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Israel struck out at the World Baseball Classic, but the team’s Twitter account was a hit
(JTA) — Many fans were despairing as Team Israel trailed Puerto Rico 6-0 in the World Baseball Classic last week, but the team’s Twitter account had a different message.
“We will never give up,” the account tweeted. “After all, Moses was once a basket case.”
While the quip couldn’t stave off the team’s ultimate 10-0 loss, it came in the course of a win for Avi Miller, the 30-year-old marketing veteran who runs the @ILBaseball account. For Miller — who tweeted the tournament from 3,000 miles away — the World Baseball Classic was a breakout moment, nearly doubling Team Israel’s social media followers and exposing countless baseball fans to jokes straight out of Hebrew school.
Miller told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that his ambition was to do for Team Israel what the World Baseball Classic, an international Olympic-style baseball tournament, aims to do for baseball itself: deepen fans’ interest.
“Of course virality is nice, because it creates more of a following. But then once you have a following, what are you doing with it?” Miller said. “So for me, and it’s even continued through today, and it will tomorrow and so on, is to create engagement with people, create interest in it, help to create and raise the fundraising efforts, help to create awareness of these programs.”
Team Israel won its first game but dropped the next three to exit the competition early. Some of those games were brutal: Across 15 innings on March 13 and 14, Israel managed just one base runner against its opponents.
But on the team’s Twitter account, the hits kept coming. One breakout post, seen more than 100,000 times, showed a photo of a seemingly apoplectic Jakob Goldfarb (who was actually celebrating, despite what his expression suggests). Miller’s caption reflected contemporary meme culture: “When she says a latke is just a hash brown.”
when she says a latke is just a hash brown pic.twitter.com/K0jkVNHfeN
— Israel Baseball (@ILBaseball) March 12, 2023
In another popular post, the account outlined its “bubbie rankings,” using the Yiddish word for grandmother used in some Jewish families — and a homonym for the first name of one of the team’s pitchers. The list: “1) my bubbie 2) Bubby Rossman 3) other bubbies.”
From joking about storing a cooler of Manischewitz in the dugout to leaning into the “nice Jewish boy” vibe of the team, which was almost entirely composed of American Jewish ballplayers, the account’s sense of humor seemed to resonate.
Bill Shaikin, an award-winning baseball writer for the Los Angeles Times and a member of the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, called Israel’s Twitter “the best social media account in the tournament.”
“I thought the account was a wonderful mix of baseball information and witty nods to what your Jewish mother might say,” Shaikin told JTA. “If you know, you know. But, if you didn’t know, it still worked.”
The USA doesn’t need the World Baseball Classic to popularize baseball within its country.
Other countries do. Here’s a thread from one (from the best social media account in the tournament): https://t.co/fyifV9H1lF
— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) March 15, 2023
Miller was well positioned to tell Team Israel’s story. A marketing consultant living in San Diego, he worked in communications for sports teams and the NCAA before expanding his portfolio to include tech clients. He’s also been involved with the Israel Association of Baseball in different capacities for a few years, mostly helping with social media and video editing. The Baltimore native is a Jewish day school graduate and cofounded a Moishe House in San Francisco.
“I’ve had these two worlds collide,” Miller said. “I have a mentally strong relationship with baseball in my life, and then I have a bond to Judaism, from my entire upbringing. And for me as a passionate storyteller, my goal has been, both in years past and this World Baseball Classic, it’s been to help tell that story.”
That story, which included a late-game comeback win over Nicaragua and an impressive performance by Orthodox prospect Jacob Steinmetz, took place entirely in South Florida — a few thousand miles from Miller’s home in San Diego. Miller had been planning to be present at the tournament but was not able to — though no one would have been able to tell from the tweets.
Paging r/mademesmile – just watch Jacob’s face light up here in the dugout after his debut outing.
What a memory for @JacobSteinmetz6. pic.twitter.com/rCRJCk781Y
— Israel Baseball (@ILBaseball) March 14, 2023
“I think it’s similar to what a great YouTuber or videographer would tell you, is that to make the best video you don’t need the best camera ever made,” Miller said. “What I needed was the passion and the storytelling ideas behind it. Between that and then having contact with almost every single guy on the team and people on the ground, it gave me plenty of ideas to work with when it came to telling that story in a fun way.”
Miller said the feedback was overwhelmingly positive — and came from all levels of baseball fandom, from those who know little about Israel baseball, or even baseball, to die-hard fans.
