The Matzo Bowl
In one of the opening scenes of the spoof film “Airplane,†a flight attendant played by Julie Hagerty doles out magazines to the plane’s passengers. When an elderly woman requests “something light†to read, Hagerty searches through the stack and fishes out a single sheet of paper. “How about this leaflet, ‘Famous Jewish Sports Legends’?†she coyly asks.
Ephraim Moxson, co-publisher of the year-old Jewish Sports Review, is out to change that perception. By day, Moxson works in downtown L.A. as a mental-health clinic administrator for the California Department of Corrections. At night and on weekends, he teams with New York-based teacher-journalist Shel Wallman to identify and write about Jewish athletes--male and female--in the high school, collegiate and professional ranks.
The numbers aren’t overwhelming, but Moxson points out that Lenny Krayzelburg, a senior at USC who owns the American record in the 200-meter backstroke and won two titles at the 1998 world swimming championships, reigns as perhaps the greatest Jewish athlete of the 1990s. Or Zhanna Pintussevich, the Ukrainian sprinter who showed some serious chutzpah in taking the women’s 200-meter dash at last year’s world track and field championships. And who besides the Dodgers’ PR staff could identify relief pitcher Scott Radinsky as half-Jewish, and thus a member of the “Blue Jews†with Sandy Koufax, Larry Sherry, Cal Abrams and Goody Rosen?
“It blows people away when they see how many Jewish athletes there are,†says Moxson, the son of Russian immigrants. He attended both Fairfax and Hamilton high schools when the then predominantly Jewish schools’ heated rivalry came to a head in the annual football game. As a teen, Moxson followed Koufax’s career closely. “I sat outside listening to Koufax pitch his first no-hitter,†the 56-year-old sports fanatic recalls. “My parents didn’t throw out my baseball cards, thank God.â€
Previously, Moxson had struck up a friendship with Wallman, who wrote a weekly sports column for the Indianapolis-based Jewish Post and Opinion newspaper. When Wallman left the paper, he and Moxson joined forces on the Jewish Sports Review. The slim, 24-page bimonthly publication is a mishmash of statistical trivia, biographical notes and odd facts. In their quest to unearth any and all Jewish athletes, Moxson and Wallman research every sport, from wrestling to women’s lacrosse to fencing. Coverage of the Maccabiah Games, the Olympic-style sports festival held every four years in Israel, gives the magazine an international edge.
“The paper is about what’s happening today in Jewish sports,†Moxson says. “If you want history, you can go somewhere else.â€
