| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 289 words from this article are provided below; about 566 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Jeffrey S. Gurock. Judaism's Encounter with American Sports. (The Modern Jewish Experience.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2005. Pp. x, 234. $29.95.
The story of how immigrants assimilated to American life is a familiar one, and it is one that Jeffrey S. Gurock wisely avoids in his history of the role of physical recreation in Jewish American life. Rather than structure his analysis within the framework of the Americanization of the Jews, Gurock uses sports to focus on the religious tensions that coming to America created for them. The end result is a conversation of sport on a small scale, the community and collegiate level, rather than a retelling of why Sandy Koufax refused to pitch Game One of the World Series in 1965.	1
Instead, much of Gurock's focus is the range of perspectives Jewish religious leaders had regarding sports participation through the ages, particularly in the twentieth century, when Jewish immigrants found themselves establishing permanent roots in the United States. On one side were those rabbis who wanted to incorporate sports activities at religious centers, such as the Young Men's Hebrew Association, in order to attract members, hoping that they could use the American-forged interest in sports to encourage religious observance. Others disagreed, finding that sport, increasingly its own religion in America, was something to be resisted, as it only led Jews to assimilate further toward America and away from Jewish traditions. Still others sat somewhere in the middle, such as Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, who saw sport as an essential maintenance tool, particularly in terms of recruiting youth, but thought that better efforts had to be made to get people to pray in addition to play.	. . .

There are about 566 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.