Mitch credits his (slightly) bigger brother for paving his way on the field, in the kitchen and in life.

“It’s a surreal experience to see my kids on the field, on TV.” And I started to kind of feel like maybe this was their destiny.’”Īs for their father, Lee Schwartz, a business consultant: “I just kvell,” he told Los Angeles’s Jewish Journal in 2012, on the eve of that year’s NFL Draft, in which Mitch would join his brother in the league when the Cleveland Browns took him early in the second round. “‘They were like trucks hitting small cars. In the book, the brothers quote their mother, attorney Olivia Goodkin, on her eventual acceptance of her sons’ football fate, given that each stood well over six feet tall at his bar mitzvah.“‘I started out worrying that they were going to get hurt - but then I realized it was the other players I should be worrying about,” she said. But neither started playing football until high school, in part because their parents didn’t want practices and games to interfere too much with Hebrew school. Growing up in West Los Angeles - and attending Adat Shalom, a Conservative congregation - the brothers were always involved in sports. “I mean, my whole family - we’re proud to be Jewish and to be raised in the tradition and going to temple.” “The people who know us know that’s a big part of our identity, but I think it was important to share as much as possible in the book,” Geoff Schwartz told JTA from Detroit, where he spent the preseason as a member of the Lions. But from the opening pages - a scene of the brothers frying up latkes on the first night of Hanukkah, following their bubbe’s recipe - their Jewishness is front and center. Sports fans will find plenty of insider info on the NFL and major-college football (Geoff and Mitch played for Pac-12 contenders Oregon and Cal, respectively). Co-written by the brothers, with novelist and humorist Seth Kaufman, it’s a lighthearted memoir about all the topics in the subtitle and how often they intersect. “ Eat My Schwartz: Our Story of NFL Football, Food, Family, and Faith” lands in stores and online September 6. The cover of “Eat My Schwartz,” by Geoff and Mitch Schwartz.

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