“That to me is the best response to it, making it something that was approachable for all, but then still getting the signs of respect from the deep baseball people,” Miller said.
He also said there were, predictably, some negative responses. Miller said he made a conscious effort to shy away from politics, including keeping his own personal opinions out of the mix. Not everyone followed that tack.
“Could I have engaged with every single person that wrote in on any platform and was sending us messages about ‘Free Palestine,’ and [said], ‘Oh, you respect our boundaries now, because you don’t like the strike zone,’ all these different things?” Miller said. “Sure, I could have been sassy and responded within those spaces, one hundred percent. I could easily talk smack with anyone any day. But at the end of the day, that wasn’t the goal.”
Part of that restraint, Miller said, had to do with channeling the voice and priorities of the team itself.
“If you talked to Ryan Lavarnway, you talk to Josh Zeid, any of those guys about their views on Israel baseball, I can’t imagine the Palestinian conflict comes up as part of it because it’s simply not,” he said, referring to a Team Israel player and coach, respectively. “It doesn’t make that not an important thing to talk about, but in this case, the story was aside from that.”
In general, Miller said he worked to build relationships with the players and other members of the Israel baseball organization, to help craft an authentic presence of the team’s social media accounts — from the underdog mentality to the emphasis on team camaraderie.
And in that vein, it was tweets showcasing players’ talents that Miller said made him most proud. Not only did the players’ families appreciate the content, but some of their agents did, too — with one pitcher even asking Miller for video highlights he could send to teams considering bringing him on. Miller declined to share who it was, but at least one Team Israel pitcher landed an MLB contract after the tournament, Rossman with the Mets.
“The most meaningful to me are ones where I can put out content that showcases an individual or multiple individuals and then knowing that that impacts that guy in some way,” Miller said.
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The post Israel struck out at the World Baseball Classic, but the team’s Twitter account was a hit appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Man charged in a Jewish journalist’s death vandalized a Jewish business days before
The unsolved murder of a Jewish man in a public park, a synagogue desecrated with motor oil and feces, a bagel shop splattered with dirt, and the sudden and tragic death of a Jewish journalist.
Those incidents within a few miles of each other in a heavily Jewish neighborhood of Queens have put the Jewish community in that borough on alert since May. Ronnie Perry, who works at Benny’s Brick Oven Kosher Pizza in the neighborhood, said he can’t help but see a pattern.
“You know what the common denominator is, right?” Perry said.
Though investigators have not determined the motives in each case, prosecutors on Monday charged the same man who allegedly caused the death of the journalist with a hate crime for allegedly vandalizing the bagel shop.
“I was beyond horrified,” said Rachel Sales, daughter of the killed journalist, Cara Trager. “The fact that this guy did a hate crime … days before means that he could have been apprehended before my mom was killed.”
Perry, whose pizzeria is just a block from the vandalized bagel shop, told the Forward that the string of troubling incidents have rattled the community, and there’s not a lot visibly Jewish businesses like his can do to bolster security.
Nily Rozic, the Jewish state Assembly member who represents the Queens district where many of those attacks took place, said the incidents are more than just property damage or isolated violence.
“It really makes people feel like they’re being targeted as a community,” she said.
Last week, prosecutors charged Dawood Faisal, 22, with a hate crime for destroying property at Bagels & Co, a bagel shop on the corner of a major thoroughfare in Fresh Meadows that advertises itself as kosher in neon lights and displays Israeli flags. On two separate occasions in May, Faisal allegedly knocked over multiple plant stands outside the shop and, in one instance, hurled dirt at the outside wall of the store.
In May, Faisal was arraigned on charges of manslaughter for the death of Trager, a Queens-based journalist who was also active in her Jewish community. Faisal allegedly sped over 75 mph through two red lights and collided with two cars, propelling one into a crosswalk where it struck Trager and her husband, Michael, who survived.
Prosecutors have not presented any evidence that Trager was specifically targeted by Faisal, and authorities are not investigating the crash as a hate crime, according to a spokesperson for District Attorney Melinda Katz.
But even before the vandalism charge, Michael Trager told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he believed that Faisal had been “looking to do damage in a heavily Jewish area.”
Sales told the Forward her mom was passionate about fighting antisemitism, and the two often discussed the uptick in anti-Jewish hate crimes — including the bagel shop’s vandalism days before Cara Trager’s death on May 29.
