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Jewish basketball nostalgia
Steve Cohen
The good old days
(when Jews battled anti-Semites)
STEVE COHEN
There was a time, strange as it might seem, when short Jewish players dominated the game of basketball. It was a different sport then– one where cleverness and strategy trumped height or strength. David Vyorst tells the story in the documentary film, The First Basket, playing at the Jewish Film Festival at the Gershman Y (November 19) and after that will be available on video.
Vyorst’s film has a Philadelphia connection because a team called the Sphas is central to its story. From the early 1930s until the 1950s the Sphas (the name is an acronym for “South Philadelphia Hebrew Association”)— played at the Broadwood Hotel on the corner of Broad and Wood Streets, where their games as well as the dances that followed became part of Philadelphia culture.
The Sphas were organized as an all-Jewish pro team in 1917 by teenagers Eddie Gottieb, Hughie Black and Harry Passon. They became the dominant team in the American League, basketball’s first pro league, where the Sphas flaunted their Jewishness to confront that era’s prevalent anti-Semitism. Black left to start Pine Forest Camp in the Poconos and Passon to run a sporting goods store; Gottlieb remained as sole owner and coach and, later, founded the Philadelphia Warriors.
Why not New York?
The Sphas were ostentatiously Jewish; even their uniforms had Hebrew lettering. The team attracted non-Jewish fans as well, some of whom came to see the Jews get beaten. Eventually the Sphas became recognized as representing the entire city, and they won seven national championships between 1934 and 1946.
It’s perhaps odd that this first professional Jewish team emerged in Philadelphia, which then had only about 150,000 Jews in its population of 2 million. Perhaps New York’s far more numerous Jews didn’t feel the same need to assert their Jewishness; Philadelphia’s Jews, by contrast, must have felt more victimized and isolated. Hence the Sphas.
"On the way to and from school, Christian kids would yell 'kike' or 'Christ-killer' at us,” Gil Fitch, one of the Sphas’ starting players, told me. “It may be hard for people today to understand this, but all of us had experiences of being beaten up because of our religion. When Hitler and his crowd came to power in Germany, we were all upset, and there was nothing we could do about it except go out on the court wearing Hebrew letters on your shirt and become champions.”
Lox, bagels and nostalgia
Fitch, who had captained Temple’s team in 1930, also was a clarinetist whose dance band played every Saturday night at the Broadwood after the games. Kitty Kallen, then a teenager, was Fitch’s vocalist.
Vyorst is a Washington, D.C., public relations consultant who grew up a New York Knicks fan on Long Island. He got the idea for this film after he heard about a South Florida fraternity of retired basketball players, mostly Jewish, who meet monthly for lox, bagels and nostalgia. That group includes men who played for the Sphas and then made the transition after World War Two into the new big league that became today’s National Basketball Association.
The film’s title comes from a reminiscence of Ossie Schectman, a Spha who joined the New York Knicks and scored the first basket in the first game of the new NBA on November 1, 1946. "That’s what’s kept my name alive," Schectman says in the film.
A Sphas historical society is currently being formed. That will be good for informing new generations about this important part of Philadelphia’s sociological past.
To read responses, click here and here.
(when Jews battled anti-Semites)
STEVE COHEN
There was a time, strange as it might seem, when short Jewish players dominated the game of basketball. It was a different sport then– one where cleverness and strategy trumped height or strength. David Vyorst tells the story in the documentary film, The First Basket, playing at the Jewish Film Festival at the Gershman Y (November 19) and after that will be available on video.
Vyorst’s film has a Philadelphia connection because a team called the Sphas is central to its story. From the early 1930s until the 1950s the Sphas (the name is an acronym for “South Philadelphia Hebrew Association”)— played at the Broadwood Hotel on the corner of Broad and Wood Streets, where their games as well as the dances that followed became part of Philadelphia culture.
The Sphas were organized as an all-Jewish pro team in 1917 by teenagers Eddie Gottieb, Hughie Black and Harry Passon. They became the dominant team in the American League, basketball’s first pro league, where the Sphas flaunted their Jewishness to confront that era’s prevalent anti-Semitism. Black left to start Pine Forest Camp in the Poconos and Passon to run a sporting goods store; Gottlieb remained as sole owner and coach and, later, founded the Philadelphia Warriors.
Why not New York?
The Sphas were ostentatiously Jewish; even their uniforms had Hebrew lettering. The team attracted non-Jewish fans as well, some of whom came to see the Jews get beaten. Eventually the Sphas became recognized as representing the entire city, and they won seven national championships between 1934 and 1946.
It’s perhaps odd that this first professional Jewish team emerged in Philadelphia, which then had only about 150,000 Jews in its population of 2 million. Perhaps New York’s far more numerous Jews didn’t feel the same need to assert their Jewishness; Philadelphia’s Jews, by contrast, must have felt more victimized and isolated. Hence the Sphas.
"On the way to and from school, Christian kids would yell 'kike' or 'Christ-killer' at us,” Gil Fitch, one of the Sphas’ starting players, told me. “It may be hard for people today to understand this, but all of us had experiences of being beaten up because of our religion. When Hitler and his crowd came to power in Germany, we were all upset, and there was nothing we could do about it except go out on the court wearing Hebrew letters on your shirt and become champions.”
Lox, bagels and nostalgia
Fitch, who had captained Temple’s team in 1930, also was a clarinetist whose dance band played every Saturday night at the Broadwood after the games. Kitty Kallen, then a teenager, was Fitch’s vocalist.
Vyorst is a Washington, D.C., public relations consultant who grew up a New York Knicks fan on Long Island. He got the idea for this film after he heard about a South Florida fraternity of retired basketball players, mostly Jewish, who meet monthly for lox, bagels and nostalgia. That group includes men who played for the Sphas and then made the transition after World War Two into the new big league that became today’s National Basketball Association.
The film’s title comes from a reminiscence of Ossie Schectman, a Spha who joined the New York Knicks and scored the first basket in the first game of the new NBA on November 1, 1946. "That’s what’s kept my name alive," Schectman says in the film.
A Sphas historical society is currently being formed. That will be good for informing new generations about this important part of Philadelphia’s sociological past.
To read responses, click here and here.
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