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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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Trump Official Resigns Over Iran War, Blames Israel
Mattie Neretin – CNP/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
A senior U.S. counterterrorism official resigned Tuesday in protest of President Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran, accusing Israel of playing an outsized role in pushing the United States into conflict.
Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said he could not support the war, arguing Tehran posed “no imminent threat” to the United States. But it was Kent’s broader assertion, that pressure from Israel and pro-Israel voices influenced the decision to go to war, that drew swift pushback from the White House and national security experts.
In his resignation, Kent also drew parallels to the Iraq War, suggesting that similar dynamics shaped both conflicts, arguing that Israel pushed the US into the conflict. His comments revived long-running debates about how U.S. intelligence and foreign alliances factor into decisions to use military force, though many officials and analysts have rejected such comparisons as misleading.
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent wrote in his resignation letter.
Kent further claimed that he lost his wife in a “war manufactured by Israel.” Kent’s wife, Shannon Kent, died in 2019 when an ISIS suicide bomber detonated an explosive device during a U.S. military operation during the Syrian Civil War. Kent’s assertion suggests that Israel started the Syrian Civil War is completely unfounded. However, the notion that Israel controls the ISIS terror group is a popular conspiracy online.
The Trump administration forcefully disputed Kent’s claims, maintaining that the decision to strike Iran was based on credible intelligence about threats to U.S. forces and interests in the region. Trump dismissed Kent as “weak on security,” defending the operation as necessary to deter Iranian aggression and protect American personnel and allies.
Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary, lambasted Kent’s letter as inaccurate .
“The absurd allegation that President Trump made this decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable. President Trump has been remarkably consistent and has said for DECADES that Iran can NEVER possess a nuclear weapon,” she wrote.
National security experts and former officials also criticized Kent’s framing, arguing that it oversimplifies the policymaking process and risks promoting narratives that inaccurately portray Israel as driving U.S. military decisions. They emphasize that while Israel is a close ally that shares intelligence and strategic concerns, particularly regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions and support for proxy groups, decisions to go to war are made by U.S. leadership based on American intelligence assessments.
Israel has long warned about the threat posed by Iran’s regional activities, including its backing of armed groups hostile to both Israeli and U.S. interests. Those concerns are broadly shared across multiple U.S. administrations and within the intelligence community, regardless of political party.
Kent’s resignation marks the most significant internal break so far over the Iran conflict and highlights growing divisions within the administration and across Washington. While some critics of the war have echoed his concerns about the lack of an imminent threat, others have expressed alarm at his decision to center Israel in his critique, warning that such claims can distort public understanding of how U.S. foreign policy decisions are made.
Kent came under fire during his confirmation process over his reported connections to white supremacists Nick Fuentes and Greyson Arnold. Kent admitted that he had conversations with Fuentes over social media strategy. However, Kent later distanced himself from Fuentes and repudiated his views.
Kent also holds other unorthodox foreign policy viewpoints, such as a relatively forgiving posture towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In April 2022, following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Kent argued that Putin was “very reasonable” and accused the US foreign policy establishment of aggravating Russia into war.
Kent’s comments on Tuesday drew widespread backlash from many who accused him of peddling antisemitic tropes. Ilan Goldberg, Senior Vice President and Chief Policy Officer of liberal pro-Israel organization J-Street, praised Kent for leaving the administration, but added “the antisemitic stuff in here blaming Israel for the Iraq war and a secret conspiracy of the media and Israelis to deceive Trump into going to war with Iran is ugly stuff that plays on the worst antisemitic tropes.”
“Donald Trump is the President of the United States and he is the one ultimately responsible for sending American troops into harms way,” Goldberg added.
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UK Hate Crime Prosecutions Reveal Stark Disparities Between Muslim and Jewish Victims
Demonstrators attend the “Lift The Ban” rally organised by Defend Our Juries, challenging the British government’s proscription of “Palestine Action” under anti-terrorism laws, in Parliament Square, in London, Britain, Sept. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Jasso
Hate crimes against Muslims in the United Kingdom are nearly twice as likely to result in prosecution as those targeting Jews, newly released figures show, exposing a striking imbalance in how justice is ultimately delivered.
According to data compiled by the British Home Office, the government department responsible for policing and security, figures on hate crime offences recorded over the past year show that Muslim victims of Islamophobic attacks were 76 percent more likely to see their attackers prosecuted than Jewish victims of antisemitic attacks.
Across the United Kingdom, 6.7 percent of hate crimes targeting Muslims led to a charge or summons — around one in 15 cases — compared with just 3.8 percent of offences against Jewish victims, or roughly one in 26, over the period from April 2024 to March 2025.
The gap is particularly stark in certain offences. Religiously aggravated assaults without injury against Muslims were over six times more likely to lead to prosecution, with 6.3 percent of cases resulting in charges compared with just 1.1 percent for Jewish victims.
Similarly, racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage was around four times more likely to result in charges, at 3.4 percent versus 0.8 percent.
