Published: 6 September 2016
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Ever so strangely, the answer is ping-pong, aka table-tennis. This one-time after-dinner entertainment and frivolity was turned into a serious sport by an extraordinary Jew named The Honourable Ivor Goldsmid Samuel Montagu. A grandson of banker Montagu Samuel, who then swapped over the names to avoid antisemitism (or so he thought), his daddy was the second Baron Swaythling, Louis Montagu. Ivor had older brothers, one of whom only wanted to raise cows; the other, Captain Ewen Montagu, wrote the famous book (and later, the movie) The Man Who Never Was, and spied for England.
Ivor, educated at Winchester and King's College, Cambridge, was a film buff who helped Alfred Hitchcock on his way. He was also a ping-pong fanatic who played for England and then established both the rules and the International Table-Tennis Federation in 1926. He joined the Fabian Society, became a dedicated socialist and then joined the Communist Party, spying for Russia, using table-tennis as a means of travelling openly to Communist countries. It was he who helped broker the US–Red China thaw in 1971 in what came to be known as Ping-Pong Diplomacy (2014), the title of a fine book by Nicholas Griffin. His gracious mother, Lady Gladys (Goldsmid), gave her titled name to the Swaythling Cup, to this day the name of the men's world team championship competition.
As with boxing, there was a 24-carat golden era for Jewish table tennis players. Gydzo Braun changed his name to Viktor Barna in the face of Hungarian antisemitism, and under that name won 13 world titles between 1930 and 1939. He became a parachutist for Britain during the war. Austrian–British Richard Bergman won four world singles between 1937 and 1950, and many doubles events with Barna. Hungarian-American Laszlo Bellak was yet another forced to flee, and he eventually rose to sergeant in the US Army. In his time, Laszlo won seven singles and a total of 21 world titles between 1928 and 1938. Dick Miles was United States single titleholder ten times between 1945 and 1962, regarded as the best player in American history.
Viktor Barna displaying his famous flying defence in Madras
Jewish women, especially Central and Eastern European women - usually portrayed in film and literature (and in life) as quiescent, quiet wives, fiancées or hopefuls - were more than up to the mark. American Ruth Aarons won two world titles (1936–1937), famed for her use of the 'shake-hands grip' (as opposed to the earlier 'pen-holder' grip). Hungary's Anna Sipos won 21 medals all told, 11 of them gold in world championships in the 1920s and '30s. Angelica Rozeanu won 17 world titles, a streak interrupted by World War II and Romanian antisemitic campaigns against Jewish participation in anything. Czech Gertrude 'Traute' Kleová won three world doubles titles - and survived the Theresienstadt camp and then Auschwitz. The suitably dubbed 'Miss Ping' was Leah Neuberger, winner of 29 US titles and 41 Canadian medals after the Second World War.
Angelica Adelstein-Rozeanu
The domination pattern in table tennis has changed, as it has in boxing: Central European and Western 'ownership' gave way to the Chinese and Japanese. Apart from a few Swedes, the men's game is all-Asian these days, and no non-Asian has won the women's title since Angelica Rozeanu's last victory in 1955. These are cultural shifts, propelled by economics and other social dynamics and have nothing to do with 'race'.
Turning from table tennis to tennis, we see there are times when sports Halls of Fame can be vexing and irritating: they often include those who should never be there and omit those who are central. Why, for example, would the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame not include two American world tennis champions, Helen Jacobs in the 1930s and Elias Victor Seixas (pronounced Sayshus) in the 1950s? Perhaps because Helen was an overt lesbian and Vic had only one Jewish parent, a Brazilian of Portuguese Sephardic origin? Who knows?
Helen, 'Our Helen' as the American press called her, won five grand slam titles and was world number one in 1936. Openly gay, she shocked Wimbledon by wearing men's tailored shorts in 1933. She served in US naval intelligence during the war. Vic Seixas emerged in the late 1940s and was still on the scene in 1960. He won the Wimbledon singles in 1953 and the US title in 1954. (On Vic's visit to South Africa I was allowed to be a ball boy on a private court where he was invited to let a budding Jewish youngster show off his paces. The teenager was nipped in the bud, so to speak.) Seixas won eight mixed doubles and nine men's doubles grand slam championships.
Helen Jacobs
In the 1930s, Ladislav Hecht won eighteen of his 37 Davis Cup matches for Slovakia. Although Jewish, he was invited to play for Germany, but declined.
A 1950s tennis champion was Frenchman Pierre Darmon, winner of nine national singles titles. In the top ten for six years, he achieved a world ranking of eight. Others in the top ranks were American Herb Flam, rated number four amateur in 1957; Dutchman Tom Okker, who got to world number three in 1968 and number one in doubles that year. The small American Harold Solomon, a fine clay court player, made it to world number five in 1980. Brad Gilbert, a much sought-after commentator and coach (of, among others, Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, Andy Murray and Kei Nishikori), got to world number four in 1990. He won 40 titles and had a 10-0 record in Davis Cup matches.
The one truly enigmatic player, for me at least, was American Richard (Dick) Savitt, the quite unexpected Wimbledon and Australian singles winner in 1951. Only Don Budge, Jimmy Connors and Pete Sampras have won both those competitions in the same year. In 1951, the US Davis Cup coach dropped him from the team, replacing him with a slowly-declining Ted Schroeder, thereby losing that year's Cup to Australia. No one has explained 'the prejudice' of the coach, but one can guess: Seixas was in the American team, and one may have been enough for the coach? Savitt suddenly quit tennis the following year. He reappeared in Israel in 1961, winning the Maccabi Games singles and doubles titles.
Dick Savitt
Jewish women tennis players are scarcer than their table-tennis counterparts. Hungary's Suzy Kormoczy won the French singles in 1958, aged 33, the oldest ever to win that trophy. She was runner-up a year later. Several tennis writers regard her as the best of all Jewish women but they seem, for reasons I know not, to ignore 'Our Helen'. Britain's Angela Buxton, and American Julia Heldman had high rankings, as did South Africa's Ilana Kloss and Israel's Sashar Pe'er, who won a number of international events.
A great many Jews love to play squash, and there are doubtless many club champions. But national and international champions are thin on the ground: they are simply not there, apart from Cecil Kaplan, winner of the South African singles title in 1957, and the American academic and hedge-fund manager of renown, Victor Niedhoffer. Victor won five US National titles in hardball squash, which uses a faster-moving ball and a smaller court than softball squash. He was the only man to defeat one of the all-time greats, Sharif Khan. Khan won 12 US Nationals in 13 years, but lost to Victor in 1975. Victor won five US National singles and three National doubles titles. Given the upward mobility of many urban Jews in the West, and their penchant for playing this game, it is surprising that there aren't more national champions.
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