“This is a tragedy for the entire Jewish community to understand, and beyond the Jewish community, this is a tragedy for New Yorkers, for Americans, to see that hate crimes don’t end at vandalism. People could die,” Sales said. “My mom died.”
Just a week before the car crash, Albert Itzkowitz, a local rabbi and former kosher bakery owner, was shot and killed while visiting Kissena Park in Queens. Police are investigating the incident as a murder but have not identified any suspects.
His family is calling for the killing to be investigated as a hate crime.
“Daddy was visibly Jewish. He was targeted in broad daylight. He was killed in a public park where he should have been safe,” his daughter, Leah Livshitz, said at a press conference in June. “His family deserves answers. The Jewish community deserves answers.”
Then in July, two Orthodox congregations in Queens were desecrated with feces and motor oil. Police are also investigating that vandalism as a hate crime.
Rozic, the first and only Israeli-born New York state Assembly member, said even as investigations are ongoing, she understands the incidents as “interconnected” and has heard from Jewish constituents who feel afraid.
“Context is important,” Rozic said. “When incidents like this are followed by additional violence, it compounds the fear and the trauma of the community.”
Anti-Jewish hate crimes have increased by 8.5% in New York City this year — with 205 reported versus 189 for the same period last year, according to data from the NYPD.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who previously represented a Queens district in the statehouse, has noted his administration’s 800% increased investment in the office of hate crime prevention. But in recent weeks, he has faced backlash from some Jewish New Yorkers after he released a video referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “war criminal” and calling on New Yorkers to protest the Israeli leader’s planned visit to the United Nations in September. Mamdani has defended his comments on Netanyahu as “critiques of a political leader, not of people of a specific faith.”
The post Man charged in a Jewish journalist’s death vandalized a Jewish business days before appeared first on The Forward.
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He stumbled upon Leonard Bernstein’s stubble on his way to finding a ‘Lost Mozart’
David Israel needed an electric razor, so he borrowed Leonard Bernstein’s.
It was the early ‘90s and Israel was about to make his first trip overseas as a representative of the Bernstein estate at the London Symphony Orchestra. He knew that European outlets had a different voltage and so he phoned up the maestro’s daughter Jamie to ask if he could use the one at the Dakota, where Israel worked as an editor, preparing the definitive scores for Mass, West Side Story and On the Town after Bernstein’s death in 1990.
“I took a red eye, so I’m there in the morning, and I was going to shave,” Israel told me in a video call from his home in Malibu. “All of Lenny’s gray stubble comes falling out into the sink. And I thought, ‘Well, if I get a piece of Scotch tape, I could save this, and we could clone him at some point.’ And so I did.”
Israel, who has composed music for Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp, knew he had a story to tell about his picaresque early days in the world of classical music. His second novel, The Lost Mozart is a kunstleroman that borrows quite a bit from life and, like the stubbly attempt to revive Leonard Bernstein, is about an effort to bring genius back to life.
The story follows Noah Wideman, like Israel a graduate of the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, who stumbles on a fragment of an unfinished Mozart string quartet. An unprecedented 627th composition from a life that lasted only 35 years.
Together with a crew of older men — a legendary classical music radio announcer, his partner and their collector friend in possession of the titular sketch — Noah works to finish what Amadeus started.
Noah, a gifted pasticheur, is primed for the task and, due to an early job at ASCAP, where he surreptitiously recorded the music playing at strip clubs that failed to pay their annual licensing fee, his skills as a detective.
Completing the work of one of the greatest musical geniuses is an act of chutzpah, something Israel knows something about. His own lost Mozart moment came shortly after college, when he made a play for the legacy of another great.
He knew Bernstein socially through the dean of the Hartt School, and chose the college in part because he knew the maestro often came to visit. Israel was scheduled to have dinner with him in 1990, but Bernstein died a month earlier. Israel produced a memorial concert and, on March 13, 1991, was at a party where he ran into Bernstein’s former assistant, who ran the publishing arm of his estate.
“We were just chit-chatting in the kitchen after this concert at this party, and he said, ‘What are you going to do when you graduate?’” Israel recalled. “And I said, ‘ I’m going to work for you,’ and that’s how the job came to be.”
Israel immersed himself in Bernstein’s scores and correspondence, in much the same way Noah dives into the Mozart archive. Bernstein was an idol, but Israel reveres Mozart, and picked him as a subject over Bach or Beethoven in part because of how prolific he was.
“The reason why I felt like this was good material for a novel is because by 2023, which is when I was writing the book, it seemed like the only way you could experience new Mozart was through fiction,” Israel said.
