocally pro-Israel Rep. Ritchie Torres, with his AIPAC donations being a point of emphasis of his opponents.
Lander did not name Goldman but referred to his AIPAC ties in the video, saying the “challenges we face” can’t be solved by “doing AIPAC’s bidding in a district that knows our safety, our freedom, our thriving is bound up together.” Two photos of Lander holding signs at Gaza war ceasefire rallies appeared on-screen — one in Hebrew, the other in English.
The 10th Congressional District covers Lower Manhattan, as well as parts of western and central Brooklyn, which Lander represented on the City Council. While Lower Manhattan was more split in the mayoral general election, most of the district’s Brooklyn neighborhoods voted overwhelmingly for Mamdani. The district also includes part of Borough Park, a neighborhood with a large Orthodox Jewish population that strongly supported the centrist mayoral candidate, Andrew Cuomo.
In the video, Lander alluded to Goldman’s refusal to endorse Mamdani, saying that if he beats Goldman, “Our mayor can have an ally in Washington instead of an adversary in his own backyard.”
Mamdani told the New York Times on Wednesday that Lander is a “true leader” who has “unwavering principles, deep knowledge and sincere empathy.”
Lander has been Mamdani’s most prominent local Jewish ally since the pair cross-endorsed each other before the Democratic primary.
Critics said Lander’s efforts, including bringing Mamdani to his synagogue and reinforcing his commitment to the safety of Jewish New Yorkers, merely “kosherized” antisemitism at a time when fierce reaction to the war in Gaza led to Jews feeling unsafe and isolated, and anti-Jewish attacks rose.
Following Mamdani’s general election victory, reports emerged that Lander, who’d been angling for a top position in the new administration, was being left out in the cold without a role. Rumors suggested that Lander might have Mamdani’s support if he pivoted to a congressional run against Goldman. But that support was complicated by the presence of Aviles — Mamdani’s fellow DSA member — who was entertaining a run herself.
All that was put to rest Wednesday, when Lander officially entered the race with the support of Mamdani — who went against the DSA’s endorsement of Aviles, to the chagrin of some of the DSA’s rank-and-file — and Aviles released a statement announcing that she would not be running.
“A split field runs too great a risk of allowing him another damaging term,” she wrote about Goldman, who won his first election in 2022 by two points against a crowded field that split votes between progressive candidates.
Before running for office, Goldman, a millionaire and Levi Strauss heir, drew praise from the left when he served as lead majority counsel on the first impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump in 2019. He has co-sponsored progressive legislation like the Medicare for All Act and the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, as well as a recent bill that would protect immigrants’ right to appear in immigration court.
But progressives have soured on Goldman, who calls himself a “proud Zionist and steadfast supporter of Israel,” and is criticized for receiving funding from AIPAC — a group whose brand has become increasingly toxic in American politics.
Goldman also faced criticism after Donald Trump Jr. tweeted about a friendly interaction between the two in the Bahamas, following Trump’s Israel-Gaza peace deal.
“Thank you Congressman @danielsgoldman for your kind words today when you saw me, about the incredible job my father did delivering historic peace to the Middle East and bringing the hostages home,” the president’s son tweeted. “Safe travels back from the Bahamas.”
Speculation of a potential Lander challenge had been building since September, when a poll by Data for Progress surveyed voters in the 10th congressional district; in a two-man race between Goldman and Lander, the poll found that Lander would win 52-33.
Democratic strategist Trip Yang advised pumping the brakes in a November interview, pointing out that polls taken so far in advance of an election “don’t matter as much” and that incumbents bring an advantage.
In addition to big names like Mamdani, Sanders and Warren, local politicians have begun throwing their support behind Lander including Assemblymember Robert Carroll — who was an early endorser of Goldman in the 2022 election — and State Sen. Andrew Gounardes.
The post Brad Lander launches run for Congress against pro-Israel Jewish incumbent Dan Goldman appeared first on The Forward.
