A Jewish New York basketball culture

By 1934, Jewish players had become commonplace at New York colleges.  Jews occasionally played at Fordham, Manhattan, and Columbia, but had more of a presence at CCNY, NYU, St. John’s and LIU.  During the 1934 season, CCNY fielded an almost exclusively Jewish team while St. John’s had two Jewish starters and both NYU and LIU had four.  These four schools proved important in college basketball’s new model and each took advantage of the growth of Jewish basketball as it related to the experience of New York Jews during the Depression.

Historian Beth Wenger illustrated that New York Jews survived the Depression in a better position than other immigrant groups.  A decade of anxiety and economic insecurity intensified threats from American fascists who supported Nazi Germany, but Jews avoided employment in the heavy industries or large corporations, due in part to the belief that corporate anti-Semitism would restrict upward mobility.  Many Jews found employment in the garment industry and white collar positions, or owned small businesses.  Their relatively stable economic situation allowed Jews to attend college basketball games and cheer on players from the Jewish neighborhoods of New York.[1]

New York Jews did not constitute a unified community in the 1930s.  Eighty percent of New York Jews lived in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and class divisions remained strong even as differences in nationalities became less important.  Immigrant associations built around identification with a region or town in eastern Europe had virtually no appeal for native-born Jews who became more important in American Jewish life due to immigration restriction.  Their world revolved around the neighborhood, whether a middle class neighborhood like Flatbush or the working class neighborhoods of East New York and Brownsville.  By the 1930s, 75% of New York Jews lived in “neighborhoods with predominantly Jewish populations.”[2]  From the streets of Brownsville to the Williamsburg YMHA and the Brooklyn Jewish Center in Eastern Parkway, playing basketball became a daily experience for many young Jews in New York.

The Brooklyn Jewish Center (BJC) represented the changing demographic pattern of New York Jews.  The BJC was constructed in 1920 as a ‘synagogue-center’ in the middle class neighborhood of Eastern Parkway.  Historian David Kaufman defined the ‘synagogue-center’ as “any institution whose program merges the religious, the educational, and the social within one unified ‘center.’”[3]  The ‘synagogue-center’ intended to merge secular American life with Judaism, and in the early 1920s, the BJC served as the “new community center of Brooklyn Jewry.”  The building itself, an impressive structure that served as a “functional institution,” reflected the architectural boom of post-World War I America.  The BJC placed its gymnasium in the basement, along with a bowling alley, swimming pool, billiard room, locker rooms, and the boiler room.  The institution’s president hoped young members would leave the “lower regions” of the gymnasium and look “upward where Godliness and Holiness dwell.” He conceded, however, that “we would rather have them in the Center’s basement than in Goyishe [non-Jewish] clubs and organizations.”  Other ‘synagogue-centers’ formed soon after the BJC and became an important part of Brooklyn Jewish life.[4]

The BJC helped expand competitive basketball among New York Jews.  In the 1920s, New York ‘synagogue-centers’ had formed the Inter-Center Basketball League.  During the 1930s, the BJC competed against top local amateur teams, including the 92^nd Street YMHA, Union Temple, another ‘synagogue-center,’ and Ohrbach’s Department store, which like other department stores, sponsored a team as a promotional device.  In 1936, the BJC won the Kings County AAU championship.  Sam Schoenfeld, who also served as the head basketball coach at Brooklyn’s Jefferson High School, directed BJC basketball and produced a number of college players at both locations, which contributed to the growth of Jewish basketball. [5]

Along with the BJC, a street culture in Brownsville contributed to Jewish basketball.  Located just east of middle class Eastern Parkway and eighty percent Jewish during the Depression, Brownsville contained a vibrant Jewish culture and became known among some residents as the “Jerusalem of America.”  It served as the home to Danny Kaye, Alfred Kazin and other young Jews who would later become public figures.  Poverty, however, existed alongside its Jewishness.  Outside the Hebrew Educational Society (HES), there existed few neighborhood facilities and resources.  Wenger explained that streets in working class neighborhoods often served as second homes.  This certainly occurred in Brownsville, where basketball players learned the game on streets, playgrounds, and schoolyards.[6]

