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Former baseball star Darryl Strawberry is now an evangelical preacher focused on promoting Israel
(JTA) — As part of his journey after a tumultuous decade and a half in the spotlight, former New York Mets star Darryl Strawberry is speaking at a pro-Israel event in his second career as an evangelical minister.
Strawberry, an eight-time MLB All-Star-turned-traveling-preacher, will be a panelist on Thursday at Extending the Branches of Zionism, an event taking place in New York City and organized by the Jewish National Fund-USA focused on support for Israel among non-Jews.
The panel will include participants from two JNF-USA programs that Strawberry supports called the Caravan for Democracy Student Leadership Mission and the Faculty Fellowship Program in Israel. Both bring non-Jews on Birthright-style trips with the intention of having participants subsequently discuss Israel on college campuses.
“I think the most important thing is, as a non-Jewish person, you have to be able to educate them about Israel,” Strawberry told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on a Zoom call. “I think in this country, a lot of people talk about Israel, and talk about the Jewish people, but they’ve never been there. So they don’t even have a clue.”
Strawberry, 60, was a New York sports icon in the 1980s as a leading member of the 1986 World Series champion Mets. With a picturesque, looping swing, the lanky 6-foot-6 outfielder could both hit for power and show off speed on the bases, drawing early predictions from sports analysts that he was destined to be an all-time great.
But Strawberry instead became a poster child for the team’s hard-partying ways, and he and fellow phenom Dwight “Doc” Gooden saw their careers hampered by drug addiction and scandal. Strawberry’s downfall included multiple stays in drug and alcohol rehab centers; multiple surgeries for colon cancer and losing his left kidney; and a charge for getting caught soliciting a prostitute in 1999, the last year he would play professional baseball.
Darryl Strawberry bats in a game between the New York Mets and the Pittsburgh Pirates at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh in 1986. (George Gojkovich/Getty Images)
Soon after that, Strawberry began attending an evangelical church and spent seven years “being discipled,” or learning from a teacher steeped in evangelical knowledge.
“I would have never thought that was the true calling in my life,” Strawberry said. “And I would have a chance to experience the true meaning of life and be able to go to places I always wanted to go.”
In 2018, one of those places turned out to be Israel, a country he says he knew nothing about until his years of religious study.
“Once I finally got there, it was like, ‘Oh, my God, it is so beautiful.’ It’s so amazing, to be able to experience something that I’ve read so much about, and to be able to walk those grounds,” he said.
Evangelical Christianity stresses the importance of being “born again,” or having a spiritual awakening centered on faith in Jesus. Evangelicals have at different points over the past two decades made up close to a quarter of the U.S. population. (The vast majority of them are white.)
Many also believe that the modern state of Israel is a fulfillment of God’s promise to give the land to the Jewish people. Christian Zionist movements such as Christians United for Israel, a group that claims about 11 million members, have played a significant role in the Republican Party’s strong support of Israel.
Many evangelicals additionally believe that when Israel’s contemporary boundaries eventually match up with the land that Jews were promised by God, that moment will kickstart the Rapture — or the return of Jesus accompanied by the end of times. A 2017 poll by LifeWay found that 80% of evangelicals believe the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 shows “we are getting closer to the return of Jesus Christ.”
For years, Strawberry — who is based at the nondenominational Journey Church in Troy, Missouri, about 50 miles west of St. Louis — has given sermons at megachurches and talked about his recovery story. More recently, he has also talked with prison inmates about turning their lives around. But promoting Israel has become a main focus for the Straw Man.
He demurred when asked for his thoughts on the country’s new right-wing government, which has drawn criticism from across the global political spectrum — including from some American conservatives — over policies it has advanced, including legislation that would sap the power of the Supreme Court.
“I keep it separated from the politics,” Strawberry said about his Israel advocacy. “I know what it’s about — it’s about the people, and it’s about the culture there. That’s what I know, and nobody else can tell me any different.
“I went there and saw, you know, the Sea of Galilee,” he added. “These are real places, you know? These are real places, and [biblical] things happened there in real time.”
New York Yankees Hall of Fame pitcher Mariano Rivera — who was Strawberry’s teammates in the late 1990s as a member of multiple World Series-winning teams — is also an evangelical Israel supporter. Strawberry said the two are friends and have bonded over their shared religion.
