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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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Synagogue protests have shocked NYC and LA. This Michigan congregation has faced them for 22 years
Protests outside prominent synagogues in New York City and Los Angeles have roiled the Jewish community in recent weeks, prompting scrutiny of how authorities respond when demonstrators at a house of worship frame their actions as Israel-related political speech.
Rabbi Nadav Caine of Beth Israel Congregation in Ann Arbor, Michigan has some experience with that: Every Shabbat for the past 22 years, protesters have shown up to Beth Israel holding signs with slogans like “Jewish Power Corrupts” and “No More Holocaust Movies.”
After years of legal battles that consistently sided with the protesters, Caine has been forced to accept that the courts view their actions as protected speech. More than two decades on, he has come to terms with the protesters’ enduring presence.
“There are long time members who come as little as possible, or who left the congregation, but for the most part, people have learned to ignore it,” Caine said.
‘Unseemly and distasteful’
The man behind the protests, Henry Herskovitz, was raised Jewish, had a bar mitzvah, and even attended Beth Israel for years. But he later adopted conspiracy theories blaming Israel for 9/11, became a Holocaust denier, and openly expressed hatred for Jews.
Starting in 2003, Herskovitz and a small group began protesting at the synagogue weekly during Shabbat, brandishing signs like “Antisemitism is earned, never given.”
In 2019, fed up with passing the demonstrators, a congregant and local Holocaust survivor sued the protesters and the city, arguing that their First Amendment rights to safely practice their religion were being violated. The American Civil Liberties Union represented the protesters, acknowledging the speech was “unseemly and distasteful,” but legally protected nonetheless.
Ultimately, the courts sided with the ACLU: A lower court dismissed the case, the Supreme Court declined to hear it on appeal, and a district judge ordered the congregants to pay nearly $159,000 in legal fees to the protesters — prompting the congregants’ lawyer, Marc Susselman, to accuse the judge of antisemitism.
Now, while the number of protesters has dwindled — it’s typically two people nowadays, Caine said — they still show up, week after week.
Caine said the sustained protests have affected membership, particularly as newcomers weigh which synagogue to attend. Some longtime members avoid in-person events, and others have left entirely. The display can also shock unsuspecting visitors attending bar or bat mitzvahs.
“Before you get used to it, it’s a little traumatizing and triggering,” he said.
‘A community issue’
Caine said he isn’t surprised by recent protests outside Park East Synagogue in Manhattan and Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. At Park East, demonstrators were protesting a synagogue event promoting immigration to Israel, chanting “death to the IDF” and “globalize the intifada.” At Wilshire Boulevard Temple, protesters took issue with the synagogue hosting speakers from the Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems.
Protesting at a synagogue is “not meant to raise consciousness about a human rights issue,” Caine said. “It’s about harassing a group.”
His advice for synagogues facing persistent protests: don’t engage. Beth Israel does not organize counterprotests, and Caine avoids posting about the protests on social media.
“These kinds of activists, they thrive on publicity. It’s their oxygen,” he said.
Still, Caine said he understands the desire to respond. One idea he finds promising: In New York City, two Jewish lawmakers introduced a bill that would ban protests within 25 feet of houses of worship. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has reportedly been receptive to the legislation.
Caine also cautioned against turning the protests outside synagogues into a political debate.
“I wouldn’t make it about the Israel issue,” he said. “I would make it about the fact that it’s a community issue.”
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Israel has a crucial lesson to learn from apartheid South Africa. It isn’t what you think
Some years ago, I traveled to South Africa with a group of Israelis to study the anti-apartheid movement. On our first morning, our guide posed a question: Why did apartheid end?
We offered the standard answers: because internal resistance grew stronger, because international pressure mounted, because the regime lost legitimacy. The guide listened and then said: Apartheid didn’t end for any of those reasons. It ended when the Berlin Wall came down.
His point was not that South Africans were passive. It was that political change does not happen on timetables set by internal movements alone. Power shifts systemically and globally, and when it does, the outcome depends on whether societies are prepared to move when the moment comes. Movements cannot control when history accelerates, but they can determine whether they have built the moral clarity, political vision and organizational capacity to act when it does.
A few years later, I traveled with the same group to Serbia and met former student leaders of Otpor, the movement that helped unseat the dictator Slobodan Milošević. They described how they began as a marginal, improvisational group, driven more by urgency than structure.
What eventually changed their trajectory, they told us, was recognizing that mobilization only works if people can see not just what they are resisting, but what they are building toward. They developed a concrete vision of a democratic Serbia that people could recognize as an alternative—not just to the regime, but to permanent instability. When the political opening arrived, there was something ready to replace what had collapsed.
Political change begins with imagination — but that imagination must be taken seriously.
This past weekend in Israel, something shifted quietly, and if you blinked, you may have missed it.
At a meeting for its 10th anniversary Standing Together — the largest Jewish–Arab grassroots movement in Israel — formally adopted a framework for ending the Israeli–Palestinian conflict that proposes two states not as sealed national projects but as overlapping political realities.
That vision, put forward by the group A Land for All, would see Israelis and Palestinians both have freedom of movement and equal rights in the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, and shared sovereignty in Jerusalem. It establishes mutual recognition of autonomy between the two peoples as a premise for peace, rather than as a final-status issue to address, as it was in previous peace efforts like the Oslo Accords.
