קולטור

Sports

Mendl, Nomi, and Nomi’s friends love playing sports--however the participation of Jewish youth in athletic activities is a relatively recent phenomenon. Interest in sports only began to rise among Jews in Eastern Europe in the early part of the twentieth century, influenced by surrounding non-Jewish cultures. Various Jewish sports clubs and even federations of sports clubs were created throughout Eastern Europe. Among the most popular sports of that era were gymnastics, soccer, and boxing.

Besides the general idea that physical exercise is good for health, Jews also associated sports with modernization and emancipation. Jewish sports clubs were thus often affiliated with the political movements that played an important role in Jewish society at that time. As a result, the Jewish sports clubs often had an ideologically based language policy – in Poland between the world wars, for example, there were clubs in Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish.

While playing sports attracted the “modern” city youth, the older generation and more traditional sectors of the Jewish population remained uninterested in this new branch of activity. This is reflected, for example, in the Jewish press of the time, which only slowly began to include sports news and notices about local sporting events in its pages.