Here’s a little quiz. Why is Ray Arcel something of a Jewish hero? And what about Max Zaslofsky?
Give up? Check out the interesting, though indifferently arranged, home page of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame at www.JewishSports.net/subindex.html
Arcel, for the uninitiated, was a boxing trainer who handled about 20 world champions between 1923 and 1982, including bantamweight Abe Goldstein in 1924. And Zaslofsky was a star in the National Basketball Association from 1946 to 1956.
The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and its Web site are projects of Israel’s Wingate Institute for Physical Education and Sports and Maccabi USA/Sports for Israel. The site covers Jews around the world in a wide range of sports, from cricket to water polo.
Elections to the hall of fame are made annually. There are also awards for non-athletes who have contributed to sports and to those who have helped the cause of athletics in Israel.
The site’s home page is basically just a long list of athletes, along with their countries and sports. Click on names to get a brief description of their exploits.
There’s plenty of information here, although the site is not attractively organized for casual browsing. Still, Jewish sports fans and trivia buffs will find much to entertain and educate them. It’s definitely worth at least one visit.
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The richness of the Jewish world has always been hard for non-scholars to grasp due to barriers of geography, language and culture. But the World Wide Web, with sites representing every imaginable expression of the Jewish soul, allows us to explore Jewish diversity as never before.
Case in point: the Modzitz home page at www.modzitz.org
The site spotlights an intriguing Chassidic group known for its musical contributions over almost two centuries. The Modzitz dynasty, now based in Israel, began with Reb Yechezkel of Kuzmir, a Polish rabbi in the early 1800s.
From the beginning, the group’s leaders were acclaimed for their musical abilities. The Modzitz home page says that “the place shook” when Reb Shmuel Eliahu, Yechezkel’s son, led the Chassidim in song. But he didn’t continue singing.
“Precisely because he understood the value of niggun, he refrained from singing,” the site states. “Even so, he composed many niggunim, especially for Shabbos and Yom Tov, that were known throughout Poland and attracted many people.”
Niggunim are melodies that are wordless or repeat just a few words.
Rabbi Israel Taub brought the dynasty to the town of Modzitz in 1891. He continued the musical tradition, penning more than 200 religious melodies, many of which are still sung by Chassidim today.
His most famous: the Ezkera Hagadol, which was composed during the amputation of his leg.
The site offers biographies of the four Modzitz rebbes, right down to the current leader, Reb Israel Dan, who was born in Warsaw but fled to Israel before the outbreak of World War ll.
He, too, is a noted composer. But enough talk: The Modzitz Chassidim are famous for their focus on music, and it’s fitting that music is the real centerpiece of this interesting site. Click on the “music” tab at the top of the page for a menu of about 20 Modzitzer songs. The site offers two options for each.
Select the “Real” icon to listen to the selection using the RealPlayer software that’s probably on your computer already. If it isn’t, there’s a link to a site where you can download it at no cost.
Or click on the floppy disk icon to download and save the song on your hard disk so you can play it at your leisure. And this isn’t tinny, artificial-sounding computer music. The Modzitz selections are recorded from old LPs (remember them?), scratches and all.
There’s also an extensive collection of Torah studies and organization news — weddings of dynastic families, important yahrzeits and the like. But music is what the Modzitzers are all about, and the Web masters here effectively use cyber-technology to introduce their melodies to an audience far vaster than the founders of the dynasty could have imagined.
James D. Besser is a Washington-based correspondent who has been writing about Jewish Web sites since the early 1990s. His columns alternate with those of Mark Mietkiewicz. Besser can be reached at [email protected]