What Makes Harold Run? (A Review)
Levine, Robert & Salkin, Jeffrey
WHAT MAKES HAROLD RUN? JEFFREY SALKIN ROBERT LEVINE "Chariots of Fire," the winner of the 1982 Academy Award for Best Motion Picture, succeeds in combining numerous elements into an attractive...
...In a world heavy with the threat of anti-Semitism, what could be more exhilarating, especially to Jewish audiences, than a Jew who runs as a defense against bigotry...
...He refuses to undergo what John Murray Cuddihy has called "the ordeal of civility...
...He is stiff-necked, "arrogant, defensive to the point of pugnacity, as they invariably are," someone remarks...
...Not even the manipulation of the Prince of Wales can convince him to violate the Christian Sabbath for the glory of the United Kingdom...
...Abrahams' running is predicated on vindicating his Jewish background: "I run as a weapon against being Jewish...
...There is an added element: religion...
...His initial loss to Humphries left English Jewry despondent, but their spirits soared when he subsequently beat his opponent...
...he just wants the mild anti-Semitism to stop long enough for him to earn a place for himself in "England's corridors of power...
...Sporting skills then gave way to business acumen...
...He argued that since public opinion would not support a boycott, a "personal" refusal to participate would do German Jews more harm than good...
...His father, Isaac Abrahams, emigrated from Eastern Europe (probably Lithuania) in the mid-1860s, wandered through Canada, South Africa and the United States during the next two decades, and settled permanently in Britain in 1883...
...His professors tell him that his approach to competition has been "a little too plebian...
...Later in his life, he served as President of the Jewish Athletic Association and publicly identified himself with Jewish athletic causes...
...In 1922-1923, he served as President of the Caius College Student Body and Honorary Secretary of the Cambridge University Athletic Club...
...Abrahams then turned to journalism as a career, and held a series of official positions within the British sports world, allowing him to emerge by the 1930s as one of its leading spokesmen...
...A porter comments that, with his name, Abrahams "won't be singing in the chapel choir...
...society's failure to accept his father, an immigrant merchant from Eastern Europe who was, in Abrahams' words, "as foreign as a frankfurter...
...He was the first boxer to appear on the stage, and the first Jew to speak to a king of England...
...Born in London in 1764, Mendoza developed his boxing skill while a young teenager as a way of responding to the anti-Semitic slurs of older and heavier men...
...There was considerable controversy as to whether or not Britain should boycott the Olympic Games, given the efforts of the Nazis to turn the event into a propaganda charade...
...We have shown that we are as good as the next guy...
...The film portrays his battle against anti-Semitism and the expectation that he behave as a proper gentleman in the course of running for England and ultimately winning that nation's first Gold Medal in the 100-meter sprint...
...In 1936, he married Sybil Marjorie Evers, and they adopted two children...
...Some professors, watching him run in the courtyard, speculate about his father: "a financier in the City...
...I'm going to run them off their feet...
...Yet Abrahams' character deserves a second look—both as it is portrayed in "Chariots of Fire" and as it can be reconstructed from historical data about his life and career...
...As a Jew, Abrahams' loyalties were fragmented...
...A natural desire for material rewards increased as the Jew was more accepted in the general community...
...Movie audiences will recall that a passenger in the spoof "Airplane!," upon requesting light reading material, was offered a book on Jewish sports heroes...
...On their first date, two orders of roast pig are placed before them...
...His career was a constant struggle against the popular belief that Jewishness was incompatible with athletic prowess...
...An itinerant tradesman, he became sufficiently wealthy to put his four sons through the most aristocratic private schools in the country...
...Abrahams speaks bitterly of having been the victim of anti-Semitism, beginning with genteel English Jeffrey Salkin is assistant rabbi at Temple Israel of Greater Miami, Florida...
...Perhaps it was his perceived disregard for the "gentleman's agreement" in sports, a prerequisite for acceptance into "proper" society, that led to his exclusion...
...JEFFREY SALKIN ROBERT LEVINE "Chariots of Fire," the winner of the 1982 Academy Award for Best Motion Picture, succeeds in combining numerous elements into an attractive package, admired by both critics and audiences...
...The cinematic portrait of Harold Abrahams raises more questions than it answers...
...He becomes nothing less than the Duddy Kravitz of the playing-field...
...In that same year he became the first— and the last—Briton to win the Gold Medal for the 100-meter sprint, but a year later he broke his leg in a freak athletic accident and never returned to competition...
