RSS
Veteran catcher Ryan Lavarnway pens children’s book about how playing for Israel brought him closer to Judaism
(JTA) — When Ryan Lavarnway joined Team Israel for the World Baseball Classic in 2017, the journeyman catcher chose jersey no. 36 not because of the number stitched onto the back, but because the shirt fit him best.
But in the years since that tournament, any time Lavarnway has represented Israel, he’s stuck with 36, which holds meaning as a multiple of 18, a number that signifies life in Jewish tradition.
That choice is emblematic of Lavarnway’s experience with Team Israel, one that he says has changed his life. It’s also the inspiration for a new children’s book, which hits shelves today, written by the recently retired member of the 2013 World Series champion Boston Red Sox.
In “Baseball and Belonging,” illustrated by Chris Brown, Lavarnway chronicles his life, athletic career and how a call from Israel’s burgeoning baseball program helped him find his Judaism.
“When I played for the WBC team in 2017, that was a really life changing experience for me,” Lavarnway, 36, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I didn’t feel a huge connection to my Judaism, to any religion, to the community at all. Through playing for Team Israel, I felt that for the first time.”
In the book, Lavarnway wrote that growing up in an interfaith family — his mother is Jewish and his father is Catholic — left him feeling lost.
“His parents let him choose his path,” Lavarnway writes early in the book, which is narrated in rhyme in the third person. “They said, ‘You can be either.’ But thinking he was half and half made him feel like he was neither.”
When Israel recruited him to join the 2017 team — the WBC allows players to represent countries where they are eligible for citizenship — Lavarnway writes that it was “the answer to his dreams.”
He tells the story of Israel’s Cinderella run in that tournament, during which the team won its first four games, all against higher-ranked countries. Lavarnway was named MVP of Israel’s group in the first round. The team exited the tournament in the second round after a loss to Japan.
In the book, Lavarnway also shares his experience traveling to Israel for the first time with the team, including illustrations of his visits to famous sites like the Western Wall, the Dead Sea and the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum.
He writes about meeting Israeli kids — who he says treated the players like superstars — and playing in front of Jewish fans. “By representing Israel, Ryan played for something more,” he writes.
At the end of the book, Lavarnway includes three pages of information about Israel, its baseball program and sites the book mentions.
“Playing with Team Israel, was just the very start,” reads the last page of the book. “Ryan found where he belonged, on the field and in his heart.”
Much like Lavarnway’s journey to Team Israel, his experience writing his first book was not a straightforward one. The idea first began when Lavarnway participated in Q&A sessions surrounding the 2018 documentary “Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel,” about the team’s unexpected success in the previous year’s WBC.
Audience members encouraged Lavarnay to share his story of learning about Israel, meeting its citizens and discovering his connection to Judaism, and he began speaking on college campuses.
“I think that’s a great audience to hear it because college students are deciding who they want to be and deciding who they want to develop as their community,” Lavarnway said. “It’s a really transformational time of their lives. And this was a really transformational experience.”
From there, he received a suggestion from his rabbi, the popular Jewish musician and rabbi Joe Black, who leads a Reform congregation in Denver, where Lavarnway lives: why not turn his story into a children’s book?
Lavarnway had never written a book before, much less a kids’ one. So just like facing a new pitcher for the first time, it took a few tries to get it right.
Catcher Ryan Lavarnway, right, enjoys a moment during a pregame warmup with Israel’s bullpen coach Alon Leichman, in Brooklyn, New York, Sept. 22, 2016. (Hillel Kuttler)
Lavarnway began work on the book in early 2021. His first few drafts were turned away by publishers, and he put the project aside.
Then he and his wife, who is also Jewish, had a daughter.
“I was reading stories to her at night, and I found a few that I gravitated towards, that I read the same books over and over because I really loved them,” Lavarnway said. “And I started to pay attention to the structure of the book, and then I had a lightbulb moment of, ‘Oh, mine is nothing like this.’ Which means that my book was probably not very good — the first two iterations of it.”
After becoming more familiar with the structure and rhyme schemes of the children’s books he enjoyed, he took another crack at his own. He said the key was simplifying the story.
“I think the concept of religion is over most children’s heads, especially the younger audience,” Lavarnway said. “But what they can relate to, and what is universal, is doing what you love and feeling loved. If I really had to boil down the message, that’s what it is: doing what you love, and finding somewhere where you can feel loved.”
