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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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A lost film by Israeli B-movie director Sam Firstenberg gets a new life
(JTA) — Sam Firstenberg, the Israeli-raised director behind cult B-movie staples like “American Ninja” and “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” is getting an unexpected career revival — thanks to one of his most overlooked films.
“Riverbend,” his little-seen 1989 action drama, will screen for one night at Alama Drafthouse theaters in five cities on April 29, offering a fresh look at a film about a group of Black Vietnam veterans who arrive in a Southern town and liberate it from a racist sheriff.
It could also revive interest in the 25 or so films Firstenberg directed between 1981 and 2002, which fans celebrate for their unironic commitment to over-the-top action, niche cultures, and pure entertainment value. In films such as “American Samurai,” “Cyborg Cop,” “Delta Force 3: The Killing Game,” and “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” Firstenberg has been a prolific purveyor of what some critics praise as “earnest shlock.”
It’s a career rooted in the long afternoons a young Firstenberg spent at Smadar, the movie theater in Jerusalem’s German Colony neighborhood. Firstenberg watched the best that midcentury Hollywood had to offer.
Firstenberg, whose given first name was Shmulik, was born to a Jewish family in March of 1950, in Wałbrzych, Poland. His parents had returned to Poland after fleeing east to the Soviet Union during the Nazi invasion.
The family arrived in Jerusalem when Firstenberg was 6 months old. Once in Israel, Firstenberg became immersed in cultures other than his own, which, he says, was key to his versatility behind the camera.
“I grew up in a neighborhood that consists of a lot of immigrants from all over the world,” Firstenberg said in an interview. “So, you know, we came from Poland with a Polish background, but around us, there were Hungarian Jews, Romanian Jews, Jews from Morocco, Jews from Tunisia, from Iraq, from Yemen, from all over the world, Indian Jews.
“So my neighborhood was a melting pot of all kinds of cultures from all over the world. I didn’t understand it. I’m telling you all of this [retrospectively], but I grew up in this, all kinds of different food and cooking and languages, and everybody was talking different languages,” he said. “We grew up in a kind of chaos of listening to 30, 40 different languages and cultures.”
Eventually, this led the future filmmaker to the movies. Smadar, now known as Lev Smadar, began screening films for the public in 1950. Firstenberg would spend afternoons watching double features.
“That’s where we were exposed to cinema. So from a very early age, maybe 7 or 6 years old, I would go, and every week he would change the two movies,” he said.
It was a crash course in genres.
“Those movies were mainly Hollywood movies, mainly Westerns, adventure movies, World War II movies, organized crime, gangster movies. Here and there are some musicals,” he said. The showings ranged from classics like “High Noon” and “Bridge on the River Kwai” to escapist movies like “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.”
“This was the diet of movies that I grew up. And that’s how I was exposed,” he said, adding that Israel didn’t yet have much of a domestic film industry.
By the time he was 18 or 19, Firstenberg realized that he was interested in pursuing a career in cinema.
After finishing his Army service in Israel at age 21 — which included a stint as a projectionist when movies were shown to soldiers — Firstenberg decided to go to Hollywood.
“When I finished the military service, I decided, OK, I want to go and study how to make movies. How do you make cinema?” he said. “Now, I’m not fascinated by European movie-making. I’m not crazy about any of that French, Italian, I don’t know, Swedish movie-making. I like Hollywood. I always liked Hollywood movies. I like bullets. I like James Bond.”
In 1972, he enrolled in film school at the L.A. campus of Columbia College. He still lives in Los Angeles, although he continues to speak with a distinctly Israeli accent. He and his wife both have family back in Israel, and they try to visit annually.
While his connection to Israel remains strong, he also regards the film industry as his people.
“I immediately kind of had this feeling that I arrived at home. I was surrounded by people who all had the same language, we all wanted the same thing: ‘Let’s put a story on the screen,’” he said. He relished getting to know people from all walks of life, from Vietnam veterans to students from Japan to aspiring Black filmmakers from the South.