This was not an organizational merger or a policy announcement. It was the articulation of a political horizon.
For most of its history, Standing Together has focused on equality within Israel itself: advocating for labor rights and a reasonable cost of living, combatting racism, and promoting shared civic life. Since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, it has been one of the only Israeli movements willing to organize sustained opposition to the war in Gaza, engage in civil disobedience, and try to deliver humanitarian aid in the face of increasing hostility.
Through this vote, the movement sought to expand its domain of responsibility — from Israel’s internal democracy, to the scope of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole.
It’s just one group; just one vote. But it’s also a reframing of what the future is allowed to look like, and a landmark moment of Israelis and Palestinians engaging in a joint political process. Its importance lies less in its technical details than in its structural ambition: replacing separation as the organizing principle, and establishing equality as the baseline.
In a context where imagination itself has been steadily eroded, this matters.
Israeli life has been governed for years by a doctrine of management — managing conflict, managing unrest, managing despair. The public has been trained to treat war as permanent; inequality as unavoidable; and a punishing power hierarchy as necessary for survival. This is not an accident. It is a governing logic that eliminates alternatives by framing them as incoherent, naïve or dangerous.
The most lasting damage done by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Israel may turn out not be the ways in which he’s degraded the country’s electoral system and democratic institutions. It may be psychological.
On his watch, Israel’s political culture has been systematically emptied of credible futures. What remains is a society fluent in fear, and increasingly unable to articulate what it is trying to become.
Comprehensive political visions change the conditions of organizing. When people can describe a wished-for future in concrete, realizable terms, political engagement stops being purely reactive and starts becoming constructive. It reshapes alliances, alters the language of debate, and changes the kinds of risks individuals and movements are willing to take.
South Africa understood this. Serbia understood it. Even New York City saw a version of this dynamic recently, when Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani went from polling at around 1% in the early days of the primary to winning the general election on a platform of affordability and thriving that did not dilute its goals in exchange for political safety.
Israel’s ruling order will not last forever. Regimes built on a premise of permanent emergency aren’t sustainable. What matters is whether there will be anything ready to replace it when it cracks.
Standing Together did not change reality with its vote in favor of a different kind of future — but it clarified what that future could practically look like, and in a country trained to believe that no future exists. And that, on its own, is a political marvel.
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Lithuanian government party leader convicted of inciting hatred towards Jews
(JTA) — The leader of a Lithuanian party in the ruling coalition government was convicted on Thursday for inciting hatred towards Jews and grossly minimizing the Holocaust in a series of public statements and social media posts in 2023.
Remigijus Žemaitaitis, the head of the populist Nemuno Aušra party, was fined 5,000 euros, or $5,835, by the Vilnius Regional Court.
In her decision, Judge Nida Vigelienė said that Žemaitaitis had “publicly mocked, demeaned and encouraged hatred” toward Jews as well as “grossly minimised the Holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany on Lithuania’s territory in an offensive and insulting manner,” according to the Lithuanian public service broadcaster LRT.
Žemaitaitis’ conviction was related to statements he had issued in May and June of 2023, including social media posts, a speech delivered in Parliament and an exchange with a journalist, in which he falsely accused Jews of killing Lithuanians.
“How long will our politicians continue to kneel to the Jews who killed our countrymen, contributed to the persecution, torture and destruction of Lithuanians,” wrote Žemaitaitis in all-caps, according to the country’s constitutional court. “There was a Holocaust of the Jews, but an even greater Holocaust of Lithuanians was in Lithuania!”
In other posts, Žemaitaitis also baselessly blamed Jews for the 1944 Nazi massacres in the Lithuanian villages of Pirčiupiai and Kaniukai.
The ruling Thursday was not the first time that a Lithuanian lawmaker has come under fire for Holocaust distortion. In 2021, Valdas Rakutis, a member of Lithuania’s parliament, was criticized by the U.S. ambassador to Lithuania for claiming in a speech that there was “no shortage of Holocaust perpetrators among the Jews themselves.”
In another post about the demolition of a school building in the West Bank, Žemaitaitis quoted an antisemitic nursery rhyme that encourages children to kill a wounded Jew.
“I want to give you a chance, dear Jews of Israel, to apologize to Palestine and the EU for your disgusting actions in a foreign country,” he wrote. “And I will repeat, ‘After such events, it is no wonder why such sayings are born: A Jew climbed a ladder and fell by accident. Take a stick, children, and kill that Jew.’”
The lawmaker, who frequently posts about the war in Gaza on social media, resigned from Lithuania’s parliament in April 2024 after the country’s constitutional court found his rhetoric had violated his oath and its constitution.
But he was reelected in October 2024 and his party joined the country’s new coalition government led by the Social Democrats.
Žemaitaitis and his lawyer were not present during the ruling Thursday in Vilnius and are expected to seek an appeal. He told reporters after the ruling that “everybody understands that this is a politicized decision,” according to the Associated Press.
“Any form of antisemitism, hate speech, or Holocaust belittling is unacceptable to us and incompatible with our values,” wrote the Social Democrats party in a post on Facebook following the ruling. “We respect the decision of the court. Together we point out that this decision is not yet final.”
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