The Franchise

Judaism is a religion but it’s also a culture, and how we engage with sports reveals how American Jews have assimilated, how we have maintained our otherness, how we obsess, how we pass on traditions (often by weaving suffering into our narrative), how take communal pride in ourselves and our successes and how we feel shamed by stereotypes and moral failure. Somewhere in our contemporary history, American Jewish culture imprinted itself onto sports and sports imprinted itself onto Jews. The Franchise is a show about how and when and why that came to be, and about the people—athletes, fans, stat geeks, reporters and team owners—who made it so.