Eventually, his Israeli connection helped him when he met Menahem Golan, the flamboyant Israeli-born producer who helped pioneer Israel’s film industry in the 1960s and set out to conquer Hollywood in the ’70s. Golan later took over Cannon Films and produced several of Firstenberg’s films, along with Golan’s cousin Yoram Globus.
Golan invited Firstenberg to work on “Lepke,” Cannon’s 1975 film starring Tony Curtis as a Jewish gangster in New York. Firstenberg described his job on the film as a “really nothing, very low job, like bringing and taking and schlepping and nothing serious, whatever, you know, drive the car here, drive the car back.”
He ended up taking the advice of the film’s cinematographer, Andrew Davis — who went on to direct “The Fugitive” in the 1990s — to “get next to the director,” to learn how movie sets really work. So he stayed close to Golan, and “forged a connection” with Golan’s Ameri-Euro Pictures, which specialized in low-budget films. Firstenberg spent five years as assistant director on various films, both in the United States and in Israel.
Quentin Tarantino, at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2021, described Firstenberg as “my favorite” of Cannon Films’ in-house directors, and listed Firstenberg’s “Ninja 3: The Domination” as one of his favorite Cannon pictures.
In 1979, Firstenberg went back to school to earn a graduate degree at Loyola Marymount. While there, taking advantage of his access to equipment, he set to work on his first feature, the 1981 drama “One More Chance,” which also marked the film debut of actress Kirstie Alley.
Firstenberg soon became a prolific director, churning out “Revenge of the Ninja” in 1983 — which got major distribution and was successful — and “Ninja III: The Domination” in 1984, both for Cannon Films.
In late 1984, Firstenberg directed “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” a sequel to the successful break-dancing movie “Breakin.’” The sequel — or its title, anyway — has earned a sort of immortality as a joking reference, in shows like “Family Guy” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” to any unnecessary or ridiculously named sequel. The film was released just seven months after the arrival of the first “Breakin,’” a film with which Firstenberg had no involvement.
“I had nothing to do with the title of the movie,” Firstenberg said. “It became a big deal through the years.”
Firstenberg kept up a breakneck pace in the 1980s and ‘90s, sometimes completing two or three movies in one calendar year. In 1985, he directed “American Ninja,” which he calls his most popular movie, and its sequel two years later. He continued directing movies until after the turn of the millennium.
“I was busy with other movies. I was still directing. I was getting directorial jobs,” he said. “And then at some point I stopped directing, and I started to look into the movies that I have done, what happened to them.”
Some of them are easy to find. Much of the director’s work, including “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” is available on the free streaming service Tubi. But other movies have proven harder to track down.
“Out of 25 movies that I directed, some of them became very famous,” he added. “But some other movies … stuff happened.”
Firstenberg came to direct “Riverbend” after he was approached by a group of private investors from Texas — a pair of married couples, one white and one Black — who weren’t experienced in the movie business. But they were familiar with his previous work, and were hoping to lure actor Steve James, who had starred in Firstenberg’s “American Ninja,” and ended up starring in “Riverbend.”
“Riverbend,” which had a minor theatrical release in 1989 and was later relegated to VHS, has been restored thanks to the efforts of Philadelphia-based archivist Michael J. Dennis. Dennis, who hosts a YouTube channel and film screenings focused on African-American-oriented film, had discovered the film in his days as a video store clerk in the early 1990s, only to find it had almost completely dropped out of sight.
“Riverbend” is “the best movie you’ll see that you never heard of,” Dennis told cinéSPEAK Journal. “One of the things we talk about on my channel is self-reliance and empowerment, and ‘Riverbend’ is a rare film in that it shows Black people standing up for one another. It shows Black people teaching and training one another to fight for their rights.”