Although 4,478 religious hate crimes were reported against Muslims compared with 2,873 against Jews, the smaller size of the Jewish population means such offences are far more concentrated and statistically significant. By raw population, the contrast is stark: around 3.9 million Muslims live in England and Wales, compared with 287,360 Jews
The Home Office’s data also reveals that Jewish people are disproportionately targeted, experiencing religious hate crimes at a rate roughly ten times higher than Muslims.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) — the body responsible for bringing criminal cases in England and Wales — said comparing crime reports with prosecutions is difficult because cases can only proceed once police submit sufficient evidence for a charging decision.
According to the CPS, a record number of hate crime cases were referred by police last year, with 11,140 defendants prosecuted for racially flagged offences, resulting in a charge rate of 87.1 percent and a conviction rate of 85.2 percent.
In the UK, the Community Security Trust (CST) — a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters — recorded 1,521 antisemitic incidents from January to June last year. This was the second-highest number of antisemitic crimes ever recorded by CST in the first six months of any year, following 2,019 incidents in the first half of 2024.
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A government takeover could save a struggling Brooklyn hospital — while unsettling the Orthodox Jewish community it serves
As New York City moves to assume control of a financially distressed hospital that serves Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community, some local players are pushing back, filing lawsuits in hopes of stopping the imminent merger with the city’s public hospital system.
Many Hasidic patients rely on Maimonides Medical Center, an independent nonprofit in Borough Park, as their local hospital. Even in a city where hospitals typically offer kosher food and are sensitive to Jewish patients’ needs, Maimonides stands out, with Shabbat elevators that stop on every floor, Yiddish-speaking staff and an onsite synagogue in the main lobby that hosts daily afternoon prayer.
New York City Health and Hospitals CEO Dr. Mitchell Katz has promised to retain those religious accommodations at Maimonides under the merger, noting in court documents that the merger agreement between Maimonides and the city requires preservation of existing religious and cultural practices at the hospital for at least 30 years.
“We certainly have heard concerns at community settings from the Orthodox Jewish community who are concerned about whether or not the hospital will still respect their cultural traditions,” Katz said at a New York City Council hearing earlier this month about the proposed merger. “And we’ve explained, ‘Absolutely.’” But, he acknowledged, “Change makes people worried.”
Such reassurances, however, have done little to assuage the plaintiffs in the pair of lawsuits seeking to block the merger, who include hospital’s trustees who disagreed with the decision to go public, Orthodox Jewish patient advocacy groups, and local Bobov, Satmar and Belz Hasidic congregations.
Their cases, filed against Maimonides Medical Center, the New York State Department of Health, and New York City Health and Hospitals, argue that relinquishing local control to the city hospital system jeopardizes the hospital’s Jewish character, conflicts with the nonprofit’s local mission, and threatens to deteriorate its quality of care.
The lawsuits have set up a clash between two groups who each argue they have the hospital’s best interest at heart: a city that says it wants to rescue a hospital on the brink of financial collapse, and Jewish leaders wary of public institutions, who prefer to keep the hospital’s management within the community it serves.
“Maybe at first you won’t see such a change in the culture, but over time, it’s inevitable that it’s just going to become a city-run hospital, like all the other city-run hospitals,” Martin Bienstock, a lawyer for the plaintiffs suing to block the merger, told the Forward. “If people lose trust in the hospital, because they lose that sense of affiliation, you’re going to get poorer health quality outcomes.”
The merger is set to be finalized on April 1, but could be disrupted by a judge’s pending decision on a request for a preliminary injunction blocking the transaction. The next hearing is scheduled for March 27.
A financial lifeline
Maimonides Medical Center, named for the 12th century Jewish scholar, was founded over a century ago by a group of Jewish women as a philanthropic effort to serve the poor. It has long served a diverse, largely low-income population that includes many immigrant communities, in addition to the Brooklyn neighborhood’s longstanding Jewish population.
Even as other independent hospitals shut down or merged with big medical systems, Maimonides held out. But recent years have brought mounting financial strain, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last December, those financial troubles led the city to step in. Former Mayor Eric Adams, with just three days left in office, announced a plan to merge Maimonides Medical Center with the city’s public hospital system. Gov. Kathy Hochul endorsed the deal, backing it with a $2.2 billion grant as part of her broader push to stabilize New York’s struggling safety-net hospitals, which serve patients who can’t afford to pay for their care.
New York City’s public hospital system receives a higher Medicaid reimbursement rate than independent hospitals do — a potential lifeline for Maimonides, which receives 70% of its patient revenue from Medicare and Medicaid, according to the Healthcare Association of New York State.
The deal is poised to infuse Maimonides with more than $2 billion over five years, according to city hospital spokesperson Christopher Miller. The money will be used “for many important upgrades,” Miller said, including adopting electronic health records and renovating the hospital’s maternity ward, where more than 6,000 women give birth each per year — more babies than any other hospital in Brooklyn.