...In other words, he enlists the aid of another pariah to lead him to his goal, earning contempt because he refuses to conform to the behavior expected of a Jew who seeks acceptance into polite society...
...Their aim was to create a new Jew—one with physical as well as intellectual and spiritual muscles...
...Indeed, there was a rabbi as well as ministers in attendance...
...There was Hank Greenberg, who, during the 1934 season, played on Rosh Hashanah but not on Yom Kippur, or the famous example of Sandy Koufax, who refused to pitch on Yom Kippur during the 1965 World Series...
...And yet, it was Harold who was the medal winner and the recognized father of British amateur sports...
...Clearly, the creators of "Chariots of Fire" wanted to paint a portrait of Harold Abrahams in the image of a Daniel Mendoza...
...The other runner is Harold Abrahams, who came to be considered the greatest Jewish athlete in the history of Great Britain...
...The career of Daniel Mendoza, British boxing great, had a similiar emphasis...
...One would think that young Abrahams' sensitivity to his origins would result in affirmatively Jewish behavior...
...I imagine he lends money...
...The opening scene of "Chariots of Fire," shows the memorial service that was held for Harold Abrahams at Saint Mary's Church, London, in 1978...
...The roots of the Maccabiah Games, the so-called "Jewish Olympics," lie in the ghettos of Eastern Europe and the Middle East...
...He shook hands publicly in Berlin with the Nazi Minister of Sport, and in his presence, Helen Mayer, a half-Jewish fencer who was forced on the German Olympic team by international pressure, gave the "Heil Hitler" salute at the opening ceremonies of the Games...
...He is also—how shall we say this?—pushy...
...One is Eric Liddell, a Scottish Presbyterian minister whose devotion to the Christian Sabbath overrules his otherwise awesome determination to run...
...Any snide comments are "gentlemanly" in their bigotry...
...Jewish audiences have certainly sympathized with Abrahams, understanding his feelings that he must prove himself to the upper-class Anglo-Saxon world in which he is a guest...
...Actually, we have not been without our greats of the playing field...
...Robert Levine is Professor of History at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida...
...Harold Maurice Abrahams in real life was a more complex figure than the one-dimensional figure portrayed in "Chariots of Fire...
...Mendoza himself became wealthy, although he was ultimately dragged into debt by his own generosity...
...He became a lawyer and a member of the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council...
...but in his real life he was also criticized for accepting payment for his newspaper articles while simultaneously serving as an honorary official of British sports...
...as compared to the reality of aristocratic anti-Semitism that pervaded Britain in the 1920s, and later gross manifestations of Jew-baiting in other European societies, they are innocuous...
...The audience never does learn whether or not the meal is eaten...
...Both of his brothers were knighted for their contributions to British sports, but Harold was not...
...Becoming an elder statesman of British sports, he was appointed honorary team captain of the Olympic Squad in Amsterdam in 1928 and Assistant Honorary Secretary of the British Amateur Athletic Association in 1939...
...On his first day in Cambridge he challenges a seven-centuries-old unbroken record, sprinting the 187 paces round the perimeter of Caius College within the time it takes for the ancient bells of the cloister to strike twelve times...
...It is both a sports epic and a saga of religious assertiveness...
...He wrote sporting columns for the Sunday Times of London, held posts within the British Amateur Athletic Association, and wrote a few books on sports: Sprinting (1925), Athletics (1926) and The Rome Olympiad (1960...
...Other Jewish athletes have adopted an approach to their craft not unlike Eric Liddell's position: refusing to allow their religious principles to be compromised by the game...
...Chariots of Fire" alludes to the biographical fact that he was attacked for working with a professional trainer...
...This, then, is ostensibly the main theme of the film...
...Jews have been identified with scholars, scientists and jurists, but only rarely with sports heroes...
...As Jews, our immediate reaction is to feel a natural kinship with Abrahams in his struggle against British anti-Semitism...
...Nervous laughter follows, and the scene ends...
...And how does he go about doing so...
...After the Second World War Jewish interest in sport receded...
...But no such conviction is forthcoming from Harold Abrahams...
...One son, Sidney, a long-jump champion, represented England at the Olympics in Athens in 1906 and at Stockholm in 1912...
...Indeed, audiences have been moved by this act of religious discipline and devotion...
...Adolphe, Harold's other brother, was the team doctor for the 1924 Olympic squad for which Harold won his historic victory...