Dennis got in touch with Firstenberg and, during the pandemic, tracked down a 35-millimeter copy of the film in South Africa. He eventually obtained the original negative, which led to a crowdfunding campaign and, ultimately, the film’s full restoration. This has led to a series of one-off screenings around the country, hosted by Firstenberg, Dennis, and actors from the film. A Blu-ray release is also planned.
“I feel very comfortable with different cultures,” Firstenberg said. “This is exactly the way I grew up when I was a kid. I grew up with many, many people. So, for me to understand, I believe so: understanding a different culture is easy. It’s no problem for me.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Looming large over Israel’s 78th Independence Day celebrations: Argentina’s Javier Milei
(JTA) — During his three days in Israel this week, Argentinian President Javier Milei made a strong impression.
There he was, weeping again at the Western Wall. There he was, receiving the Presidential Medal of Honor for his leadership and support for Israel. And there he was, lighting a torch for the Independence Day festivities as the first foreign leader ever to do so.
There Milei was, grabbing a microphone and dancing raucously on stage to the Spanish-language song “Libre” at both the rehearsal for the national ceremony and the live event on Tuesday.
And there he was, ostensibly the reason that the far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir left the ceremony before it began. Ben-Gvir left after being asked to vacate his seat to make way for Milei, in an arrangement that some speculated was meant to prevent Ben-Gvir from being photographed in the same frame as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Milei’s presence in Israel Sunday through Tuesday offering a powerful symbol of his continued support for Israel even as so many other world leaders have distanced themselves. Milei is a longtime philosemite who has said he aims one day to convert to Judaism.
“In life there are partners and there are friends,” Milei said in Spanish during the Independence Day ceremony. “Partners come together for a moment of shared interest. Friends forge unbreakable bonds for life. I am pleased to say that Argentina and Israel are not merely partners, but friendly nations.”
The Independence Day ceremonies projected an image of resilience at a challenging time for Israel, where wars on two fronts are currently in ceasefires announced by U.S. President Donald Trump. Among the others chosen as torch-lighters, seen as one of Israel’s most significant honors, were soldiers who have participated in the years of war that followed Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Two of the chosen torch-lighters drew sharp criticism. One was Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, a rabbinical judge who has drawn scrutiny for publicly praising demolition operations in Gaza. In February, the Ombudsman of the Israeli Judiciary ruled that Zarbiv had violated a code of ethics by expressing his views on controversial issues.
“I light this torch in honor of the bulldozer and excavator operators, the trailblazers, destroyers of the enemy and the dismantlers of terrorist infrastructure who protect the lives of our soldiers,” he said at the ceremony.
A cousin of a woman killed in captivity also also denounced the selection of Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for hostages and missing persons, who faced calls for his resignation in February after telling Haaretz that demonstrations demanding the release of hostages were aiding Hamas. Gil Dickmann, a cousin of Carmel Gat, wrote in a post on Instagram that his selection was “spitting in the faces of families” of the hostages.
Last year, torchlighters for the ceremony included former Israeli hostage Emily Damari, NBA player Deni Avdija and the American Jewish conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, whose appointment was criticized by some Israeli leaders as inappropriately political.
The day’s official programming will end with a ceremony awarding the Israel Prize, the nation’s top civilian honor. Among those receiving the prize this year are the artist Yaacov Agam and Chantal Belzberg, the CEO of a nonprofit that aids the families of fallen soldiers.
Trump was also invited to receive the prize, getting a public invitation in February following an earlier announcement by Netanyahu. He will not be present.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Marx Brothers fans rejoice: There’s a recording of Harpo speaking
Harpo Marx’s wife, Susan Fleming, once remarked that, when you got him talking, you couldn’t shut him up.
The proof was there for those who chanced to see him in the 1930s and ‘40s, screening clips of the films he made with his brothers. If a crowd was good, he’d deliver what was known as “Red’s Speech,” a reference to the red wig he wore on stage.
The speech grew more verbose with each recitation, with input by Harpo’s friend, the critic Alexander Woollcott, a fount of $5 dollar words. It got so long, in fact, that Harpo would take it out in the form of a long script that spilled off the stage down the aisle.
