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n Ukraine
The Global Gamei Ук р а ї н а
www.theglobalgame.com
The Global Game
founded  is a sponsored
John Turnbull, editor and publisher project of
Fractured Atlas,
a non-profit
Parity and Pathos in Ukraine’s Football Forests arts service
Jewish Soccer Clubs of Galicia, – organization.
Contributions in behalf of The
Global Game may be made
Research and contribution payable to Fractured Atlas
Jewish sport societies, football (soccer) clubs in particular, served as markers and are tax-deductible to the
of Jewish distinctiveness in Eastern Europe starting early in the twentieth extent permitted by law.

century. These clubs, associated in many cases with Zionist organizations

or workers’ societies, permitted both engagement with and competition bibliography
against rival ideological and national groups. In western Ukraine—a Agnon, Shmuel Yosef.
[] . A guest for the
contested border region ruled at times by the Habsburg Empire, Poland,
night. Trans. Misha Louvish.
independence-seeking Ukrainians, Nazi Germany, and the former Soviet New York: Schocken.
Union—Jewish communities in city and shtetl, inspired by Zionist calls for Bartov, Omer. . White
a new “muscle Jewry” (Sutcliffe , ), supported local soccer teams as spaces and black holes: Eastern
part of a cultural flowering in the s. Galicia’s past and present. In
The Shoah in Ukraine: History,
The project surveys Jewish soccer clubs in Galicia and elsewhere in western testimony, memorialization,
Ukraine between , when the Ukrainian National Republic declared ed. Ray Brandon and Wendy
Lower, –. Bloomington:
Jewish autonomy, and the end of Nazi occupation in . Research Indiana Univ. Press.
encompasses the clubs’ creation and popularity, repression by anti-Jewish
Berkhoff, Karel C. .
influences, and finally the extermination of communal life through Harvest of despair: Life and
pogroms, forced relocation, and genocide. The popularity and rapid growth death in Ukraine under Nazi
of soccer in this region are indisputable. “In the interwar period,” writes rule. Cambridge: Belknap
Vladimir Levin, researcher in the ongoing Galicia and Bukovina Project Press of Harvard Univ. Press.
at Hebrew University, Jerusalem (www.jewishgalicia.net), “almost every Bunzl, John. . Hakoah
town in Galicia had a Jewish sport club, [the] majority with football teams” Vienna: Reflections on a
legend. In Emancipation
(personal correspondence). Within Jewish memorial books commemorating through muscles: Jews and
the vanished people and institutions of Eastern Europe, testimonials record
team names, players, match results, and the community-building that
soccer teams allowed—or the tensions they created with
secular authorities and ethnic rivals.
The proposed research explores such tension to ask how
Zionism—especially the corporeal approach advocated by
Max Nordau in  at the Second Zionist Congress—built
Jewish self-confidence on the soccer field but also how such
influences contributed to intra-community conflict. Jews with
more orthodox views often objected to sports (Bunzl ,
). For young Jews, however, football represented a modern
flavor, such as that embodied by Zionism and the Ashkenazi
migration to Palestine. Nobel Prize–winning writer Shmuel

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Yosef Agnon of Buchach, Ukraine, includes in A Guest for the Night a

