A Jewish American Heritage Month celebration at City Hall in Los Angeles honoring Jewish athletes on May 15 shows that “we are all the same,” Bob Blumenfield, a Democratic member of the City Council, told JNS.
That general line speaks to commonalities between people of different faiths—an equalizer—in the larger world of sports in the past half-century or so.
Blumenfield and Katy Yaroslavsky, both Jewish members of the council, honored Jewish athletes, including Olympic gymnast Mitch Gaylord (1984 gold medalist) and Pan American fencer Carl Borack (1967 gold medalist), as well as members of the Maccabee Los Angeles Soccer Club championship team.
Before the joint council meeting/honorary event, a group of organizers, leaders and athletes unveiled an exhibit on Jewish athletes, which included gymnast Aly Raisman, a six-time Olympic gold medalist; Israeli basketball star Deni Avdija of the Portland Trail Blazers; and the Dodgers Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax.
“We’re highlighting various Jewish sports figures throughout many different years—very famous folks like Koufax, but also folks who had an impact in other sports as well, whether that’s football, soccer, running, Olympics, Paralympics,” Blumenfield told JNS.
“The Jewish community has been part of sports in this country for many years, and many Jews are connected to that in lots of different ways,” he said.
Blumenfield also honored the Los Angeles Rams football team, which he said has “been active in terms of helping fight antisemitism.” He said it was the first team in the National Football League to have a shofar-blowing live during a game.
The council has celebrated Jewish American Heritage Month annually for the last 10 years, according to Blumenfield.
“Every year, we find a different way to do it,” he told JNS.
‘We are not a monolith’
This year, sports became center-stage since Los Angeles is scheduled to host the World Cup this summer, the Super Bowl in February 2027 and the 2028 Summer Olympics, Blumenfield told JNS.
The member of the City Council hopes that the celebration is “very much a message that counters antisemitism, because you don’t often think of the Jewish community being engaged in sports.”
“It shows that we are all the same,” he told JNS. “It’s a humanistic message in that everyone is involved in many different facets of life, including sports.”
Yaroslavsky, the other Jewish member of the council who took part in the event, told JNS that “as one of two Jewish members of the Los Angeles City Council representing the largest concentration of Jews in Los Angeles, it’s really important that we can celebrate, publicly and proudly, in the seat of local government.”
It’s vital to “honor the contributions, some of the many contributions, of Jewish Americans, and it was a lot of fun that we were able to focus this year on Jewish athletes and the history of how they came to play the sports that they play,” she told JNS.
During the celebration at the council meeting, a man held a sign with a Nazi symbol behind participants until police escorted him to the back of the room.
Blumenfield told attendees at a subsequent reception that “we have some folks like that, who come to council all the time,” adding that “it’s their free-speech right, but it certainly is not something that is sanctioned by this city.”
“I wish we could just throw them out for that, but we’ve been sued, and we can’t,” he said. “That is something we deal with on a regular basis.”
Yaroslavsky told JNS that the protester shows up often. “It’s sort of an indictment of where we are as a country and the amount of hate and antisemitism that exists in Los Angeles but also everywhere right now,” she said. “It’s a stark reminder that you can’t allow hate to be the only thing people feel and experience.”
It’s also necessary to remind “ourselves and our community—and people who don’t know Jews necessarily—that we are not a monolith, and that we are proud and strong and talented and unique individuals,” she told JNS. “And also that we have this incredible heritage that is deep and strong and varied.”
