Gurock to discuss Judaism and sports
LEWISBURG, Pa. — Jeffrey Gurock, professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University, will give the talk, "Judaism’s Encounter with American Sports," Thursday, Sept. 14, at 7 p.m. in the Forum of the Elaine Langone Center at Bucknell University.
The talk, which is open to the public without charge, is the opening event in the Jewish Studies Series at Bucknell.
Assistant men’s basketball coach for Yeshiva for 25 years, Gurock has run the New York marathon 12 times. He is the author or editor of 13 books.
His most recent, Judaism’s Encounter with American Sports, examines the controversial role that sports has played in shaping American Jewish identity and how the secular values of sports threatened religious identification and observance.
Gurock asks, "What do Jews do when a society — in this case, a team — ‘chooses them in,’ but demands commitments that clash with ancestral ties and practices?"
Gurock’s other books include A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community: Mordecai M. Kaplan, and Orthodoxy and American Judaism, which received the Saul Viener Prize from the American Jewish Historical Society.
Posted Sept. 7, 2006
