PrintDecember 31, 2010
Baseball Judaism
The wondrous moment of my boyhood (and surely not only mine) came in late September 1945. Newspapers prominently displayed the photo of a jubilant baseball player crossing home plate to accept handshakes from his ecstatic teammates. He had just hit a grand-slam home run in the ninth inning of the final game of the season to clinch the American League pennant for the Detroit Tigers. He was Hank Greenberg. And, as my father proudly informed his nine-year-old son, he was our cousin.As the 1/1/11 centennial of Hank's birth approaches, it is important to understand what he has meant to American Jews ever since, and why. Only Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jew to be appointed to the Supreme Court, rivals him for the seamless public integration of Americanism and Judaism."To be good Americans," in Brandeis's memorable non sequitur, "we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists." But Brandeis, for all his...(Read Full Article)
