About a month ago, just before Opening Day of the 2013 Major League Baseball season, I received an email from a newspaper reporter who asked if I had time available to discuss Jewish baseball players. I had recently read a fascinating review of John Rosengren’s new Hank Greenberg book in the Wall Street Journal and…
Hank Greenberg certainly remains the most famous and accomplished professional Jewish baseball player with that last name. However, this week Adam Greenberg was the “Greenberg” everyone was talking about. I first learned about Adam Greenberg in an article that Ralph Woronoff sent me. An usher at Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Ralph knows…
Trivia question: How many Major League Baseball player have successfully won an appeal of a suspension resulting from a positive drug test? The answer is only one. And that is Ryan Braun, the Milwaukee Brewers’ Jewish superstar. Ryan Braun should feel vindicated after successfully appealing his 50-game suspension (Getty Images) The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel just…
Originally published at JTA.org More than 65 years ago, Evan Kaufmann’s great-grandparents were murdered in the Auschwitz death camp. Now he is taking the ice for the German national hockey team. Following a successful hockey career at the University of Minnesota, Kaufmann tried out for several professional clubs in the United States before being advised…
One year ago today I waited in line to enter the Reichstag. The moment wasn’t lost on me. Almost seventy years prior, the Nazi government made every effort to wipe my people off the face of this earth. And there I was, with a dozen other American rabbis, about to walk into the historic Berlin…
This year’s Super Bowl Sunday will place two major Jewish philanthropists against each other. The New York Giants are co-owned by the Tisch family and the New England Patriots are owned by the Kraft family. Joint Media News Service’s Jacob Kamaras provided the “who’s who” for both families and which Jewish organizations they all lead….
Tamir Goodman, known as “The Jewish Jordan,” made national headlines in the late 1990s when he decided not to play for the University of Maryland because they wouldn’t adjust their schedule to meet his Sabbath observance. Sports Illustrated even reported on Tamir’s decision to play for Towson State in 1999. However, a few years later…
Here in Detroit we couldn’t be happier. Detroit Tigers’ ace Justin Verlander won both the Cy Young Award and the MVP Award for the American League this year. Justin is the first starting pitcher to win the MVP Award in 25 years and the first Detroit Tigers player to win both awards since Willy Hernandez…