The Spalding basketball guide published articles in 1929, 1931, and 1934 that captured the relationship among Jewish neighborhood, college, and professional basketball.  Contributor Barney Ain focused on the heavily Jewish areas of Brownsville and East New York and explained in the first article that basketball “is now the principle athletic sport in every section of Brooklyn…Night after night, hundred of teams, and thousands of players fought for supremacy on every available playing court.”  The second article expanded on the impact of Brooklyn basketball as clubs and teams produced “more and better championship quintets than any other section of the city.”  Finally, in 1934, Ain claimed Brooklyn “is recognized as the ‘Basketball Hotbed of the East.’”  Jewish players in colleges, high schools, middle schools, amateur clubs, ‘synagogue-centers,’ and other independent organizations dominated his articles.[7]

Street basketball’s close relationship with the other forms of Jewish basketball helped construct a fluid New York basketball culture.  Even as the New York mainstream press provided more attention to college basketball during the 1934 season, they retained a relatively balanced coverage of New York basketball.  Colleges, and sometimes the ABL, received the most attention, but the press also provided information on more obscure teams, leagues, and organizations.  On any given day, the New York daily newspapers may have provided bold headlines of CCNY or NYU games as well as results from the ABL, YMHA or YMCA games, municipal leagues, or AAU games and tournaments.  Soon after Ain’s third article, however, promoters began to exploit this relationship and turned college basketball into a modern, national spectacle.

---

[1] Wenger, New York Jews and the Great Depression, 1-3, 15-24, 83.  Also see Feingold, A Time for Searching, 126-128.  The author conducted interviews with former players, all of whom indicated that friends and family watched their games.  Norm Drucker, phone interview with author, September 5, 2005; Irwin Rothenberg, phone interview with author, September 3, 2005; Dutch Garfinkel, interview by author, Brooklyn, New York, April 18, 2005.

[2] On immigrant associations, see Daniel Soyer, Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).  Quote from Wenger, New York Jews and the Depression, 81-96.

[3] Kaufman, Shul with a Pool, 4.

[4] Annual Message delivered by Mr. Isidore Fine, president, January 19, 1933, Ratner Center, JTS, Brooklyn Jewish Center Records, box 3/folder 8.  On Brooklyn ‘synagogue-centers, see Kaufman, Shul with a Pool, 249-257. The floor plans of the BJC on 255.

[5] For information on the formation of the basketball league, see “Basketball League,” Brooklyn Jewish Center Bulletin, October 22, 1926.  The teams in the league were the BJC, Union Temple (also located on Eastern Parkway), Ahaveth Sholem of Flatbush, the New York Jewish Center, and the Far Rockaway Jewish Center.  The following year, it was called the Jewish Temple Basketball League.  It returned to being named the Inter-Center League in 1928.  On AAU title, see “Basketball Season Ends,” Brooklyn Jewish Center Review, March 1936.  Schoenfeld was first mentioned as the BJC coach in 1929-30 while he was a star player at Columbia University.  One of the BJC players in the mid-1930s was Irwin Witty, who played for NYU at the same time.

[6] Wenger, New York Jews and the Great Depression, 85-96.  Quote on ‘Jerusalem,’ from Soyer, “Brownstones and Brownsville,” 184.

[7] Barney Ain, “Brownsville and East NY Sections of Brooklyn,” Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide 1928-1929 (New York: American Sports Publishing Company, 1928); Barney Ain, “Brownsville and East New York Sections of Brooklyn,” Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide 1930-1931 (New York: American Sports Publishing Company, 1931); Barney Ain, “Basketball in Brooklyn,” Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide 1933-1934 (New York: American Sports Publishing Company, 1933).