“There’s always been this fallacy that Harpo never spoke on stage,” said Marx historian Robert S. Bader, author of Four of the Three Musketeers: The Marx Brothers on Stage and Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother. When he did, he would often make a joke about the mute persona he adopted in 1914, opening his remarks with “as I was about to say in 1915.”
In 1964, Harpo was hitting the speaking circuit. He spoke at events for the United Jewish Appeal, having grown more connected to his Jewishness after a 1963 trip to Israel. On these occasions, Bader said, Harpo “might have looked like a local councilman, just wearing a business suit,” and would sneak in a line from his bar mitzvah speech: “For 13 long years, I have toiled and labored for your happiness.”
Advised to retire from performing after a number of heart attacks, Harpo reasoned that, so long as it was for charity and he didn’t get paid, it couldn’t count as work.
That rationale led to Harpo’s appearance at benefits for a number of symphony orchestras. On March 20, 1964, he gave his final performance at a concert for the Riverside Symphony Orchestra in California, playing a suite of songs about the moon, an original composition and conducting a particularly manic take on Haydn’s “Toy Symphony.”
This time, Harpo not only spoke, giving a lively recitation of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, he did something unprecedented by allowing himself to be recorded with the understanding the public might someday hear it.
On June 5, 2026 a record of the evening will be released as Harpo Speaks! The Riverside Symphony Concert. It was announced on April 1, but it was no April Fools joke. It’s an outstanding artifact, and it was discovered quite by accident.
John Tefteller, the foremost collector of rare, Marx-related records, was looking for a copy of a 1963 concert with Harpo and comedian-musician Allan Sherman, recorded by Sherman’s son Robert. Looking in the tape box for Pasadena, Sherman instead found the Riverside tape. Oddly enough, Robert Sherman had no memory of recording — or even attending — the Riverside concert.
Bill Marx, Harpo’s son and the arranger of much of his music, says the man on the recording, telling the tale of “Peeduh,” the “boid” and the “huntahs,” is the one he grew up with.
“It was very, very low key,” said Bill Marx, now a celebrated pianist and Juilliard-trained composer, recalling his father’s voice. “I think I would have to say that he was about five or six notes lower than Groucho’s. It was easy to hear him speak. I suppose you could call him soft-spoken. He rarely if ever raised his voice in our house with my two brothers and sisters.”
Instead, he would do something like wake his daughter in the middle of the night to play jacks.
Peter and the Wolf, written for young audiences, was a natural fit for Harpo, and it was his idea to do it. The version of the libretto, co-written by Harpo and Groucho, also features a topical joke for that election year of 1964: “Imagine the triumphant procession. Peeduh at the head, after him the huntahs leading the wolf, then Goldwatuh, Rockefelluh and Nixon.”
That Harpo was a patron of the symphony is no great surprise. He practiced the harp three hours a day and Bill Marx remembers his father’s love of French impressionist composers like Debussy and Ravel and Fauré. When Bill played records in his bedroom, without fail his father would knock on the door, ask what he was listening to, and commit to learning it — which he did.
“He just had a great learning thirst, and I had the privilege of watching this man appear in everybody’s life by doing things that he was compelled to do,” Bill Marx said.
As the narrator of Peter and the Wolf, Harpo is wonderfully expressive, evoking the storytelling of an old-time New York-born Zayde (dressed in his traditional costume at the concert, he donned a new accessory: reading glasses). He sounds quite a lot like Chico, his closest brother in age.
Restoring the tape took major work from audio restorer Joel Tefteller (John’s son) and audio engineer Nick Bergh. At one point, in his closing speech, Harpo walked away from the mic, making the original tape almost inaudible.
“He wasn’t used to looking for a microphone,” said Bader. “He didn’t have a lot of time in front of microphones. I don’t think anybody ever had to say ‘Harpo get closer to the microphone’ ever.”
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