Not anymore. In June, just a couple of months before Israel’s pub date, a curator at France’s National Library found a notebook with sketches from the 22-year-old Mozart, who was in Paris to audition as a court musician at Versailles.
There’s more to the story, Israel said, including Wolfgang’s oft-overlooked older sister Maria Anna, a composer and musician in her own right who got top billing in the siblings’ early tours through the courts of Europe.
The sequel, Israel tells me, will feature her as another “lost Mozart,” and draw from Israel’s own time working on Bernstein’s archive, including his impromptu jam session with Yo-Yo Ma.
“It’s one of the funniest scenes in the first few chapters,” Israel promises. He can’t yet say more about what happens at the Dakota. Readers will have to discover those lost movements for themselves.
The post He stumbled upon Leonard Bernstein’s stubble on his way to finding a ‘Lost Mozart’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Michigan’s Senate race has become a referendum on Israel — and the future of the Democratic Party
Tuesday’s primary contest for an open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan has become a proxy fight over the Gaza war and a referendum on Israel supporters’ influence in Democratic politics. Democratic voters will decide whether to nominate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who is leading in the polls after assailing his opponent as beholden to the campaign fundraising group AIPAC, or Rep. Haley Stevens, a reliable supporter of Israel who has condemned what she called “inflammatory rhetoric” from El-Sayed.
Following a string of primary victories by insurgent Democrats who made condemning Israel central to their campaigns — from New York to New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Colorado — the outcome will become the clearest test yet of whether the vocally anti-Israel progressive movement may come to define the Democratic Party.
Recent polls show El-Sayed with growing momentum, leading Stevens by as much as 16 points.
Michigan, home to one of the country’s largest Arab-American communities, was already a national hot spot for voter pushback on pro-Israel politics as the birthplace of the 2024 “uncommitted” movement that protested President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza by submitting blank ballots in the presidential primary.
It also has an influential Jewish community that has become deeply invested in the race — and with some El-Sayed supporters among them.
Tuesday’s winner will have to prevail in the November general election, and success is not guaranteed: While Democrats are a majority of registered voters in Michigan, Republican President Donald Trump won the state in 2016 and 2024.
With Democrats counting on winning Michigan as they aim to retake the Senate, the questions looming over Tuesday’s primary aren’t just about the party’s direction on Israel — they’re also about whether running against Israel is a winning message in a swing state.
Democrats are facing a difficult path to winning Senate control even as polls show growing dissatisfaction with the Republican agenda.
A look at three possible scenarios shows the high stakes of the race for the Democratic Party and the place of Israel in U.S. politics:
An El-Sayed victory
An Emerson College survey of 700 voters shows El-Sayed leading Stevens by 16 points, despite more than $60 million of outside spending attacking him. AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, has spent $30.6 million backing Stevens, according to recent FEC filings. AIPAC also raised several million dollars for Stevens by directing its donors to online portals that funnel money directly to the candidate’s campaign. All in all, the Michigan contest is AIPAC’s largest investment this election cycle.
If El-Sayed wins, he would become the first Muslim nominated by a major party for the U.S. Senate and would immediately become one of the most prominent figures on the Democratic left. It would echo the victory of Zohran Mamdani in last year’s mayoral race as the city’s first Muslim mayor and the most prominent democratic socialist in office, with Jews divided between fierce opposition and fiery support.
But the immediate political meaning would be about AIPAC.
The progressive frontrunner has transformed AIPAC’s investment in the race into a centerpiece of his campaign message. Backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, El-Sayed used AIPAC as a political foil and a symbol of everything he says is wrong with Democratic politics: super PAC money, billionaire influence and demands for unconditional support for Israel. A poll of Michigan voters conducted by Data for Progress in April found that 64% of likely Democratic primary voters would be less inclined to support a candidate backed by AIPAC.
At a recent virtual town hall hosted by Progressive Democrats of America, El-Sayed compared his possible victory to David defeating Goliath. “AIPAC, if you’re listening, burn your money, come back and burn it again in the general,” he said. “I’m happy to burn your money for you, and then we can get onto the business of governing and asking whether or not our foreign policy ought to be dictated to us by the interests of a foreign government.”