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‘America Last’: Report Reveals Suspicious Foreign Support Amplifying Nick Fuentes Online
Nick Fuentes during an interview in December 2025. Photo: Screenshot
Amid ongoing debates about the rise of antisemitic voices on the US political right, recent investigations into social media activity suggest the potential involvement of inauthentic amplification by anonymous actors in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
On Monday, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) released new research showing the techniques used by overseas operatives to promote the authoritarian ideologies of antisemitic podcaster Nick Fuentes, who claims he seeks to preserve the white, European identity and culture of the US.
Titled “America Last: How Fuentes’s Coordinated Raids and Foreign Fake-Speech Networks Inflate His Influence,” the 23-page report dissects how the 27-year-old influencer “consistently amasses far more retweets than any comparable figure, including Elon Musk, despite having a fraction (<1%) of the follower count.”
The report was co-drafted with the support of the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab. Previous research collaborations between NCRI and Rutgers have also explored how far-right influencers hijacked the religious phrase “Christ is King” to advance their ideology and how Tik-Tok content promotes the Chinese Communist Party’s international objectives.
The researchers reviewed Fuentes and compared him with other prominent accounts. They discovered that “within the critical first 30 minutes, Fuentes routinely outperformed accounts with 10-100× more followers.” The report explains that “in a sample of 20 recent posts, 61% of Fuentes’s first-30-minute retweets came from accounts that retweeted multiple of these 20 posts within that same ultra-short window – behavior highly suggestive of coordination or automation.”
The accounts are characterized as entirely anonymous and seemingly single-purpose for promoting Fuentes.
While Fuentes has grown most well-known for his endorsement of Adolf Hitler, Holocaust denial, and pre-Vatican II, Catholic-reactionary antisemitism, the report highlights the podcaster’s endorsements of terrorism and enthusiasm for sexual violence. He has stated that he seeks a 16-year-old wife, desiring an underage woman “when the milk is fresh.” This aligns with his support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, a nation which has now seen the return of child marriage. Fuentes also claims that rape within marriage is impossible, since he believes that a wife’s body belongs to her husband.
Fuentes also “praised Vladimir Putin for the invasion of Ukraine, expressed support for China taking Taiwan, and described the Taliban’s victory over US forces as a positive development.”
The researchers in their analysis seek not to explain Fuentes’s views but rather to “assess how synthetic engagement, real-world events, and media incentives converged to elevate a fringe figure into a central subject of national attention.”
Looking into Fuentes’s history and disclosures from former insiders within his organization support the suggestion of artificial engagement.
“Additional evidence shows that Fuentes has a prior history of coordinated digital manipulation. In 2022, two former associates described internal group chats where Fuentes directed interns and loyalists to carry out online tasks on his behalf, and a former technical aide alleged that viewer counts on his streaming platform were artificially inflated using a built-in multiplier,” the report states.
The researchers explain that “Fuentes did not deny the inflation itself. These documented practices demonstrate a willingness to orchestrate controlled teams and manipulate digital metrics — behavior entirely consistent with the coordinated amplification patterns observed on X.”
The report features images of “America First” Fuentes appearing on different foreign TV networks including the Iranian regime’s Press TV and Russia Today (RT). On the former he sided with Iran during an American attack in support of Israel, and on the latter, he claimed that support for Ukraine was based on “Russophobia.” He also reportedly stated that he would “fight on the side of China against America.”
Another picture shows Fuentes in 2022 at the America First Political Action Conference, where he stated in his introduction to US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA): “And now they’re going on about Russia and Vladimir Putin, saying he’s Hitler – they say that’s not a good thing. Can we get a round of applause for Russia?”
The analysts describe how “Fuentes’s defense of authoritarian adversaries — Russia, Iran, China — is not a minor contradiction. It represents a coherent pattern in which his anti-American worldview aligns more closely with America’s enemies than with its interests. His self-proclaimed patriotism crumbles in the face of performative contrarianism, where any regime that resists liberal democracy becomes, in his eyes, preferable to the current United States.”
According to NCRI, the Russian and Iranian media’s approval of Fuentes “underscores the broader point: the figure elevated by algorithmic manipulation and mainstream media grooming as a voice of nationalist revival is, in reality, one of the most reliable public defenders of America’s geopolitical foes.”