Seen here in formal team wear, the "Maccabee" soccer team has a formal meet n' greet with everyone's favorite American mayor, the city's 99th one, Fiorello La Guardia, at city hall. La Guardia was the honorary chairman of the team's 11 game US tour. The mayor gifted the team with the city's flag. They also brought back home to Tel Aviv with them the flag of New York's harbor. Both New Yorker flags were presented by the team to Tel Aviv's city hall and newly opened harbor, upon their return in December of that year.

Yankee Stadium still located up in "da Bronx" back in 1936, seen here, was the site of an exciting international soccer game. The Jewish "Maccabees" crossed oceans, from Mandate Palestine, trouncing the NYC All-Star team 6-0 to the delight of 40,000 fans. Funds raised by the game were in support of the suffering Polish Jews in Eastern Europe where fascism and antisemitism were in near full power.

Meanwhile, that same exciting Sunday, a German team was also playing in the city, at the "German Stadium", located on the grounds of the Morris-Jumel Mansion seen above. According to the Forward newspaper's reporter: the energy there was all pro-Hitler and most German -American sports clubs had spent the past year fundraising for Hitler's Berlin Olympics of that past summer.

The energy at the German soccer game was said to be so intense, the Forward a player from the Minerva team was critically injured by the South-Germany team and died in the hospital that day. He was noted in the Forward's article as Sweety Nicholson, a carpenter, of East 180th Street, not far from the image above.

The Forward continued coverage of NY pols and sports as later that month, with the world series featuring the NY Yankees vs the Giants, Governor Lehman, seated next to Mayor La Guardia at the Polo Grounds, seen here, threw out the first ball of the game. The Forward's captions read, in part, about both politicians being advocates of fair play on and off the field. La Guardia. frequently recalled as 'not your typical big-city mayor' had adopted an early anti-fascist stance that was famous by then.

It seems "Maccabee's" win over the All-Star team wasn't enough for the city. By October 4th, the Forward was calling on folks in Brooklyn, especially, to come out for their next game, October 11th, against the American Soccer League pros, at none other than Ebbets Fields, pictured above. "They've accepted the challenge from the greatest professional American Soccer League," the paper advertised.

Again, the game was to be a fundraiser sponsored by the Federation of Polish Jews in America, whose offices were on W 34th Street, in the heart of the garment center, as seen in the image above. And tickets were priced at 1-2 dollars, so as to make it affordable for all.

The Forward's sports reporting was done by Jay Grayson, who resided at the time across the road from this building above on Brooklyn's Ocean Parkway. Grayson, a Jewish Belorussian immigrant from the Minsk region, whose given name was Yankev Abromovitsh, had the reader's rapt attention those few weeks in fall 1936 when "Maccabee" toured America. In his final report before their final game, again at Yankee Stadium, Grayson mentioned the rough games they'd played (and lost) in St. Louis, where their sportsmanship was very much called on, as their host team played a "rough game" in Grayson's words. So rough, in fact, that prior to being permitted to play their final one on November 8th, they had to check out by their doc. Luckily for the team, everything worked out as far as their physical status. And, to top it off, the Mayor invited them, a couple of days before their farewell game, to visit him at city hall where they were presented with New York City's flag, along with the flag of New York's Harbor. By the time they sailed back to Mandate Palestine, the team had become beloved by Forward readers and fans throughout the city, who ponied up their hard-won gelt (money) to come to watch a group of overseas landslayt (townsfolk) play. Later in December, when "Maccabee" presented New York's flag, in turn, to Tel Aviv's city hall, and its newly opened harbor, it was clear the love was mutual and going to be long-lasting.