An El-Sayed win would mark a reversal from AIPAC’s last confrontation with Stevens’ opponents in Michigan. In 2022, Stevens defeated Jewish Rep. Andy Levin by 20 points in a rare incumbent-versus-incumbent House primary after redistricting. Levin argued that the group was trying to punish him for criticizing Israeli policy and supporting Palestinian rights. AIPAC celebrated Levin’s defeat as proof that even a Jewish incumbent could not survive after crossing the organization. (Levin is supporting El-Sayed.)
It would also create immediate questions about how El-Sayed would operate in Washington.
Would he support Sen. Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in American history and one of Stevens’ most powerful allies, as Democratic leader if Democrats win the majority? And would he give Senate progressives new leverage over key votes on Israel?
What if El-Sayed loses the general election?
For Democrats worried about electability, the primary is only the first test.
The winner will face former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost Michigan’s 2024 Senate election and is now running with a largely unified Republican Party behind him.
Michigan remains one of the country’s key battlegrounds. President Donald Trump carried it in 2016, lost it in 2020 and won it again in 2024. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a moderate Democrat who was an intelligence analyst in the CIA and served three tours in Iraq, won her race even as Trump carried the state.
Recent polls found Rogers leading El-Sayed by single digits.
Some Michigan Jewish Democrats are already considering whether they could support El-Sayed, vote for the Republican, or leave their ballot blank in November. Jewish voters make up just 1.4% of the electorate in the state.
Stevens has sharpened those concerns in the final days of the campaign. She accused El-Sayed of blaming “all of your problems on Jewish Americans,” warning that his rhetoric would lead to defeat in the face-off with Rogers. El-Sayed, who has courted Jewish voters without moderating his views on Israel, rejected accusations of antisemitism.
“I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people,” he said.
A November loss would have consequences far beyond Michigan.
Democrats are already facing an uphill battle for Senate control after the collapse of Graham Platner in the competitive Maine Senate race.
Losing the seat being vacated by Sen. Gary Peters would further divide Democrats. Party leaders would almost certainly blame El-Sayed’s ideology, his vocal opposition to Israel and the progressive groups that elevated him for losing a swing state. AIPAC, meanwhile, would claim vindication despite losing the primary.
Speaking with reporters on Sunday, El-Sayed said he’s confident Democratic voters will rally behind his candidacy as they reckon with what is at stake.
What if Stevens survives?
A Stevens victory would offer a very different lesson.
It would show that experience, establishment support and a strong general-election argument can still overcome anger about AIPAC, even in the state where the uncommitted movement began. Even a narrow victory would preserve AIPAC’s reputation as one of the most effective forces in Democratic primaries.
But it would say more about Stevens and her personality. She first entered Congress in the 2018 Democratic wave, capturing a Republican-held suburban district. She then survived redistricting and defeated Levin in the bruising 2022 primary.
Stevens has the backing of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Schumer and much of Michigan’s Democratic establishment. And she leads Rogers in a November matchup.
By Wednesday morning, Democrats will know who won Michigan. It may take until November or even longer to know whether Tuesday’s vote marked the beginning of a new era in Democratic politics or another chapter in the party’s divide over Israel. Nonetheless, Democratic leaders still have to reunite a coalition fractured over Gaza and manage a growing progressive wing in the House.
The fight extends down the ballot
The Senate contest is not the only Michigan race testing the strength of the progressive left.
In Detroit’s 13th Congressional District, state Rep. Donavan McKinney, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is challenging incumbent Rep. Shri Thanedar with the support of Justice Democrats. The group, which helped launch Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the Squad, made McKinney its first congressional endorsement in four years.
In Michigan’s 7th District, former climate activist William Lawrence is running against two centrist Democrats in the primary, making an end to all U.S. military aid to Israel a key part of his campaign. The seat was previously held by Slotkin.
On a state level, Abbas Alawieh, one of the leaders of the uncommitted movement in Michigan, is running for a seat in the state legislature in a Dearborn-area district with a large Arab and Muslim population. In a sign of his growing profile, Alawieh recently met with former Vice President Kamala Harris.
AIPAC and the debate over Israel is also spilling into a neighboring state Senate race. Pro-Israel donors are spending heavily to back Justin Onwenu against former State Rep. Abraham Aiyash, an outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza.
It has also reached the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents. Michigan Democrats nominated Amir Makled, an attorney who represented pro-Palestinian protesters, after he defeated incumbent Regent Jordan Acker at the party convention. Makled faces scrutiny for past Hezbollah praise and antisemitic posts. Republican regent candidates Lena Epstein and Michael Schostak, both Jewish, have campaigned on antisemitism and campus safety. That race will be decided in November.
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