The Franchise: Jews, Sports, and America

The Franchise: Jews, Sports, and America

The Franchise is a new eight-part series exploring how contemporary American Jewish culture imprinted itself onto sports and how sports imprinted itself onto Jewish traditions. Hosted by Meredith Shiner and produced by the team behind Unorthodox, the No. 1 Jewish podcast, The Franchise highlights the moments and the people—athletes, fans, stat geeks, journalists, and team owners—who are writing this uniquely, American Jewish story. The series begins in 1965 with Sandy Koufax, and traces the arc of American Jews and sports since then: from probing the so-called Koufax curse that befalls Jewish athletes who play on Yom Kippur to reevaluating the "Jewish Jordan" phenomenon and wondering why Jews love teams that always seem to lose, and much more. The Franchise premieres on Wednesday, Oct. 12.

Episodes

Introducing: Covering Their Tracks

January 30, 2024 • 6 mins
Covering Their Tracks is the extraordinary story of a young man’s escape from a moving train bound for the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust, and his fight to hold the French national rail company, the SNCF, accountable for their actions as they later bid for lucrative high-speed rail contracts in the United States. For more information visit http://tabletmag.com/coveringtheirtracks or search for Covering Their Tra...
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Please Vote for The Franchise!

October 3, 2023 • 47 secs
The Franchise has been nominated for the best sports documentary series in Signal Awards’s Listener's Choice competition! And we need your vote. Voting closes THIS THURSDAY October 5: Now is the time to show your love for this series, Jews in sports ... even the Mets (tell us we’ll lose in catastrophic fashion without telling us we’ll lose in catastrophic fashion). Vote NOW by clicking here or by going to https://tabletm.ag/votethe...
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Ep. 8: The Postgame Show

December 14, 2022 • 12 mins
Over the course of this series, host Meredith Shiner has explored how Jewish culture, American culture, and sports culture intersect. She's talked to journalists, athletes, amateur and professional sports nerds, and fans who have spent as much time obsessing over these topics as she has. And in this final episode, she looks back on what she’s learned—and what surprised her—through the process of reporting and writing this series.  ...
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Ep. 7: Sports, Identity, and Justice

December 7, 2022 • 54 mins
On this series, we’ve explored sports as a tool for American Jews to assimilate into their broader  communities, to establish and pass down family traditions, and even how sports can be a love language for us. But what if sports is quite literally a way we can tell a rich story of Jewish identity?  This episode focuses on how sports have acted as a cipher to crack the code of what it means to be Jewish in America. We talk to Dan Gr...
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Ep. 6: The Sports Mitzvah

November 30, 2022 • 47 mins
Jews don’t have to go pro in sports to love them, and nothing demonstrates that amateur love more than dedicating a whole lifecycle event to it. On this episode, we’re diving into the sports-themed bar mitzvah—and, of course, the coveted shoutout from a professional athlete—and what the confluence of sports and this rite of passage tells us about Jewish identity in America.  In this episode, we’ll hear about the time Sandy Koufax s...
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Ep. 5: Shondas and Stereotypes: Jewish Sports Team Owners

November 16, 2022 • 48 mins
This series has so far focused on the bright spots, the moments that Jewish athletes and storylines have made us proud. But not all stories about Jews in sports are the ones we want splashed in the headlines. On this episode, we confront an uncomfortable subject: Jewish team owners behaving badly. We explore the concept of shondas, and how we feel as Jews when high profile Members of the Tribe embarrass us or bring us shame. . Epis...
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The Halftime Show

November 9, 2022 • 20 mins
We’re halfway through our series, so on this bonus mini episode we’re heading to the locker room for halftime. First, a look at the surprisingly Jewish story behind the iconic sound of the 1990s New York Knicks with Pam Harris, the former Madison Square Garden marketing executive who spearheaded the creation of the Knicks City Dancers and the incredibly catchy “Go NY Go” theme song. Then, an analysis of Kyrie Irving’s recent antise...
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Ep. 4: Jewish Sports Nerds and their Path to the Promised Land

November 2, 2022 • 37 mins
While many Jewish kids dream of growing up to become iconic Jewish athletes like Dolph Schayes or Sandy Koufax, the numbers aren’t exactly on our side. This episode is about all the ways Jews have found careers in the game without playing the game—how they professionalized their passion and forged their own path to the Promised Land, in large part by embracing the mathematical and statistical revolution of the early 2000s. The so-c...
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Ep 3: 40 Years in the Desert: Jews and the New York Mets

October 26, 2022 • 43 mins
If baseball is the most Jewish of sports, then there is nothing more Jewish than the New York Mets. There are scores of Jewish Mets fans, and Citi Field even has kosher concession stands. But it goes deeper than that: the Mets are the most metaphysically Jewish team. Loving the Mets means wandering the desert, suffering, season after season—and never giving up on this team, no matter how much goes wrong. And a lot seems to go wrong...
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Ep. 2: Reevaluating ‘Jewish Jordan’ Tamir Goodman

October 19, 2022 • 46 mins
In the 1990s, basketball dominated popular culture. There were the six-time NBA champion Chicago Bulls, the 1992 Olympic Dream Team, and the movie Space Jam—and the face of all of it was Michael Jordan. Everyone wanted to be like Mike, even the Jews. Enter Tamir Goodman, a 16-year-old Orthodox Jew playing at Talmudical Academy in Pikesville, MD. His skills on the court quickly earned him attention from local and then national medi...
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Ep. 1: Genesis: Sandy Koufax as Model Minority

October 12, 2022 • 31 mins
Sandy Koufax is a Jewish hero less for his Hall of Fame talent on the mound than for the one day he stayed off it: Yom Kippur, 1965. His decision to sit out Game 1 of the World Series, in his prime and with America’s eyes on him, is a Genesis moment. And so our series begins with Sandy: Who he was, how he became an avatar for Jewish Americans, and what his legacy means today. A half-century later, on Yom Kippur 2019, three Jewish ...
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Introducing - The Franchise: Jews, Sports and America

October 4, 2022 • 3 mins
The Franchise is a new, eight-part series exploring how contemporary American Jewish culture imprinted itself onto sports and how sports imprinted itself onto Jewish traditions. Hosted by Meredith Shiner and produced by the team behind Unorthodox, the No. 1 Jewish podcast, The Franchise highlights the moments and the people—athletes, fans, stat geeks, journalists, and team owners—who are writing this uniquely, American Jewish story...
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