Odessa, Ukraine has a rich Jewish baseball history
Fewer than 200 Jews have played in the majors. But three Jewish players born in Odessa, the Ukrainian city now under heavy Russian siege, excelled in their adopted sport.
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News ‘This bond of friendship and love’: How Jackie Robinson became a young Jewish boy’s lifelong friend
In the 1950s, Jackie Robinson became penpals with a Jewish kid from Wisconsin, sang to him at his 10th birthday party and congratulated him on his bar mitzvah. On Friday, when baseball marks the 75th anniversary of Robinson breaking the color barrier, Ron Rabinovitz will remember his boyhood hero -– as a civil rights icon…
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Opinion The ‘tomahawk chop’ is racist. So why are my fellow Jews still supporting it?
At Shabbat dinner Frank LaMere, a HoChunk Nation Elder and lifelong Native American Rights Activist, implored those gathered to “do something about those Braves.” I hosted this particular Shabbat dinner in Atlanta in 2016 at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. The event featured Native and Jewish leaders as well as elected officials….
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Culture In a very Jewish World Series, it’s Astros vs. Braves, and rabbi vs. rabbi
Rabbi Adam Starr, who leads an Orthodox synagogue in Atlanta, found a way to make this year’s World Series more meaningful: he proposed a holy wager. Tuesday afternoon — with only a couple hours to go before the first pitch of Game 1 — the longtime Braves fan texted his Houston-area colleague, Rabbi Barry Gelman,…
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Food A guide to kosher food (and vegan options) at every Major League Baseball stadium
(JTA) — Jews love baseball — there’s no denying it. But when the baseball season opened in April, most major league stadiums were operating at restricted capacities and offered a limited number of concession stands. Not anymore. As the U.S. COVID-19 vaccination rate has soared, many of the ballpark restrictions have been lifted, and remain…
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Opinion Watching Team Israel’s Olympic run — and loss — taught me about Jewish resilience
In 2017, I was a high school junior who usually struggled to wake up on time for school. And yet, at 5:30 am one morning in early March, I sat wide-eyed on my family room couch, watching a baseball game. It was the opening game of the 2017 World Baseball Classic, the foremost international baseball…
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Culture The Olympic cardboard beds were finally defeated — by the Israeli baseball team
It was one of the big early stories of the Tokyo Olympics: The cardboard beds. Sure, athletes were told the beds were an attempt to reduce waste, since the materials used to make them are sustainable and easily recyclable. But in the Olympic Village and international media alike, the rumor quickly spread that the beds…
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Culture As Team Israel takes the field vs. U.S., a random history of the countries’ other rivalries
At 6 a.m. tomorrow, Team Israel will take on the United States in its second game of Olympics baseball. (Israel dropped its first game, 6-5, to South Korea in extra innings.) As you may have read before, Israel’s baseball team is largely made up of American-born players — who had to acquire Israeli citizenship to…
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