Basketball comes to the Lower East Side, by Ari Sclar

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as reformers used sport to improve immigrant bodies and morals, American Jews, some of whom were also involved in reform movements, began to view the athletic world as invaluable to direct the assimilation process of the children of eastern European immigrants.  This project took its cues from Progressive reformers, but Jewish leaders also promoted sport as a means to counter charges of Jewish abnormality in relation to the American ideal.[1]  A philosophy emerged that connected an immigrant’s ability to overcome prejudice and discrimination with the ability to learn and appreciate the value of physical activity and work.  Jewish leaders attached sport to a project of immigrant adjustment as early as 1893 when officials at the Jewish institution, the Educational Alliance, stated:

The importance of physical training for our down-town brethren cannot be over-estimated.  Our co-religionists are often charged with lack of physical courage and repugnance to physical work.  Nothing will more effectually remove this than athletic training.  Let a young man develop his body, and he will neither shrink from imaginary danger nor shirk manual work which falls to his lot.[2]

The statement did not attribute the immigrants’ “repugnance to physical work” to any racially determined characteristic.  Nor did Alliance officials define “athletic training,” although they implied that they intended to use it as a means toward participation in mainstream society, not as a gateway toward broader athletic opportunities.  Anxiety concerning Jews’ place in society led Alliance officials to link sport with assumptions concerning manhood, labor, and physical development.[3]  Jewish leaders embraced the belief that sport’s goodness would provide the necessary training and education to turn immigrants into productive citizens.

In the late 1890s, the Educational Alliance began to use sport to attract young Jews to the institution.  The Alliance’s 1897 annual report mentioned the formation of a “baseball nine,” and contained the first official reference to basketball, only six years after the sport’s invention.  The brief citation merely indicated that the institution would provide “the principal part of one evening each week to basket ball, wrestling, and tumbling.”  The report did not make a value judgment of basketball, although it did encourage individuals to participate in “competitive trials of strength and skill.”[4]  By 1899, Alliance basketball monopolized the small gymnasium for one night a week.  The following year, the growing popularity of the sport led officials to form a representative basketball team that “won seven-tenths of all the matches with their adversaries, some of whom were very strong teams, among others that of the YMCA.”[5]

Basketball proved popular because it required little space or money, but the Alliance offered a wide variety of athletic activities.  It used an athletic field on Long Island for track, baseball, and soccer.  Between April 1901 and June 1902, the Alliance Review only mentioned basketball once while it extensively detailed soccer tournaments.  Officials found, however, that “only a small minority of the members will take the trouble of regularly visiting grounds not within easy reach of their homes.”[6]  East Side youth at non-Jewish settlements experienced similar difficulties.  Hall of Famer Barney Sedran, who played basketball at the University Settlement before becoming a famous professional, remembered that basketball “was the only sport I could play with little trouble. …It was difficult for an East Side youngster like myself to play baseball because there was no diamonds close by.”[7] 

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[1] See James and others, The Immigrant Jew in America, 282-333. Chapter 9 covered “health and sanitation.” Also see George Dorsey, “New Race Strains Modify Jew Type,” Chicago Tribune, October 24, 1910.

[2] Educational Alliance, First Annual Report, 1893 (New York: 1894). Howe, The World of Our Fathers, 31-33.  Howe explained that ‘German’ Jews were generally opposed to unrestricted immigration until 1891.  On ‘German’ Jewish desire for rapid Americanization, see Gulie Ne’eman Arad, America, its Jews, and the Rise of Nazism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 46-51. On industrialization in relation to the body, see Carolyn de la Pena, The Body Electric: How Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York: New York University Press, 2003). 

[3] For brief analysis of the Alliance’s statement, see Howe, The World of Our Fathers, 231; Riess, “Sports and the American Jew,” in Riess, Sports and the American Jew, 18; Levine, Ellis Island to Ebbet’s Field, 14; Butsch “Leisure and Hegemony in America” in Butsch, For Fun and Profit, 11-15; Marc Horger, “Play By The Rules: The Creation of Basketball and the Progressive Era, 1891-1917,” (Ph.D. diss.: Ohio State University, 2001), 85-88; Bodnar, The Transplanted, 86-116. Bodnar argued that immigrants experienced industrial capitalism in Europe and had little difficulty adapting to industrial work rhythms.  Bodnar countered the assertions of Oscar Handlin regarding the ability and willingness of immigrants to acculturate into American society.  See Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1957).

[4] Educational Alliance, Fifth Annual Report, 1897 (New York: Educational Alliance, 1898).

[5] Educational Alliance, Seventh Annual Report, 1899 (New York: 1900).  In July 1898, David Blaustein became superintendent and instituted a different attitude toward the immigrant community surrounding the Alliance.  On the Educational Alliance, see Adam Bellow, The Educational Alliance: A Centennial Celebration (New York: Educational Alliance, 1990).

[6] See Alliance Review, April 1901-June 1902.  The field was located in Maspeth, Long Island.  See Educational Alliance, Eleventh Annual Report, 1903 (New York: Educational Alliance, 1904).  Quote on the trouble of holding outdoor exercises, see Educational Alliance, Eighth Annual Report, 1900 (New York: Educational Alliance, 1901).

[7] Bernard Postal, Jesse Silver, and Roy Silver, ed. Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1965), 92.  Historians often presume the supremacy of basketball due to the lack of space in urban neighborhoods.  At the Alliance, the purchase of an athletic field belies the claim that young Jews had to play basketball because they did not have access to other sports.  It is likely that basketball was the most accessible sport for the majority of Jewish youth on the lower East Side, but the availability of soccer and baseball at the Alliance indicates that if an individual had the desire, they could play those sports.