The Unlikely Jewish Olympian: Sarah Abrevaya Stein on Alfred Nakache

On today’s episode of The Jewish Review of Books Podcast we’re speaking with Sarah Abrevaya Stein. Sarah is a fantastic scholar of Jewish history, and the Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. She teaches Jewish studies at UCLA and her focus on Mediterranean Jewish history has uncovered underappreciated and under-examined figures from the Jewish past.
Most recently, she reached out to Abe about the Algerian-Jewish swimmer Alfred Nakache. the Michael Phelps of the 1940s. His Olympic career was astonishing, especially in the context of his times. How did a Jewish swimmer manage, for a time, to maintain his career, even as Europe fell to the Nazis?
In her inimitable way, Stein weaves Nakache’s personal story of survival in with the great upheavals of his time and Jewish life in French Algeria. Her article, heading our Summer issue, is exhilarating and devastating. In our conversation, Stein dives even deeper into the lost world of Alfred Nakache.
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