Jewish sports flicks to get you into an Olympian state of mind

In the comedy classic Airplane!, a passenger asks a flight attendant for some light reading and she hands him a leaflet called, “Famous Jewish Sports Legends,” a joke which got a lot of laughs. All kidding aside, there are a lot of nerdy Jews but there are also many great Jewish athletes and still more Jews who love sports. As we cheer on the Israeli team at the Tokyo Olympics, here are a few Jewish sports movies to get you in the mood for the Games.

1. Chariots of Fire – This unexpected 1981 Best Picture Oscar winner is perhaps the only drama that can be called a Jewish Olympics movie. It tells the fact-based story of two British runners in the 1924 Olympic Games, Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), a Jew who fights antisemitism at Cambridge, and Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), a Christian missionary. Key scene: Vile antisemitic administrators at Cambridge (John Gielgud, who was always good at being a bad guy, and director Lindsay Anderson) scold Abrahams for hiring a professional coach, telling him he shouldn’t “play the tradesman.” Jewish content bonus: Lord David Puttnam, the film’s producer, is Jewish.

2. Watermarks – This enormously enjoyable documentary by Yaron Zilberman (Incitement, Valley of Tears) tells the story of the female swim team of HaKoah Vienna Sports Club in the 1930s. These extremely charming female Jewish athletes reminisce about their athletic triumphs and return to the country they were forced to flee to swim one more time.

3. On the Map – Dani Menkin’s documentary about the against-all-odds victory when Maccabi Tel Aviv won against the Russian basketball team at the 1977 European Championships, a rousing story.

4. Victor Young Perez – This 2013 movie tells the true story of a Tunisian Jewish boxer who was captured by the Nazis in France and who was forced to box at Auschwitz to amuse his captors.

5. Kicking Out Shoshana – This sports comedy was a breakout role for Gal Gadot, who plays a gangster’s girlfriend who flirts with a soccer player (Oshri Cohen). As a punishment, the mobster forces the player to pretend to be gay and come out of the closet.

6. Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story – Peter Miller’s 2010 documentary celebrates Jewish major leaguers and the almost religious significance baseball holds in the lives of many American Jews.

7. School Ties – Brendan Fraser stars in this 1992 drama as a star quarterback who gets a scholarship to a prestigious but antisemitic prep school and must conceal the fact that he is a Jew.

8. Beitar Provence – A beleaguered small-town soccer team hosts a match against Maccabi Tel Aviv in this 2002 Israeli comedy. Ze’ev Revach, the veteran star of classic Israeli comedies such as Charlie Ve’hetzi, plays the coach, and Itay Turgeman is a young player whose dream is to make it to Maccabi.

9. The First Basket – David Vyorst’s 2007 documentary looks at the special place basketball holds in Jewish culture.

10. Berlin ’36 – A 2009 drama about Gretel Bergmann, a German-Jewish track-and-field athlete who was prevented by the Nazis from taking part in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

11. Slap Shot – Paul Newman, whose father was Jewish, was at the height of this game in this 1977 comedy, playing a hockey player/coach on a losing team.

12. Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel – This 2018 documentary by Daniel A. Miller looks at the unexpectedly strong showing of Israel’s national baseball team – with a large contingent of American Jewish players — in the 2017 World Baseball Classic.

13. Jerusalem Boxing Club – Helen Yanovsky’s 2015 documentary tells the story of a unique boxing club – it practices in a bomb shelter – that becomes a refuge for Jews and Palestinians, veteran Israelis and immigrants from the former Soviet Union and many others.

14. Big Eyes – In this 1974 movie, directed by and starring Uri Zohar – one of his last films before he became ultra-Orthodox– he plays Beni Furman, a womanizing basketball coach whose life is falling apart. Arik Einstein, who sang the title song that is better known today than the movie itself, portrays a basketball player whom Beni accuses of trying to romance one of his mistresses.

15. The Keeper – This 2018 film tells the fact-based story of a German POW in World War II who became a soccer star in England after the war. While the main characters are not Jewish, the plot details initial opposition to (Menemsha Films)

this player on the part of the British Jewish community.

16. Glickman – James L. Freedman’s documentary is about the career of legendary sports radio announcer Marty Glickman, who broadcast for the New York Knicks, the New York Giants and the New York Jets. He is credited for coming up with the basketball term, “Swish!,” quite a legacy.

17. Body and Soul – John Garfield – whose birth name was Jacob Julius Garfinkle – was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of a boxer in this classic 1947 film.

18. One Day in September – Sadly, the history of movies about Jews in sports must include some about the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, where 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were killed by Palestinian terrorists. The best-known film about this is Kevin Macdonald’s Oscar-winning 1999 documentary, One Day in September. The anthology film about the 1972 games, Visions of Eight, also references the massacre, in the segment by John Schlesinger.

19. Hank Greenberg – Aviva Kempner’s 1998 documentary, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, tells the life story of the legendary slugger and home run-champ known as the Hebrew Hammer, who famously refused to play in the 1934 World Series game that fell on Yom Kippur.

20. Aulcie – Dani Menkin directed this recent documentary about Aulcie Perry, an African-American basketball player who became a legend in Israeli sports when he led Maccabi Tel Aviv to its European Championship win, and eventually embraced Judaism.

21. Playoff – Eran Riklis’s 2011 movie

dramatized the story of how legendary Maccabi Tel Aviv coach Ralph Klein (Danny Huston) coached the German national basketball team.

22. Forever Pure – Maya Zinshtein’s look at the politics behind a campaign by some of Beitar Jerusalem’s most racist fans to reject two Muslim Chechen players.

23. Brian’s Song – Brian Piccolo, the hero of this fact-based 1971 tearjerker about a football player who died tragically young, was not Jewish, he was portrayed by James Caan, who is. Caan also starred in Rollerball, a sci-fi movie about a violent roller derby in which the players are killed.

24. Cup Final – Although the realism quotient is not terribly high in Eran Riklis’s 1991 drama about an Israeli soldier (Moshe Ivgy), who is taken hostage and bonds with his PLO captor (Mohammad Bakri) over their love for soccer, sports play a significant part in the story.

25. Turn Left at the End of the World – True, sports are not at the center of Avi Nesher’s coming-ofage drama about two teen girls, one Moroccan and one Indian, in the Negev in the 1960s, but there is a significant subplot about the Indian girl’s father starting a cricket team. He recruits the local Moroccan guys to fill out the roster and, in a comic highpoint, they play a visiting British team.

26. His People – This 1925 Yiddish classic, directed by Edward Sloman, follows the story of a New York Jewish family, where one son becomes a prizefighter, which causes his pious father to disown him, a similar story to