The Only Black Jewish Player in the NHL

Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Jordan Harris has yet to score this season. He has registered a single point on one assist. In just over half of the Blue Jackets’ games this season has Harris suited up. And yet, the extremely pleasant, soft-spoken 24-year-old has one of the most fascinating and inspiring stories of any NHL player this season – or maybe any season for that matter.

As the NHL’s only Black Jewish skater, Harris, who spent the first three years of his career with the Montreal Canadiens before getting traded to Columbus this summer, embodies diversity like few have ever done in a league notorious for homogeneity. His dad Peter, himself a former pro hockey player who was drafted by the New York Islanders in 1986 but did not make it to the NHL, was adopted from a Jewish orphanage and is half Black. His mother, who is white, is not Jewish.

“For me personally, growing up the way I did and being Jewish and biracial and exposed to so many different cultures and types of people, it made me realize that a sport like hockey can bring people together,” explained Harris when speaking to the Atlanta Jewish Times last week. “I’ve had so many fond memories of meeting people and building relationships no matter where they come from or what religion that they are.

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“I think that hockey is a great platform to bring people together like that. You just kind of want to create that space for people and let them know that this is a great avenue to show that love and show that support. Just letting people know that they are welcome and that they can learn those life lessons in hockey similarly to the way that I did.”

Last season, Harris was added to the NHL’s newly-formed Player Inclusion Coalition — a team of current and past pro hockey players, both male and female, striving to champion equality and inclusion in the sport. His initial engagement was participating in an on-ice practice with an all-girls team as part of the Hockey 4 Youth initiative that offers free hockey experiences and life skills programs to children in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Hamilton whose parents can’t afford hockey’s steep financial costs such as ice rental and equipment. Now that Harris is back stateside – he grew up in Haverhill, Mass., and later played for Northeastern University – he hopes to advance the coalition’s efforts in his new home of Columbus as well as his hockey-mad, blue-collar hometown that rests on the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border.

“It’s an awesome program and I’m definitely fortunate to be a part of it,” exclaimed Harris, who counts celebrating Passover through the years with his father’s side of the family as one of his favorite Jewish traditions. “I think that with me personally, I joined last year so I’m just trying to get my feet wet. Moving forward, I want to do more stuff for the town I grew up in, but not even just supporting but actively creating projects and doing stuff like donating hockey sticks or maybe building a roller rink and doing more significant stuff as I continue to build my career and meet more people.”

As a left-shot defenseman with eight goals and 32 points in 131 career games with Montreal following a four-year run at Northeastern and stint with Team USA’s World Juniors in 2019-20, Harris was a nice pick-up for a Blue Jackets team fighting to establish itself as a bona fide contender in a league often highlighted by Canadian teams and a region of America obsessed with college football.

“It was definitely excitement for sure,” said Harris when reflecting on the moment in late summer when he was shopping for apartment supplies and found out he was getting dealt to Columbus. “I think that starting my career in Montreal was a good start for me in a great hockey market. But Columbus has been fantastic in the sense that it’s an exciting hockey market, definitely an underrated hockey market. The fans have been great. And the guys have been great.”

As many sports fans are well aware, playing for the Blue Jackets in 2024 means being part of an organization that was rocked by a nightmarish tragedy just over a month before the season got underway: Beloved Columbus veteran Johnny Gaudreau and his brother, Matthew, were biking on a rural road in Carneys Point, N.J., on Aug. 29 — the evening before they were slated to serve as groomsmen for their sister’s wedding — when they were killed by an intoxicated driver.

“It’s obviously devastating, how it’s impacted not only our team but the community as a whole,” said Harris. “I didn’t know Matthew or Johnny personally. I just feel for the amount of people that he [Johnny] touched with his time here. How everyone reacted to it just showed how tight knit our team is and community. It was absolutely heart-wrenching, but if anything, it brought our team together. I just feel for everyone impacted by it.”

While coping with the loss of their late teammate, the Blue Jackets have been hanging tough in a stacked Metropolitan Division, hoping to creep back into playoff contention as the season enters the halfway point. “We’ve been doing well as a team so far and I think better than a lot of people expected us to do,” Harris noted.

This week, when Columbus returns home from a lengthy western Canada road trip, Harris looks forward to learning about more opportunities for giving back to the capital of Ohio. He’s already joined teammates in visiting the city’s Nationwide Children’s Hospital and wants to partake in the organization’s many holiday-centric community initiatives.

“It [Columbus] is a great community,” he added. “There’s a lot of support for the team. I think it’s really important and something that I want to do is get integrated with some more community work.”

But on a grander scale, not just for the NHL but for hockey fans worldwide who don’t necessarily associate with the racial and ethnic make-up of many players, the diversity coalition promises to be a fulfilling mission throughout the entirety of his career.

“Hockey, I think traditionally is a very non-diverse sport so to see people from all different backgrounds coming out and sharing their stories, I think it’s incredibly special. I think it speaks volumes to where the sport is going.”