...But for all Abrahams' supposed militancy on behalf of Jewish identity, his stance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics was by no means exemplary...
...And so we have a story that is told on two levels...
...Winning is no less than redemption...
...Lest we write that off as but another example of assimilation, along with his intermarriage, it should be noted that such a service is quite common for respected personages in Great Britain...
...There exists a Jewish Sports Hall of Fame at the Wingate Institute in Israel...
...In 1923 he took his Law Tripos and was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1924...
...In the late 19th century, young Jews looked to the development of athletic skills as the key to their redemption from oppression...
...Chariots of Fire" is the story of two British athletes competing in the 1924 Olympic Games...
...it is not an empty building...
...However, Abrahams also worked to rally the support of non-Jewish athletes to protest Nazi persecution of the Jews and, as a BBC broadcaster from the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, reported in detail about the issue to his listeners...
...It is this act of faith that becomes the cause c?l?bre in the film...
...Neither was Abrahams the only Jew to win a medal in the 1924 Olympics...
...By contrast, however, the only religion that is actually vindicated in the film is Christianity...
...It would seem, therefore, that what may have seemed to be a battle waged in honor of Jewish identity is in reality a battle for the right to assimilate into the British upper-class...
...Undoubtedly, Mendoza's social acceptance improved the fortunes of English Jewry...
...The character of Harold Abrahams cares not a bit about being Jewish...
...Chariots of Fire" makes it clear that Abrahams attributes the tremendous pressure he feels directly to his being a Jew at Cambridge...
...Still, to open the movie with a church service held for a Jew is to introduce early on the contradictions that plagued Abrahams as he ran for vindication and acceptance, for denial and affirmation, at one and the same time...
...As a leading member of the Olympic Committee, Abrahams spoke in favor of participation...
...That perhaps he played the game incorrectly...
...Abrahams' classmates accept him as a hale fellow well met...
...That honor was shared with 15 other Jews, from the United States, France, Finland, Hungary and other countries...
...That is not the case, however...
...Incentive was slowly lost...
...The final irony is that Harold Abrahams was denied Great Britain's highest possible form of acceptance...
...It incorporates lush photography, a powerful score, and the kind of story seldom told in movie theaters: a sports epic rooted in historical fact, a poetic tale of competition and principle...
...As recently as 1973, even the Jewish Chronicle of London expressed this view in a piece on the Maccabiah Games...
...upon Abrahams's victory in the film, a professor smirks, "Perhaps they are God's Chosen People after all...
...The Scottish missionary refuses to run on Sunday...
...He was championed by the Jewish community of England, which placed large sums of money on him when he fought Richard Humphries, the favorite of the aristocracy...
...In contrast to all of his fellow athletes at Cambridge, and presumably all other gentleman amateurs in the pre-World-War-II world of Olympic sports, Abrahams is so driven to win that he retains a professional coach, a cigar-smoking man of mixed Arab-Italian parentage...
...But the viewer actually sees little anti-Semitism...
...Billed as "Mendoza the Jew," he became an acclaimed sports and cultural hero...
...What might this say about Harold Abrahams and his career...
...The line was greeted with uproarious laughter...
...Sports are frequently ignored as a part of the emancipation process of the Jews...
...Bom in Bedford on December 15, 1889, Harold Abrahams was educated at Repton School, where he became a running and jumping champion...
...Perhaps we will never know what really made Harold run...
...It is interesting to note that Abrahams actively advocated the pro-fessionalization of sports...
...In an interview with Israel Today in 1977, Mark Spitz, the star of the infamous Munich Olympics of 1972, stated this view: "I feel that being a Jewish athlete has helped our cause...
...He firmly believed that athletes, and others connected to sports as well, should be free to profit from their activites...
...The victories of Jewish athletes in the Olympics have clearly been out of proportion to the world population of Jews in recent times...
...His mother was cited in the Guiness Book of Records as the "first foreign-born mother to produce two sons for the rank of knighthood"—but neither of these sons was Harold...
...Harold Abrahams is obsessed with running—and, perhaps, with anti-Semitism as well...
...Abrahams was severly criticized in Jewish circles for his anti-boycott position...
...He pursues (and ultimately marries) the lovely, non-Jewish, professional actress Sybil Marjorie Evers...
...Abrahams is running for those bells and for all that they symbolize: "England's corridors of power are Christian and Anglo-Saxon, and are closed to me...
Vol. 7 • June 1982 • No. 6
