March 22 1893 – 5 Nisan 5653
Senda Berenson Abbott, described by the basketball hall of fame as the “mother of women’s basketball,” refereed the first women’s basketball game at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Berenson, who was born in Lithuania but grew up in Boston, was gymnastics teacher at the women’s only college, and had introduced what was then a new-fangled game invented only two years earlier into her physical exercise classes to keep her students engaged.
Berenson herself was a frail young woman suffering from back problems when she enrolled in the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, which was attempting to improve and formalize the system of physical education for girls using a method known as the “Swedish system.” Berenson adapted the game of basketball, rewriting some of the rules for women. Now that basketball is largely dominated by black players, few remember that at its outset it was known as “the Jews’ game” due to its popularity among Jewish men and, apparently, women.