Strawberry wants to soon return to Israel, where he visited the Western Wall and was surprised that people knew who he was. Baseball is not a popular sport there, lagging far behind others such as soccer and basketball.
“I was blown away. I was like, ‘how did they know me over here?’” Strawberry said.
For now, Strawberry said he might track how Team Israel does in the upcoming World Baseball Classic tournament.
“How cool is that?” he said about the team qualifying. “That should be exciting, it’s an exciting time for them to be playing in that.”
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German government pledges record $1B in funding for Holocaust survivor home care
The German government has agreed to allocate $1.08 billion in funds for home care for survivors for 2026, marking the largest budget for home care in its history of Holocaust reparations, reflecting the growing needs of an aging survivor population.
The funding, which was secured following negotiations with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or Claims Conference, will now enable all Holocaust survivors currently on waitlists for home care to receive it, according to Stuart E. Eizenstat, who leads negotiations on behalf of the Claims Conference.
“We really believe now that, with the largest home care budget in the history of the Claims Conference’s negotiations with Germany, which go back to 1952, that we will be able to cover all those on waiting lists,” Eizenstat said in an interview.
Last year, Germany also set a record for Holocaust reparations, spending $1.5 billion overall. But as the survivor population ages, with the median age now at 87, the need for home care has become the dominant expense.
Nearly all of the Holocaust survivors who are alive today will be dead within 15 years and half will die by 2031, according to a demographic analysis published by the Claims Conference in April.
“As we’re in the last phase now of survivors — in 10 years, half of the survivors, and there’s about 200,000 now, will be gone — so we’re dealing with people in the very last stages of their life and and it’s very rewarding to provide a measure of dignity, both through these payments, but again, through home care,” Eizenstat said.
One difficulty during the negotiations, according to Eizenstat, came from explaining to German officials that although the survivor population has dramatically decreased over the years, the needs among the remaining population are much greater and require additional funding.
“Yes, there are fewer survivors, but those who live into their 80s and into their 90s are by definition in greater need of care,” said Eizenstat. “So even though the numbers are down, the needs are up, and that was a very difficult concept to get across.”
Eizenstat said that of the remaining estimated 200,000 survivors, over 80% of the population in countries that made up the Soviet Union are living below or near the poverty line. In the United States and Israel, around a third are living in or near the poverty line.
“I’m hoping that this can prompt local federations to supplement what we’ve done and to make sure that survivors in their last years don’t live impoverished, that they have a dignity that was denied them when they’re young,” said Eizenstat.
He added that this year’s negotiations had been the “most satisfying” since he began helming the organization’s Negotiations Delegation in 2009 given the distance of current-day Germans from the atrocities and the challenge posed by Germany’s economic crisis.
“These are people who literally weren’t born during the war, or if they were, they were young children, and yet they still feel a moral responsibility,” Eizenstat said. “It belies the notion that there’s Holocaust fatigue in Germany because it’s coming at a time of crushing financial burdens from Ukraine, from the need to stimulate their economy because of slow growth. This really is a combination of what Germany deserves great credit for under difficult circumstances.”
The negotiation also secured funding for a group the Claims Conference referred to as “Righteous Rescuers,” or non-Jewish people who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
“It demonstrates that we care deeply about making sure they get all the benefits of the Jewish survivors that they helped save,” said Eizenstat.
The German government also extended its support for Holocaust education programs through 2029, totalling $205 million over the next four years. The Claims Conference first negotiated support for Holocaust education from Germany in 2022.
“The survivors, the eye-witnesses, won’t be here, and we need Holocaust education desperately at a time of rising antisemitism, Holocaust distortion, denial and sheer ignorance,” Eizenstat said.
Eizenstat said he hopes the expanded funding for survivor care and Holocaust education will also carry a broader message about tolerance and empathy.
“I hope that these are the two major things that will draw as lessons and they remind us, at a time of traumatic intolerance in the United States and over the world, against minorities and others, that the real lesson of the Holocaust is to be tolerant of people who are different, to work out your differences and not to stigmatize,” Eizenstat said. “We need to be tolerant. We need to be humane. We need to all work together to solve our problems and not view each other as enemies.”
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Vance downplays ‘little skirmishes’ as Israel bombs in Gaza and Hamas fails to return hostages
(JTA) — Israel carried out a bombing campaign in Gaza on Tuesday in response to what it said was violations of the two-week-old ceasefire by Hamas.
