Source Edition of Jewish Sports History in Eastern Europe

The history of sport provides a fascinating insight into Jewish everyday life and experiences from the late 19th century to the present day. The Shoah - the almost complete murder of European Jews, the vast majority of whom lived in East Central Europe - marked a painful turning point. Nevertheless, there are continuities even beyond this caesura. This half century of Jewish sports history with its pre- and post-history is made accessible to a wider public of students and researchers in a digital source edition. The sources are presented in five chronologically arranged sections, which appear in a reproduction of the original, with transcriptions and translations from Yiddish, Polish and Russian as well as with a commentary. The sources presented here focus on the transnationality and multilingualism of Jewish life, everyday practices as well as the major questions of Jewish belonging in the modern age, the experience of racism and violence and the view of changing body and gender images, thus making an important contribution to Jewish history in the modern age. They also provide an indispensable perspective for understanding the complexity of the history of Central and Central Eastern Europe before the Shoah.

The edition project will be continuously published on the “Copernico” portal until 2024 under the thematic focus “Jewish life in Eastern Europe in the past and present”.