Lavarnway said when he first joined Team Israel in 2017, he did so because “it was an amazing baseball opportunity.” The catcher played for eight Major League teams from 2011-2021 in a career that saw him move between the majors and the minors, and he played 25 regular season games for Boston in their 2013 championship season.
After his experience in the 2017 WBC, Lavarnway would go on to play for Team Israel in the 2020 Olympics — for which he obtained Israeli citizenship — and the 2023 WBC, in which Israel won one game before eventually being eliminated. He will suit up again for Israel at the European Championships next month.
Peter Kurz, the general manager of Team Israel who first recruited Lavarnway in 2017, said he has been “a tremendous inspiration to Israeli players for the last seven years.” Kurz receives his own cameo in the book and gets high praise in the acknowledgements, where Lavarnway writes that the GM gave him “an experience that changed my life.”
Kurz called Lavarnway “a true team leader” and “true friend,” and said he named the catcher as Team Israel’s first official captain two months ago. Upon Lavarnway’s retirement in March, Kurz said that when his playing days are over, the veteran would be welcome as a coach for Team Israel.
“All that I can say is that Ryan was the ultimate professional, going about his work in a joyful and experienced manner,” Kurz told JTA earlier this year. “He was and is dedicated to Team Israel and was our ultimate warrior. But he was also warm and funny and emotional, and those are wonderful traits.”
Lavarnway said playing for Team Israel has taken on meaning beyond his love of the game itself.
“It’s no longer a baseball opportunity for me at all,” he said. “I don’t have a future in playing the game, but I’m so excited to be a member of this team, and what we’ve done with the program and with the whole sport in the country.”
As his debut book is released, Lavarnway isn’t sure if he has a future as a writer. He recently joined the Colorado Rockies’ broadcast team, where he offers analysis during pre- and post-game coverage. He also speaks at schools and synagogues.
“I don’t know that I’ll make a habit out of making children’s books,” he said. “But this felt like something I needed to do.”
—
The post Veteran catcher Ryan Lavarnway pens children’s book about how playing for Israel brought him closer to Judaism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
‘Child Killers’: Jewish Activists Doused With Red Paint in Germany While Hanging Up Hostage Posters
i24 News – Masked attackers doused with red paint and shoved German Jewish activists hanging up posters of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza in Frankfurt on Friday. The assailants shouted “child killers” and “free Palestine.”
Sacha Stawski, a German-Jewish activist who heads the media watchdog NGO Honestly Concerned, who’s spent decades combating antisemitism, spoke to local media about the incident.
“We attached posters with photos of the 50 hostages still in Hamas’s captivity to a fence in the Frankfurt Grüneburgpark,” Stawski told the Bild outlet. “We were branded ‘child killers,’ and I constantly heard ‘Free Palestine,’ and ‘genocide’ calls.”
The paint also poured over my glasses, making it difficult for me to identify the perpetrator,” he added.
Germany’s ambassador to Israel condemned the incident.
The small pro-hostage rally took place near an anarchist encampment housing several anti-Israel organizations. Stawski said this was announced to the camp organizers.
Meanwhile a German government spokesman said on Friday that Berlin currently has no plans to recognize a Palestinian state because that would undermine any efforts to reach a negotiated solution with Israel.
RSS
Hegseth Fires Head of Intel Agency Whose Assessment of Damage from Iran Strikes Angered Trump
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on US President Donald Trump’s budget request for the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
i24 News – US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from US strikes sparked the ire of President Donald Trump.
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, US media reported, citing sources speaking on condition of anonymity.
The sacking is the latest upheaval in military leadership and in the country’s intelligence agencies, and comes a few months after details of the preliminary assessment leaked to the media.
The assessment found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months by the bombings, contradicting assertions from Trump and from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Republican president, who had pronounced the Iranian program “completely and fully obliterated,” rejected the report.
n June, Israel launched a devastating bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear program, missile production and military leadership, saying the operation was necessary to prevent the mullah regime from realizing its oft-stated plan to annihilate the Jewish state.
During the ensuing 12-day war, the US joined in, striking key Iranian nuclear sites.
Following the June strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites, Hegseth lambasted the press for focusing on the preliminary assessment but did not offer any direct evidence of the destruction of the facilities.
“You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated — choose your word. This was a historically successful attack,” Hegseth said at a news conference at the time.
RSS
Amid Rising Antisemitism, American Jews Make Aliyah to Israel Seeking Safety, Community, Impact
Olim gather at JFK Airport in New York, preparing to board Nefesh B’Nefesh’s 65th charter flight to Israel. Photo: The Algemeiner
NEW YORK/TEL AVIV — Confronted with rising antisemitism and unease in the United States, a growing number of American Jews are choosing to make aliyah, embracing the risks of war in the Middle East for the chance to build new lives and foster meaningful communities.
On Wednesday, 225 new olim arrived in Tel Aviv on the first charter aliyah flight since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Aliyah refers to the process of Jews immigrating to Israel, and olim refers to those who make this journey.
Nefesh B’Nefesh (NBN) — a nonprofit that promotes and facilitates aliyah from the US and Canada — brought its 65th charter flight from New York, which The Algemeiner joined.
Founded in 2002, NBN helps olim become fully integrated members of Israeli society, simplifying the aliyah process and providing essential resources and guidance.
In partnership with Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Kayemeth, and the Jewish National Fund, NBN has helped nearly 100,000 olim build thriving new lives in Israel.
Shawn Fink is one of the 225 people who embarked on the life-changing journey earlier this week, leaving Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife, Liz, and their son.
For Fink and his family, making aliyah was driven not only by their love for Israel and desire to build a new community, but also by the escalating threats and uncertainties facing Jewish communities abroad since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
“Mostly, we were frustrated with the direction the United States is taking, and the rise in antisemitism was a major concern for us,” Fink told The Algemeiner.
Like many countries around the world, the US has seen an alarming rise in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel sentiment since the Oct. 7 atrocities.
According to the latest data issued by the FBI, hate crimes perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the federal agency’s counting them.
A striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, who constitute just 2 percent of the US population, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims were targeted the next highest amount as the victims of 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.
Fink explained that the increasing costs of living a Jewish life in the US — from education to kosher food — weighed heavily on his family’s decision to make the move to Israel.
While they first considered making aliyah five years ago, Fink and his family had to put the plans on hold for personal reasons — returning to the idea only in the past few months when the timing finally worked in their favor.
“We started planning it seriously in November and began the entire process with Nefesh B’Nefesh,” Fink told The Algemeiner. “It’s been a nonstop whirlwind ever since.”
For them, the current war did not stop their plans, but it did influence the cities they explored for their new home.
“The war really reinforced for us the importance of supporting Israel and our community,” Fink said. “By making aliyah, we felt we could do even more to help.”
Even though it is difficult to leave behind family and close friends, they look forward to reconnecting with friends in Israel, making new connections, and building a vibrant new community.
“Making aliyah in less than six months has been a whirlwind. I’d encourage anyone considering it to give themselves at least twice as much time, double the budget, and be prepared for plenty of unexpected starts and stops along the way,” Fink told The Algemeiner.
Nefesh B’Nefesh provides assistance to families throughout their entire aliyah journey, offering guidance before relocating and continued support once in Israel.
The Israeli government also complements these efforts with resources and financial incentives to help newcomers settle and ease their transition into their new lives.
“Once the ticket is finally in your hand and you’re waiting to board the plane, you realize that all the challenges and obstacles along the way were worth it,” Fink said.
Veronica Zaragovia was also one of the 225 olim who joined the flight earlier this week.
Similarly to Fink and his family, Zaragovia decided to make aliyah, driven not just by her love for Israel, but also by the increasing challenges of being Jewish abroad and the hope of making a meaningful impact by serving her community.
From Florida, she embarked on the journey alone, excited for all the new opportunities and possibilities that awaited her in her new home.
“I want to take pride in being Jewish and in Israel — that’s why I’m making aliyah,” she told The Algemeiner, reflecting on the move she has been planning for the past two years.
“It’s a huge concern for me that in some places in the US, I can’t — or maybe shouldn’t — wear my Star of David necklace,” she said. “I don’t feel that Jews can be fully safe anywhere in the country. The rise in antisemitism has been truly shocking and deeply concerning.”
Zaragovia, who worked as a journalist in the US, said her love for storytelling and uncovering the truth played a key role in her decision to make this move.
“After Oct. 7, I felt that the way my colleagues and other journalists were covering Israel was wrong and unfair,” she said.
“As someone whose career is built on facts and truth, I didn’t see that reflected in their reporting. That’s why I decided to make a difference by being there myself,” she continued.
Rather than deterring her decision to make a change, Zaragovia explained that the current war only reinforced it.
“It became clear that I needed to go, be there with my people, and make a difference through my work,” she said. “I couldn’t have done this without Nefesh B’Nefesh. They’ve been incredible, guiding me every step of the way from start to finish.”