Hamas, meanwhile, rejected the claim that it was behind an attack on Israeli soldiers and said Israel’s bombing was the ceasefire violation.
The two developments, plus Hamas’ continued holding of 13 hostages’ remains, represented the biggest threats yet to the U.S. brokered ceasefire in the two-year-long Gaza war. But U.S. Vice President JD Vance said he remained unconcerned.
“The ceasefire is holding,” Vance told reporters in Washington. “That doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be little skirmishes here and there.”
Vance traveled to Israel last week as part of a U.S. pressure campaign to preserve the truce and set the region on a path toward a deeper peace. Both Israel and Hamas have tested the terms of the ceasefire.
Hamas has not released the remains of all of hostages as required by the ceasefire and on Monday night returned remains belonging to a murdered Israeli whose body had previously been returned to Israel. Video footage from Gaza appeared to show Hamas placing the remains underground before retrieving them to hand to the Red Cross for transport to Israel — a charade that the Red Cross denounced as “unacceptable” in a statement.
Hamas said it would halt the planned release of another hostage’s remains on Tuesday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he ordered “immediate and powerful strikes in Gaza” following a meeting of his security advisors.
The strikes followed an attack on Israeli soldiers in Rafah, a portion of Gaza that remains under Israeli military control.
“The attack on IDF soldiers in Gaza today by the Hamas terror organization crosses a glaring red line to which the IDF will respond with great force,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. “Hamas will pay many times over for attacking the soldiers and for violating the agreement to return the fallen hostages.”
Hamas said it did not carry out the attack and that the airstrikes, which it said killed at least nine people in Gaza, represented a violation of the ceasefire. But it said it remained committed to the truce, which has so far allowed it to reassert control within Gaza. A second phase, required once all hostages are released, calls for Hamas’ disarmament.
Vance said he understood that an Israeli soldier had been attacked. “We expect the Israelis are going to respond, but I think the president’s peace is going to hold despite that,” he said.
The post Vance downplays ‘little skirmishes’ as Israel bombs in Gaza and Hamas fails to return hostages appeared first on The Forward.
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Vance downplays ‘little skirmishes’ as Israel bombs in Gaza and Hamas fails to return hostages
Israel carried out a bombing campaign in Gaza on Tuesday in response to what it said was violations of the two-week-old ceasefire by Hamas.
Hamas, meanwhile, rejected the claim that it was behind an attack on Israeli soldiers and said Israel’s bombing was the ceasefire violation.
The two developments, plus Hamas’ continued holding of 13 hostages’ remains, represented the biggest threats yet to the U.S. brokered ceasefire in the two-year-long Gaza war. But U.S. Vice President JD Vance said he remained unconcerned.
“The ceasefire is holding,” Vance told reporters in Washington. “That doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be little skirmishes here and there.”
Vance traveled to Israel last week as part of a U.S. pressure campaign to preserve the truce and set the region on a path toward a deeper peace. Both Israel and Hamas have tested the terms of the ceasefire.
Hamas has not released the remains of all of hostages as required by the ceasefire and on Monday night returned remains belonging to a murdered Israeli whose body had previously been returned to Israel. Video footage from Gaza appeared to show Hamas placing the remains underground before retrieving them to hand to the Red Cross for transport to Israel — a charade that the Red Cross denounced as “unacceptable” in a statement.
Hamas said it would halt the planned release of another hostage’s remains on Tuesday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he ordered “immediate and powerful strikes in Gaza” following a meeting of his security advisors.
The strikes followed an attack on Israeli soldiers in Rafah, a portion of Gaza that remains under Israeli military control.
“The attack on IDF soldiers in Gaza today by the Hamas terror organization crosses a glaring red line to which the IDF will respond with great force,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. “Hamas will pay many times over for attacking the soldiers and for violating the agreement to return the fallen hostages.”
Hamas said it did not carry out the attack and that the airstrikes, which it said killed at least nine people in Gaza, represented a violation of the ceasefire. But it said it remained committed to the truce, which has so far allowed it to reassert control within Gaza. A second phase, required once all hostages are released, calls for Hamas’ disarmament.
Vance said he understood that an Israeli soldier had been attacked. “We expect the Israelis are going to respond, but I think the president’s peace is going to hold despite that,” he said.
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