In Jew­ish Sports Leg­ends, Joseph Sieg­man pro­files some of the world’s great­est ath­letes. Each of these ath­letes and con­trib­u­tors is hon­ored as a mem­ber of the Inter­na­tion­al Jew­ish Sports Hall of Fame. The IJSHOF dates to 1977, when a group of ath­letes return­ing from the 10th Mac­cabi­ah games, held in Israel a scant five years after the mur­der of 11 Israeli ath­letes at the Munich Olympiad, sought a way to hon­or out­stand­ing achieve­ment and lay to rest the canard that Jews do not excel in phys­i­cal activities. 

The breadth of sports cit­ed, and the long his­to­ry of Jew­ish involve­ment in a vari­ety of roles — ath­lete, coach, admin­is­tra­tor, writer and broad­cast­er — reveals the influ­ence exert­ed by these leg­endary sports per­son­al­i­ties. Most of these names will be famil­iar to the sports fan, espe­cial­ly in sports offer­ing pro­fes­sion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties or Olympics expo­sure, but there are many unfa­mil­iar names, as well, par­tic­u­lar­ly among the Euro­peans who excelled in fenc­ing, soc­cer, table ten­nis and even track and field. 

A vast empti­ness is revealed when the read­er remem­bers the years of the Holo­caust and thinks about how many ath­letes lost their oppor­tu­ni­ty to excel, and often their lives. For Amer­i­can ath­letes, this book offers a soci­o­log­i­cal mir­ror reflect­ing through sports a chang­ing social accep­tance of Jews, their improved eco­nom­ic sta­tus and the shift of pop­u­la­tions from the city to the sub­urbs, from the East coast to the West. Sud­den­ly, after mid-20th cen­tu­ry, the pipeline that pro­duced Jew­ish box­ers and jock­eys is capped, replaced by an end­less sup­ply of Jew­ish ten­nis play­ers, golfers and fig­ure skaters. 

Part of the fun of such a com­pi­la­tion is being able to argue about who was omit­ted, and why. Nan­cy Lieber­man, the great bas­ket­ball play­er, does not appear, nor does Bernard ​“Red” Sarachek, the leg­endary bas­ket­ball coach. But what is so impres­sive about Siegman’s book is how few bona fide sports leg­ends are absent. Jack Moli­nas, for exam­ple, did not ​“make the cut,” prob­a­bly because of his non-bas­ket­ball activ­i­ties and the cir­cum­stances of his death, but oth­er­wise, all the usu­al sus­pects appear, and they are described in brief, infor­ma­tive ways. There is even some unfa­mil­iar infor­ma­tion, such as the pro­file of Otto Her­schmann, the great Aus­tri­an-Jew­ish swim­mer who is the answer to a triv­ia ques­tion: Which (Jew­ish) ath­lete was the first to win Olympic medals in two dif­fer­ent sports? As Casey Sten­gel said, ​“You could look it up.” 

Give this book to a Jew­ish teenag­er who loves sports. Or just put it on your cof­fee table. It is worth perusing.