Advocates of the merger say that cash is urgently needed. Maimonides lost more than $165 million at its peak deficit in 2021 and has continued to operate tens of millions of dollars in the red in the years since, according to tax filings. A 2024 audit expressed “substantial doubt” about the organization’s ability to continue operating.
Those suing to block the transaction do not dispute that Maimonides’ finances are dire. But they argue that the hospital’s board did not adequately consider alternative options that could have allowed Maimonides to maintain its status as a private nonprofit, according to court documents that claim the hospital had snubbed potential partnerships with Touro University or Westchester Medical Center, according to court documents.
(The hospital’s CEO said in a court filing that he was not aware of any viable partners for Maimonides other than the city.)
Bienstock contends the merger will place Maimonides in the hands of an unwieldy government-sponsored bureaucracy — and under the political whims of New York City’s mayor, currently Zohran Mamdani, who oversees the city hospital system and proposes its budget.
“Any promises that they make, they’re always subject to later decisions by the Health and Hospitals board and mayor,” Bienstock said. “Ultimately, they’re going to be running the show.”
‘Grave concern’
It’s not the first time the hospital has had strained relations with the Orthodox community. During the pandemic, patients alleged that the hospital had removed patients from ventilators in ways that conflicted with Jewish values protecting the sanctity of life. Meanwhile, a campaign called “Save Maimonides,” led by local Orthodox Jewish leaders at odds with the leadership of CEO Ken Gibbs, alleged substandard patient care at the hospital and financial mismanagement.
Among the concerns was Maimonides Medical Center’s purchase of the naming rights to a minor league baseball stadium in Coney Island in 2021, and ballooning executive compensation even as the hospital lost millions. Gibbs’ salary was $3.2 million in 2020, up from $1.3 million the year prior, a payout hospital officials told THE CITY was deferred compensation Gibbs had been slated to receive after five years of work. Gibbs has earned roughly $1.8 million each year since.
In a statement to the Forward, Maimonides spokesperson Sam Miller said the hospital has won national recognition for “outstanding care across several clinical areas,” including top rank for its children’s hospital.
Asked about executive compensation and spending on the minor league baseball stadium, Miller said, “Our financial management is sound.”
Mendy Reiner, co-chair of “Save Maimonides” and founder of a nonprofit that connects patients with kidney donors, told the Forward he sees the proposed merger as yet another sign of the hospital’s decline. In his experience, locals who can afford to pay often travel across the river to Manhattan for what he described as superior care. U.S. News and World report currently ranks Maimonides 19th in the New York metro area, a market that includes some of the top-ranked academic hospitals in the nation.
“City hospitals are a failure across the board,” Reiner said. “And if we thought that Maimonides could go bad from bad to worse, here it is.”
In a statement, Miller said both Maimonides and NYC Health and Hospitals “run facilities that deliver high-quality care for their patients,” citing awards that include US News & World Report putting all 11 of the system’s hospitals on its “Best Hospitals 2025-2026” list.
H+H CEO Katz defended the public hospital system in court filings, arguing that the plaintiffs had made “inaccurate and baseless claims” about the quality of care and had “offensively” justified those allegations by pointing to the system’s large number of Medicaid patients.
Still, the proposed merger came as a shock to local state Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein, who said he had been working with hospital leadership for years to come up with an alternative solution. In an October 2025 video address, he said the city’s proposal for Maimonides was “being shoved down our throats.”
“Let me be clear. This is a shortsighted, quick fix made without the slightest understanding of our local diverse neighborhoods,” Eichenstein said. “This is not collaboration. This is coercion.”
Hatzalah, the Jewish volunteer emergency medical service organization that partners with Maimonides, issued a letter last October “strongly” opposing the potential takeover as “not in the best interest of our community.” Hatzalah coordinators serving four heavily Orthodox Brooklyn neighborhoods — Borough Park, Crown Heights, Flatbush and Mill Basin — signed onto the letter “with grave concern.”
Since then, more Jewish institutions have joined the fight against the merger. Four Hasidic congregations — Congregation Khal Shaarei Zion Bobov, Congregation Kehilas Belz, Congregation Yetev Lev D’Satmar, and Khal Bobov 45 Inc. — signed onto the lawsuit filed against the hospital and state earlier this month, saying their congregants regularly rely on Maimonides for medical care. Other plaintiffs include Borough Park residents Chaim Beigel and Israel Minkoff, as well as the Orthodox Jewish patient advocacy groups Refuah Helpline and Chaim Medical Resource.
Miriam Knoll, CEO of the Jewish Orthodox Women’s Medical Association, said public hospitals can and do offer religious accommodations for Jewish patients. Still, she said, any new leadership must prioritize outreach to the local Jewish community to build trust.
For Knoll, the issue is close to home: She and all of her siblings were born at Maimonides, and her parents, both physicians, completed their medical residencies there.
“Maimonides is a deeply personal and important institution to the Jewish community in Brooklyn,” Knoll told the Forward. “And I think it’s very important that it continues to be a place that provides culturally sensitive care.”
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