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NEW YORK (JTA) — A noted former NFL coach said he was joking when he referred to a Jewish stereotype in a recent interview on ESPN Radio.

Hank Stram, who led the Kansas City Chiefs to the Super Bowl title in 1970 and is retired after several years as a football commentator, was responding to a question about spending big money on a young superstar quarterback in 1974.

"Yeah, I was ready to play that Jewish organ…Hit the cash register," he said, according to an ESPN transcript of the Sept. 20 show.

Stram, 70, responded to criticism by saying he has many friends of different ethnicities who routinely jest one another about their backgrounds.

"In the neighborhood where I grew up, you were always kidding one another like that. Nobody was ever malicious about it."

Pushke pennies feed hungry at Yom Kippur

NEW YORK (JTA) — More than 700 synagogues throughout the United States are asking their congregants to donate food money they saved by fasting on Yom Kippur to Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger.

The congregations are also asking members to bring food for distribution to local food banks.

Last year, some 50,000 Jews participated in these Day of Atonement efforts, according to Mazon, which provides grants to food banks and other programs serving the hungry in the United States, Israel and poor countries worldwide.

Jews, blacks join up to keep killers jailed

NEW YORK (JTA) — Jewish groups joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in seeking to uphold the federal convictions of two men in the 1991 killing of a yeshiva student in Brooklyn, according to the New York Jewish Week.

The brief filed last week in the case claims that a 1968 civil rights law gives the government jurisdiction in prosecuting Lemrick Nelson Jr. and Charles Price, who were sentenced to 19 years and 21 years, respectively, for their roles in Yankel Rosenbaum's death.

In related news, the American Jewish Committee is withdrawing its financial support from a 5-year-old magazine aimed at exploring relations between blacks and Jews. A spokesman for the AJCommittee said the group is investigating other ways outside of Common Quest magazine to address African-American/Jewish issues.