disputation with a rabbi who believes that soccer desecrates the holy day. sports in Europe, ed. Michael
Brenner and Gideon
“Anyone who heard him,” wonders the rabbi’s interlocutor, “might have Reuveni, –. Lincoln:
imagined that people did nothing else in the Land of Israel but play football Univ. of Nebraska Press.
every day, especially on the Sabbath” (Agnon [] , ). The study Desbois, Patrick. .
raises questions of Jewish identity and political cohesion as these concepts The Holocaust by bullets: A
found expression in sport. The idea of competing, eleven against eleven, priest’s journey to uncover the
truth behind the murder of
within a fixed set of rules suggests engagement on equal terms with Gentile
. million Jews. New York:
culture. As John Bunzl states concerning the Jewish team Hakoah Vienna, Palgrave Macmillan.
Austrian football champions of , “Hakoah offered Jews an area—and Dougan, Andy. . Dynamo:
probably the only one—where they were able and allowed to celebrate Defending the honour of Kiev.
success as Jews in Austria and where they were even officially recognized. . . . London: Fourth Estate.
Only with Hakoah was it possible to win with the Star of David on the Edelman, Robert. .
chest” (, ). Serious fun: A history of
spectator sports in the ussr. New
Questions of self-definition through sport York: Oxford Univ. Press.
push beyond pietistic feeling for Shoah Grauer, Israel. . Ha-koah’
victims toward Holocaust ethnography— be-nadvorna [Ha-koach in
asking how Jewish citizens engaged the Nadvorna]. In Nadworna:
Sefer edut ve-zikaron, ed.
power dynamic of dominant culture Israel Carmi, . Tel Aviv:
(discussed in Sutcliffe , –). Hotsa’at ha-irgunim shel yotse
Within Nadworna, Ukraine, for example, Nadvurnah be-Yisra’el uve-
a shtetl in eastern Galicia north of the Artsot ha-berit. In Hebrew.
Carpathian mountain range, Bella Knoll Knoll, Bella. . Memories
from Nadworna, trans. Zyta
() in the town’s memorial book (sample
Eliahu neé Lewl. Nadworna,
page at left) remembers that soccer games Stanislav District , –.
played beside the Bystritsa River brought http://www.jewishgen
anti-Semitic feeling, and Jewish fear, into .org/yizkor/Nadvornaya/
nad.html#page.
public view. Knoll says that “Ukrainians
would beat us for it” if the Jewish team won Kuznetsov, Anatoly. []
. Babi Yar: A document in
Sunday matches. Yet during at least one weekend attack the Jewish players the form of a novel. Trans. David
“did not hesitate to return blow for blow.” Do such depictions—that Jews Floyd. London: Sphere Books.
were able to imagine themselves, in many cases, at parity with oppressors Levin, Vladimir. .
and to act accordingly—help redress later images of passive Jewry? Could Nadworna—Jews in the
support for such teams, even as an onlooker, constitute political activism? interwar period. Jewish history
in Galicia and Bukovina.
In comparative terms, research into grassroots football at the nexus Project of the Leonid Nevzlin
between Europe and the Soviet sphere of influence allows consideration Research Center for Russian
and East European Jewry,
of football’s place in the physical-culture movement and of sport’s own Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
capacity for influencing society (Marschik , ). Football in the former July . http://www
Soviet Union during the interwar period developed militaristic significance; .jewishgalicia.net/website/
modules/database/Item.aspx
the goalkeeper in literature and film became iconic as defender of the
?pid=&type=&id=.
motherland. According to legend, Dynamo Kyiv goalkeeper Nikolai
Livers, Keith A. . The
Trusevich, for example, shouted “Red Sport will never die” before his soccer match as Stalinist ritual:
execution in  at Siretz concentration camp (Dougan , ). Constructing the body social
Odessa-born writer Yury Olesha recalls being barred from football after in Lev Kassil’s “The Goalkeeper
a school match early in the s. Doctors said he had a “nervous heart” of the Republic.” The Russian
Review  (October): –.
and feared for his wan appearance (Salys , ). In the Soviet Union
and satellite nations, football teams were characterized as collectivist Mann, John, and Johnny
Cohen. n.d. Antisemitism in

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European football: A scar on

the beautiful game. London:
The Parliamentary Committee
against Antisemitism. http://
www.johnmannmp
.com/uploads/bbb-cd-
a-bf-afa.pdf.
Marschik, Matthias. .
Mitropa: Representations
of “Central Europe” in
football. International
Sample page Review for the Sociology of
from Kassil’s Sport  (no. ): –.
Вратарь
республики Nadworna, Stanislav
(Goalkeeper District: Memorial and
of the records (Nadvirna, Ukraine)
Republic). °’/°’. . http://
www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/
Nadvornaya/Nadvornaya.html.
Updated August . A partial
translation of Nadworna: Sefer
ideal, eleven men working in concert and persevering over Western foes. edut ve-zikaron. Ed. Israel
Literature and dramatic arts such as Klapzuba’s Eleven from Czechoslovakia Carmi. Tel Aviv: Hotsa’at ha-
irgunim shel yotse Nadvurnah
(), the Dmitri Shostakovich ballet The Golden Age (), and Lev be-Yisra’el uve-Artsot ha-berit,
Kassil’s Goalkeeper of the Republic () helped create through football a . http://yizkor.nypl.
rubric for imagining a new culture: “[T]he ritualized soccer match provides org/index.php?id=.
Stalinism with a microcosm of society’s struggles, encouraging the body Oswald, Rudolf. .
social to continuously renew and remake itself while doing mythical battle Nazi ideology and the end
of Central European soccer
with its enemies” (Livers , ). professionalism, –. In
Soccer’s place in nationalistic narrative is more complicated in Ukraine and Emancipation through muscles:
Jews and sports in Europe, ed.
in border areas where ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, Hungarians, Germans, Michael Brenner and Gideon
Austrians, Jews, and others mingled. In Central European nations annexed Reuveni, –. Lincoln:
by the Third Reich, where soccer had strong urban and nationalistic Univ. of Nebraska Press.
associations, anti-Semitic impulse led to the quashing of professionalism Peppard, Victor. .
in soccer (Oswald ). Jews were expelled from German soccer clubs The poetics of Yury
Olesha. Gainesville: Univ.
in . But in Galicia and other areas with long-standing Ukrainian Press of Florida.
ties, Jewish enthusiasm for football is more difficult to interpret in purely
Reid, Anna. [] .
tribal terms. “Galicia is a true borderland,” writes Omer Bartov, noting Borderland: A journey
the region’s prominence for having birthed intellectual, spiritual, and through the history of Ukraine.
political movements and influential thinkers (, –). Not enough Boulder co: Westview.
is known about football’s grassroots development at present to assess its Salys, Rimgaila, ed. .
place within this Galician cultural complex. Within Ukrainian-language Olesha’s “Envy”: A critical
companion. Northwestern/
Jewish literature, for example, intellectuals helped pioneer Jewish-Ukrainian
aatseel Critical Companions
rapprochement. Authors such as Leonid Pervomaisky endorsed Bolshevist to Russian Literature. Evanston
ideals and portrayed Ukraine as a true promised land (Shkandrij ). il: Northwestern Univ. Press.
Whether Jews saw football as a means of resistance or of incorporation— Shkandrij, Myroslav. .
while still maintaining their identity as Jews with club names such The Jewish voice in Ukrainian
as Maccabi and Hakoach (meaning “strength”)—requires additional literature. The Ukrainian
Quarterly  (spring): –.
investigation.
Solchanyk, Roman. .
For audiences beyond scholars in the humanities, examination of Jewish Ukrainian-Jewish relations:

