What is Jewish About America's "Favorite Pastime"? Essays and Sermons on Jews, Judaism, and Baseball (review)

Let's clarify something right off the bat: yes, America's "Favorite Pastime" does refer to baseball!

Is there really something Jewish about baseball, and if so, what? As might be asked at the Passover Seder, why is this game different from all others—football, for example?

The fact that football is played with a pigskin automatically makes it treif (not kosher) as is humorously pointed out in the essay "Why Baseball Is Jewish" (1990). But aside from this and the fact that football is a violent sport (not the Jewish way) there are many other points made to support the belief(s) that baseball and Judaism go together like bagels and lox.

This collection of essays and sermons attempts to explain and make some distinct correlations between Judaism and baseball. Whether it succeeds in its purpose or not is strictly up to the reader. While it is probably possible to correlate baseball with almost any subject, the theses presented in these essays are interesting, stimulating, and (for the most part) lively and enjoyable.

For example, in the essay "The Tzedakah of Hitting," the parallel is made between the Judaic concept of Tzedaka (charity/giving) and the contributions of the batter. While Tzedakah ranges from giving unwillingly to helping a person help himself, the hitter, too, has many possibilities at his disposal, from the sacrifice fly, to the bunt, to the home run. The highest level of baseball Tzedakah would be a veteran player helping a rookie to achieve his potential.

"Mythic Baseball, Mythic Judaism: Time, Space and the Journey of the Soul" equates the three realms of Kabbalah (space, time, and the soul) with baseball and explores the meanings of each and propounds how both give profound and existential meaning to human life. If this sounds esoteric and academic, it is, but it is also challenging to understand how something as "simple" as a game can also be as mystifying as a spiritual tract.

There are many references throughout the essays to the fact that several of baseball's biggest Jewish stars (Koufax, Greenberg, Shawn Green) did not play at one time or another because of the Jewish High Holy Days of either Rosh Hashanah (New Year) or Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). Much is made of these decisions (especially Koufax's during the 1965 World Series), all leading to the conclusion that Judaism is, to a large extent, a matter of personal conviction. It is also pointed out that in all these cases the players were fully supported by their club, teammates, and management. This is in contrast to the antisemitism the first truly Jewish star, Hank Greenberg, faced in his early years in Detroit, which, in the 1930s, was home to two of the most openly virulent antisemites in the United States: Henry Ford and Father Charles Coughlin.

Through the years there have been many novels written by Jewish authors centering on baseball as a theme: linking parents and children, helping bridge the generational divide, providing redemption and reconciliation, or helping fulfill the promise of America for immigrants. There have also been numerous biographical books in which the authors (not ballplayers themselves) relate the profound and lasting effect the game had upon their lives and careers. Several of these books are examined in the essay "Baseball Across the Generations in Jewish American Writing," which provides a good stimulus for delving into more reading matter on these topics.

For baseball card collectors (and especially card collectors of Jewish ball players), an exciting event occurred a few years ago with the publication and distribution of the Jewish Major Leaguer Baseball Cards set. Martin Abromowitz, the man responsible for this venture along with his son Jacob, recounts how this began with the realization that, of the 140-plus Jewish players throughout the history of Major League...