A New Exhibition Tells the Story of Jews and Cricket

July 19 2023

Baseball has Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax, football has Julian Edelman, and basketball has Amar’e Stoudemire, but few American Jews have heard of Ivan Barrow, Norman Gordon, or Nessa Reinberg—who are some of the best-known Jewish cricketers. Currently Lord’s Cricket Ground in North London is hosting an exhibit titled Cricket and the Jewish Community, where one can learn about such figures. Georgia Gilholy writes:

By the 1830s, cricket embraced fully a muscular Christianity—“what certain groups claimed was the embodiment of morality, physical health, and mental well-being,” [the curator Neil] Robinson said. . . . Cricket is particularly popular at upmarket public schools among Christians, but that didn’t dissuade all Jews from entering the sport, upon which they soon made their mark.

Only one Jewish player has represented England as a Test (international-level) cricketer, Nessa Reinberg. In South Africa, many Jewish cricketers overcame discrimination and made the national team. . . . The legendary South African cricketer Norman Gordon was met with “Here comes the rabbi!” taunts when he bowled in a 1938 match. Unphased, Gordon played so well that he shut the heckler up for the remainder of the game, Robinson said.

Lesser-known figures also emerge in the show, including the Jamaican-born, Sephardi cricketer Ivan Barrow, who became a symbol of pride for the island’s old but small Jewish community. In 1933, he became the first West Indian to score 100 in an English Test and the first Jew to do so.

Read more at JNS

More about: Anglo-Jewry, Caribbean Jewry, South Africa, Sports

Expand Gaza into Sinai

Feb. 11 2025

Calling the proposal to depopulate Gaza completely (if temporarily) “unworkable,” Peter Berkowitz makes the case for a similar, but more feasible, plan:

The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should persuade Egypt by means of generous financial inducements to open the sparsely populated ten-to-fifteen miles of Sinai adjacent to Gaza to Palestinians seeking a fresh start and better life. Egypt would not absorb Gazans and make them citizens but rather move Gaza’s border . . . westward into Sinai. Fences would be erected along the new border. The Israel Defense Force would maintain border security on the Gaza-extension side, Egyptian forces on the other. Egypt might lease the land to the Palestinians for 75 years.

The Sinai option does not involve forced transfer of civilian populations, which the international laws of war bar. As the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other partners build temporary dwellings and then apartment buildings and towns, they would provide bus service to the Gaza-extension. Palestinian families that choose to make the short trip would receive a key to a new residence and, say, $10,000.

The Sinai option is flawed. . . . Then again, all conventional options for rehabilitating and governing Gaza are terrible.

Read more at RealClear Politics

More about: Donald Trump, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula