Uncategorized
All the Jewish MLB players to watch in 2023
(JTA) — The 2023 MLB season is almost upon us, and it has the potential to be a historic year for Jews in professional baseball.
Last year, 17 Jewish players appeared in a game — a likely record. This season, the number could be even higher.
The slate of Jewish players in the game this year features stars such as Max Fried and Alex Bregman, on-the-rise big league talent like Harrison Bader and Dean Kremer, and an impressive wave of minor league prospects on the cusp of the majors.
With the World Baseball Classic over and Spring Training winding down, there are plenty of storylines for Jewish fans to keep an eye on, including a number of Jewish teammate pairs — and even a possible trio.
Opening Day is next Thursday. Here is a complete guide to every Jewish player to watch in 2023.
The big leaguers
Max Fried pitches in Game 6 of the 2021 World Series, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. (Mary DeCicco/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Max Fried, Atlanta Braves, starting pitcher: Fried is arguably the best Jewish player in baseball — and one of the best pitchers, period. Fried was an All-Star for the first time last season, finished second for the National League Cy Young award and has won three Gold Gloves in a row for his defense. The Los Angeles native grew up idolizing fellow Jewish lefty ace Sandy Koufax.
Alex Bregman, Houston Astros, third baseman: Bregman returned to form in 2022, hitting 23 home runs with 93 runs batted in as the Astros won the World Series. The two-time All-Star has become one of the best postseason hitters of his generation, setting all-time records for most home runs and RBIs among third basemen. Bregman has been an active member of the Houston Jewish community.
Joc Pederson, San Francisco Giants, outfielder: Pederson is entering his second season playing for manager Gabe Kapler’s Giants. Last year was his best since 2019, as he notched 23 home runs, a .274 batting average and his second career All-Star selection. Pederson played for Team Israel in the 2023 WBC and even helped recruit fellow Jewish big leaguers to the team.
Harrison Bader, New York Yankees, outfielder: Bader will likely begin his first full season in New York on the injured list — injuries that kept him from playing for Team Israel, which he had committed to do. In parts of six seasons in the big leagues, spent almost entirely in St. Louis, Bader has become known for his elite defense in the outfield — he won a Gold Glove in 2021 — and last fall became a breakout star for the Yankees in the playoffs. Bader’s father, who is Jewish, told the Forward that his son is considering formally converting to Judaism.
Dean Kremer, Baltimore Orioles, starting pitcher: Born in California to Israeli parents, Kremer was the first Israeli drafted into the MLB. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency during the WBC that Israel is “like another home.” Kremer was very good for Baltimore in 2022, posting a 3.32 earned-run average (ERA) in 21 starts — highlighted by a complete game shutout against Bregman’s Astros in September.
Rowdy Tellez, Milwaukee Brewers, first baseman: Tellez has the most power of any Jewish player, crushing 35 home runs in 2022. In one game in May, Tellez hit two home runs on his way to a historic 8-RBI game for the Brewers. Tellez, who had a Jewish mother and a father with Mexican heritage, considered playing for Israel in the WBC but opted to represent Mexico.
Eli Morgan, Cleveland Guardians, relief pitcher: Last year was Morgan’s first season as a reliever, and it seemed to be the right move for the 26-year-old righty. Morgan appeared in 50 games for Cleveland, posting a 3.38 ERA — though his first half (2.83 ERA) was much stronger than his second half (4.26 ERA). Morgan originally planned to play for Israel in the WBC but ultimately did not join the team.
Garrett Stubbs, Philadelphia Phillies, catcher: Stubbs played in 46 games for the Phillies as the backup behind J.T. Realmuto, the best catcher in baseball. Stubbs delivered the game-winning hit in Israel’s lone WBC victory, while playing third base for the first time, and has already said he will play for Israel again in 2026. (His younger brother C.J. is a catcher in the Astros system and replaced Garrett on Team Israel following an injury earlier this month.)
Richard Bleier, Boston Red Sox, relief pitcher: After not making it to the big leagues until he was 29, Bleier has grown into a reliable reliever across seven MLB seasons, with a 3.06 career ERA. Bleier was traded to Chaim Bloom’s Red Sox this offseason after two years in Miami — where his most famous (and unfortunate) moment was a three-balk at bat last year. Bleier pitched for Israel in the 2023 WBC.
Jake Bird, Colorado Rockies, relief pitcher: Bird made his MLB debut last summer and would go on to pitch in 38 games for the Rockies out of the bullpen. Bird was originally on Israel’s WBC roster but dropped out at the last minute due to injury.
Zack Weiss, Los Angeles Angels, relief pitcher: Weiss debuted in 2018, but it did not go well: he allowed four runs, including two home runs, without recording an out. That meant his earned run average was — and this is real — infinite. Four years later, Weiss made it back to the big leagues with the Angels, appearing in 12 games with a more respectable 3.38 ERA. After a solid stint with Israel in the WBC, Weiss is expected to factor into the Angels bullpen this season, though he could start the season in the minor leagues. Weiss has talked about attending Rosh Hashanah services as a minor leaguer in Montana.
Dalton Guthrie, Philadelphia Phillies, utility player: Guthrie is the most recent Jewish ballplayer to debut, joining the Phillies in September. He played in 14 games for the National League champions, and even appeared in a postseason game. Guthrie is the son of former MLB pitcher Mark Guthrie, who played for eight teams across a 15-year career.
Scott Effross, New York Yankees, relief pitcher: Effross is likely to miss all of 2023 after undergoing ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction (known as Tommy John surgery). Before his injury, Effross, who wears a Star of David necklace on the mound, was excellent for the Chicago Cubs and Yankees last year, with a 2.54 ERA in 60 games. Effross also would have played for Israel had he not gotten hurt.
(Also worth noting: Chicago White Sox ace Dylan Cease, the 2022 American League Cy Young runner-up, does not identify as Jewish but was on Israel’s preliminary roster of eligible players for the 2023 WBC.)
The prospects
Spencer Horwitz played for Team Israel in the 2023 World Baseball Classic. (Courtesy of Team Israel)
There are a number of Jewish players who are on the brink of breaking into the big leagues — including a few who could even make Opening Day rosters.
Jared Shuster, Atlanta Braves, starting pitcher: Shuster is the top prospect in the Atlanta organization, and in the midst of a stellar Spring Training, with a 1.45 ERA through 18.2 innings. He has a serious shot of securing the final spot in the Braves rotation to begin 2023. He was a first-round draft pick in 2020 and played in the MLB Futures Game last year.
Matt Mervis, Chicago Cubs, first baseman: Mervis played for Israel in the WBC and though he begins the season in the minors, he is almost certain to join the big-league team this season. The Washington, D.C., native belted 36 home runs in the minors last year, hitting .309 with 119 runs batted in while rising through the Cubs’ system at an impressive pace.
Zack Gelof, Oakland Athletics, second baseman: Another Israel player, Gelof will begin the season in the minors but is expected to make his debut this year. The 23-year-old is Oakland’s No. 3 ranked prospect and was a second-round pick in the 2021 draft. (His younger brother, Jake, currently plays at the University of Virginia and is seen as a possible first round pick this year.)
Spencer Horwitz, Toronto Blue Jays, outfielder: Horwitz played with Gelof and Mervis in the WBC, and will also start 2023 in the minors. But the 25-year-old Maryland native is a candidate to crack into the big leagues at some point this season as depth for the loaded Blue Jays.
Other minor leaguers with MLB experience
Kevin Pillar during Spring Training with the New York Mets, Feb. 27, 2021. (Alejandra Villa Loarca/Newsday RM via Getty Images)
Kevin Pillar, Atlanta Braves, outfielder: The MLB veteran signed a minor league deal with the Braves this offseason and has a chance at securing a spot on Atlanta’s bench entering the year. Pillar has embraced his status as a Jewish ballplayer.
Jake Fishman, Oakland Athletics, relief pitcher: The Team Israel pitcher made his MLB debut with (who else) the Marlins last season, and begins 2023 at the Triple A level with Gelof. He could be called up as bullpen depth.
Bubby Rossman, New York Mets, relief pitcher: Rossman made his debut last year with the Phillies, and it also did not go well. But after a strong stretch with Team Israel, Rossman begins the year in the New York Mets system. Despite his Yiddish-sounding name, Rossman is only 30.
Ryan Sherriff, Boston Red Sox, relief pitcher: Sherriff has four years of big-league experience under his belt with the Cardinals and the Tampa Bay Rays. He signed a minor league deal with the Red Sox this offseason.
Kenny Rosenberg, Los Angeles Angels, relief pitcher: Rosenberg made his debut for the Angels last April and appeared in three games over the course of the season. He begins the year in the minors but has a shot to be called back up as bullpen depth.
Robert Stock, Milwaukee Brewers, starting pitcher: Stock has pitched for four MLB teams across four seasons, plus a year in the Korean professional league last year. Stock pitched for Israel in 2023 and will begin the season in Triple A.
—
The post All the Jewish MLB players to watch in 2023 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
251 hostages were taken to Gaza on Oct. 7. The bodies of these two remain there.
Hamas on Tuesday returned to Israel the body of Dror Or — a 48-year-old father from Kibbutz Be’eri who was abducted with his family on Oct. 7. The handover was mediated by the Red Cross and confirmed by Israeli forensic testing. Or’s wife was killed in the attack, and two of their children were later released during a previous ceasefire.
In exchange, Israel returned 15 Palestinian bodies, completing the latest exchange under the ceasefire as talks begin on advancing to the agreement’s second phase.
Hamas took more than 250 people hostage on the day of the attack. With only two captives now believed to remain in Gaza, the transfer marks a grim but significant step in resolving one of the central flashpoints of the current truce negotiations.
The bodies of one Israeli and one Thai national are still in Gaza.
- Ran Gvili, 24, was a member of a police counter-terror unit who was on medical leave with a broken shoulder when he heard about the attack. He rushed south and helped evacuate fleeing concertgoers at the Nova music festival. It was later determined that Gvili was shot and killed by Hamas on Oct. 7, his body dragged into Gaza.
- Sudthisak Rinthalak, a 43-year-old agricultural worker from northeastern Thailand, was killed in Kibbutz Be’eri during the attack, and his body was taken into Gaza. He had been working in Israeli agriculture since 2017, and was regularly sending money back home to support his parents.
Hamas said Wednesday it remained committed to the deal and intends to return both bodies.
Related: Jews around the world pinned yellow ribbons to their clothes and wore dog tag necklaces. How will they continue to mark Oct. 7 once all the hostages have been returned?
The post 251 hostages were taken to Gaza on Oct. 7. The bodies of these two remain there. appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Boston’s unfinished Holocaust museum hoists boxcar into exhibit space overlooking Boston Common
(JTA) — Traffic on Tremont Street in downtown Boston came to a standstill Tuesday morning as a crane lifted a historic 12-ton railcar onto the fourth floor of the city’s upcoming Holocaust museum.
The museum, the first of its kind in New England, was launched by the The Holocaust Legacy Foundation in 2022, which was founded by couple Jody Kipnis and Todd Ruderman following a 2018 March of the Living trip to Auschwitz.
While construction on the site, which rests on the city’s Freedom Trail near the Boston Common, remains ongoing, the installation of the 20th-century railcar, believed to be the same type used by the Nazis to transport Jews to extermination camps, marked a major milestone for the museum’s creation.
The railcar, which measures 30 feet long, 12 feet high, and nearly 9 feet wide, was lifted into the new museum structure by a 173-foot tower crane before construction continues around it.
A group of supporters, Massachusetts officials, civic leaders, Jewish community representatives and Boston-area partners looked on as the railcar was installed, according to the museum.
“The hardest truth this railcar forces us to confront is this: the Holocaust was not carried out by the Nazis alone. It was carried out by people, ordinary people, who kept the trains running, who stamped the papers, who followed schedules, who chose silence over courage,” said Kipnis, the co-founder and CEO of Holocaust Museum Boston, in a statement. “This railcar will stand at the heart of the Holocaust Museum Boston to confront that truth.”
After the museum opens in late 2026, the railcar will rest in a protruding bay window on the museum’s fourth floor so that pedestrians will be able to see visitors enter the railcar but not exit, a choice the museum said it intended to symbolize “the millions who never returned and the freedoms that were stripped away.”
The railcar was donated to the museum by Sonia Breslow, a Phoenix resident whose father was deported to the Treblinka concentration camp on a railcar of the same kind. Breslow’s father, who later moved to Massachusetts, was among fewer than 100 survivors of Treblinka, where 900,000 Jews were murdered.
The railcar was first discovered in a Macedonian junkyard in 2012, according to the museum, and later transported to Massachusetts, where conservator Josh Craine of Daedalus Art Conservation spent the past six months restoring it for exhibition.
“Seeing this railcar lifted into its new home took my breath away,” said Breslow. “My father survived a transport to Treblinka in a car just like this. Most who were taken there did not survive. For this railcar to be in Massachusetts, a place where he rebuilt his life, is deeply personal. It ensures that his story, and the stories of millions, will never be forgotten.”
The post Boston’s unfinished Holocaust museum hoists boxcar into exhibit space overlooking Boston Common appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Peter Beinart is speaking in Israel. Cue the criticism from both the left and the right.
(JTA) — Progressive Jewish author Peter Beinart drew a volley of criticism on Tuesday from the boycott Israel movement as well as a right-wing Israeli group over an appearance at Tel Aviv University.
Beinart, who is an outspoken critic of Israel and a journalism professor at the City University of New York, spoke Tuesday evening in Tel Aviv with Yoav Fromer, a senior faculty member at TAU’s English department, in an event titled “Trump, Israel and the Future of American Democracy.”
A founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, publicly called on Beinart to cancel his visit after saying it had privately urged him to do so. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel is the BDS movement’s cultural arm and a leading advocate for boycotts of Israeli academic institutions.
“Palestinians condemn Peter Beinart’s event at complicit Tel Aviv University in the midst of Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” PACBI said in a post on X. “Whitewashing genocide can never be reconciled with any claim to humanism or moral consistency.”
In a press release, PACBI accused the university of being “deeply complicit in enabling and trying to whitewash Israel’s US-armed and funded genocide as well as its decades old regime of settler-colonialism, military occupation and apartheid.”
Beinart declined to comment to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. But he responded to the criticism on social media, where said he supports a boycott of Israeli academic institutions as well as a right of return for Palestinians and an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank — all principles of the BDS movement to which he has long subscribed.
At the same time, he said, while he supports “many forms of boycott, divestment and sanction against Israel and Israeli institutions,” he believes there is “value in speaking to Israelis about Israel’s crimes” by speaking at universities.
“I do so because I want to reach Jews who disagree with me—because I believe that by trying to convince Jews to rethink their support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, I can contribute, in some very small way, to the struggle for freedom and justice,” Beinart wrote.
The author of several books including “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza,” published earlier this year, Beinart is also scheduled to speak at Hebrew University later this week, according to Haaretz.
Beinart also wrote that “right-wing Israeli organizations have pressured Tel Aviv University to cancel my talk,” adding that he felt he should “take advantage of this opportunity to say in Israel what I’ve been saying elsewhere for the last two years.”
Matan Jerafi, the CEO of the right-wing Israeli activist group Im Tirtzu, sent a letter to Tel Aviv University’s president, Ariel Porat, on Tuesday urging him to cancel the event, according to Israel National News.
“Why is he hosting someone on his campus who does not recognize the State of Israel and calls for sanctions against Israel?” wrote Jerafi. “We call on Mr. Porat to cancel this absurd event. Stop tarnishing the reputation of Israeli academia. This is not Columbia University.”
The post Peter Beinart is speaking in Israel. Cue the criticism from both the left and the right. appeared first on The Forward.