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