"Jews and Sports?"
If this sign is the first thing that visitors notice at the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, then the answer printed right below it would be the second.
"You betcha!"
While the stereotype is that Jews and athletics generally do not mix, one must only look at the inductees of the hall of fame to realize the great impact that Jewish athletes, coaches and other sports figures have had.
And these are just Philadelphia's Jewish sports figures.
Penn fencing coach and former Olympian Dave Micahnik was inducted into the charter class in 1997 and is a founding member of the hall of fame.
Over the years, he has heard all about the supposed lack of what he calls, "Jews with muscles" and couldn't disagree more.
"I think that's a very outdated stereotype."
On the walls of the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, visitors can find one of the NBA's 50 greatest players in former 76ers coach Dolph Schayes.
They will see the founder of the Philadelphia Flyers and the Spectrum, Ed Snider.
And they will see Harry Litwack, the coach of Temple University basketball from 1952-1973. Litwack is credited with the invention of the zone defense.
But Penn students will find special meaning in some of the other names.
Other than Micahnik, they will see Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky, who played point guard for Penn's 1970-71 basketball team that went 28-1. Bilsky was also a Naismith Award runner-up in 1971.
Robert Levy, a former Penn tennis player and namesake of the University's indoor tennis facility, is also an Eclipse Award-winning thoroughbred racehorse owner.
But the hall of fame is about much more than its inductees.
"The Jewish Olympics"
On the left side of the hall of fame's main room, there is a large panel celebrating the history of the Maccabiah Games, an international competition for Jewish athletes. The games, modeled after the Olympics, take place every four years in Israel.
In an age when Jewish people are spread all over the world, the Maccabiah Games bring together American Jews and Israeli Jews, observant Jews and secular Jews, and gives the athletes an unparalleled opportunity.
Micahnik, who participated in four Maccabiah Games and coached in them twice, recalls that his teammates went for different reasons, including camaraderie or simply the ability to participate in an international competition.
Micahnik and many others had a different reason for attending, though.
"What it meant to me was my first opportunity to go to Israel and I was agog," said Micahnik, who attended his first Maccabiah Games in 1965. "It gives young Jewish athletes a different picture of Israel than they might otherwise have."
Although he repeated his gold in the epee competition in 1969, a whole lot changed in the Holy Land in the four intervening years.
Jerusalem was still divided in 1965, when Micahnik took his first journey to the capital city.
The first time, "We went up behind some sandbags and looked over and could see the Temple Mount," Micahnik said.
Four years later, and two years after Israel had endured the Six Day War, the athletes returned to a nation much different from the one they left in 1965.
"Second time: went to the wall," Micahnik said, fighting back tears. "It's ours. It was a big deal."
The athletic achievements of what has become the world's third largest sporting event (after the Olympics and Commonwealth Games) are well-documented at the hall of fame.
In 1965, seven years before he won a record seven gold medals at the Olympics, American swimmer Mark Spitz won three Maccabiah golds at the age of 15.
And the 16th Maccabiah Games in 2001 drew over 3,000 athletes from 41 countries.
They had over 3,000 different reasons for going.
Tragedy and victory
Three major sports commissioners, close to a dozen Major League Baseball players and many other athletes and coaches represent the Jewish community in ways once thought impossible.
"I think today's generation takes for granted the privilege and the honor," Micahnik said. "The generation before me had to battle through some serious barriers."
The idea of this struggle is one that the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame tries to portray, and unfortunately must exhibit through a memorial to the "Munich Eleven."
On September 5, 1972, at the Olympics in Munich, Germany, 11 members of the Israeli Olympic delegation were killed in a political and religious statement.
In helping to found the hall of fame, Micahnik insisted that no museum about Jewish sports could be complete without a memorial to this tragedy.
While certainly not on the level of the massacre in Munich, troublesome conditions facing the first generations of Jews in America may have been the reason that some of the inductees' names and pictures are on the wall to begin with.
"The children of the immigrants often found sport to be their avenue, their way up," Micahnik said.
But since anti-semitism was a common obstacle facing these generations, the pioneers of Jewish athletics at the hall of fame had to possess two qualities.
They needed the ability to persevere through the hatred directed at them as Jews.
But more importantly, they had to be too talented to be denied opportunities.
A worthwhile visit
The Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame is online at www.pjshf.com. The Web site contains the plaques of the inductees, the stories of the "Munich Eleven" and a virtual tour of the hall of fame's location at the Gershman Y on the corner of Broad and Pine streets.
The Web site makes visiting the museum unnecessary for those who only wish to familiarize themselves with the region's Jewish sports tradition. But the "Locker Room," which contains scorebooks, uniforms and trophies of the inductees, can only be viewed with a trip to the hall of fame.
Even for those who feel no personal connection to the region's Jewish sports history, a visit to the Gershman Y or the Web site can still be beneficial, according to Bilsky.
Halls of fame "are neat places for anyone who loves sport and relishes its history," Bilsky said.
Micahnik believes that the museum would be especially moving for Jewish students and sports fans.
"It's worthwhile for people to take a look, to enjoy it, to kvell," he said.