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Ukrainian football culture adds context to lingering anti-Semitism within

European soccer. A uk parliamentary report states that, as recently as , An interview with Oleksandr
Burakovs’kyi. In Ukraine:
Nazi and anti-Semitic symbolism were in evidence weekly at Ukraine’s From Chernobyl’ to sovereignty.
soccer stadiums (Mann and Cohen n.d.). With Ukraine scheduled to A collection of interviews, ed.
co-host, with Poland, the  European Championships in football, Roman Solchanyk, –.
additional information regarding the Jewish roots of Ukrainian soccer will New York: St. Martin’s.
aid reinterpretations of the sport’s contributions to Ukrainian identity Sutcliffe, Adam. .
Symptoms at play:
that are sure to precede such a massive social project. Most important,
Soccer, Austria, and the
perhaps, study of Jewish soccer clubs of western Ukraine contributes to Jewish question. Journal
remembering the dynamic Jewish culture that has all but vanished in this of Sport and Social Issues
part of Europe. More than  percent of the Jewish population in Galicia  (August): –.
ceased to exist during World War II. Patrick Desbois, a Roman Catholic Die Todeself [The fatal eleven].
priest, and his ecumenical association Yahad-In Unum estimate that . . Directed by Claus
Bredenbrock. Dortmund,
million Jews died in Ukraine from mass shootings (Desbois ). (See Germany: colourfield.
also the Yahad-In Unum Web site, www.holocaustbybullets.com.) Many of http://www.colourfield.
those who died were soccer players. Editors of the Nadworna memory book de/todeself/todeself.html#.
in the section devoted to Holocaust victims list the town’s Jewish players
apart from the alphabetical roll, suggesting that, even on the village scale,
“[f ]ootball supersedes politics, culture and economy in the power of its
spectacle” (Marschik , ).
Methods and work plan
During residence and travel in Ukraine I plan to interview academics
in Kyiv and L’viv, researchers working in the field in Galicia and
elsewhere in western Ukraine (Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi),
local archivists, and descendants with recollection of or family
connections to interwar sport organizations. The work plan also
includes transcription of such interviews and their integration with
site visits—based on previous identification from the online archive
of  Yizkor memorial books available through New York Public
Library—to shtetls such as Nadworna. Video and mp audio files
will be uploaded to a dedicated section of The Global Game.
Maccabi Yurburg, 1924
Skills and materials
Archival materials exist in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, and
German. I will require interpretation in the field, principally to facilitate
communication in Ukrainian. As detailed in Bartov , Galician towns
possess their own museums and archival holdings, although biased toward
Ukrainian nationalist interpretations. Video and sound will be taken with a
handheld digital recorder; editing is with Adobe Premiere Elements.
Final product and dissemination
The intended outcome is a contextualized survey of Jewish soccer in
western Ukraine. The material, including interactive maps, photographs,
video, and sound recording, is well-suited to digital display at The Global
Game. Dissemination occurs freely via Internet. The site, established in
, has a wide audience among academia and media; in September ,
the Daily Telegraph (London) named The Global Game among the top
twenty-five sites on world soccer.

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