The New Jew: How Sports Shaped Jewish Identity & the Zionist Movement

Sport played a surprising role in shaping modern Jewish identity and the Zionist movement. Drawing on new research about Jewish life in Mandatory Palestine, this talk explores how athletic clubs, competitions, and public debates about thebody helped define ideas of nationalism, community, and the “New Jew.” By looking at everyday sporting culture – on playing fields, in newslpapers, and in urban life – we gain a fresh perspective on how modern Jewish and Israeli identities developed.

Dr. Ofer Idels is the Belzberg Fellow in Israeli Studies at the UCalgary. He is the author of Zionism: Emotions, Language, and Experience (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Embodying the Revolution: The Hebrew Experience and the Globalization of Modern Sports in Interwar Palestine (Rutgers University Press, 2025).

Dr. Rachel Gordan, the moderator for this event, is the Shorstein Professor of American Jewish Culture and Society at the University of Florida. She received her PhD from Harvard University, in North American Religions; her BA from Yale in American Studies, and her MAR from Yale Divinity school. After receiving her PhD, she held postdoctoral fellowships at Northwestern University and at the University of Toronto, before teaching at Boston University and Brandeis in 2016-2017. As a scholar of American religion, she researches Judaism and Jewish culture from the early 20th century to the present, with a particular focus on the immediate Post-WWII era, middlebrow culture, and American Jewish literary history.

Dr. Roy Holler, the commentator for this event, is Assistant Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Florida. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature and Jewish Studies from Indiana University, Bloomington, and his BA in English from the City University of New York. His current book project, Passing and the Politics of Identity in Israeli and African American Literatures, explores the phenomenon of passing in a comparative context. Roy’s work on Israeli and African American literatures awarded him with the 2020 Baron New Voices in Jewish Studies Prize by Columbia University and Fordham University.

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Host or Publisher The UF Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies