Uncategorized
How Israel built its most talented baseball roster ever for the 2023 World Baseball Classic
MIAMI (JTA) — As Team Israel celebrated its victory over Nicaragua Sunday afternoon in its opening game of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, there was proof up and down the lineup card of a months-long recruitment process that brought together a slew of major league talent.
There was manager Ian Kinsler, a 14-year MLB veteran and four-time All-Star. Big league pitchers Dean Kremer, who started the game, plus Richard Bleier and Zack Weiss. All-Star slugger Joc Pederson, and major league catcher Garrett Stubbs, who drove in the winning run.
For Kinsler, who played a central role in putting the roster together, the victory served as validation — even if he didn’t know what some of the players actually looked like until they arrived in Miami.
“Knowing the names, and then finally seeing all the faces and everybody coming together and playing a good game yesterday was very rewarding,” Kinsler said Monday. “It was a lot of fun.”
Pulling the team together took a combination of personal cajoling, a widely respected manager, Jewish geography and an effort to tap — and ignite — the sometimes embryonic Jewish identities of players who hadn’t given much thought to how their Jewish roots and baseball prowess might be combined.
“There’s quite a few guys who really want to help Israel and feel Jewish and buy into it,” Team Israel general manager Peter Kurz told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We evolve towards those players more — a player who says that he’s been to Israel, or that he’s connected to Israel. We definitely like to keep more than a player who was not connected at all, even though we try to go for the best athletes.”
The journey to assemble Team Israel, a 30-man roster composed largely of American Jewish ballplayers, half of whom have MLB experience, actually began back in 2021.
While playing for Israel’s 2020 Olympic team, Kinsler had conversations with Kurz and Israel Association of Baseball president Jordy Alter about managing the team in 2023.
“Once I developed the relationship with those two in the Olympics, it was a pretty easy decision,” Kinsler told JTA prior to the WBC. Kinsler had never managed a team before, at any level.
After he took the helm last June, Kinsler took a lead role in the team’s recruitment, working off a preliminary list of 50 players who were eligible to play for the team — meaning they were Jewish themselves, or the child or the grandchild of a Jew or married to one, and thus eligible for Israeli citizenship.
Kurz said Kinsler’s reputation around baseball was a key factor in offering him the job.
“There’s no doubt that Ian is one of the most respectable Jewish players that’s ever played the game before,” he said. “People respect him and they look up to him. Having experienced being in Israel twice, and playing for us in the Olympics, it just gives him that much more legitimization to talk to these players and ask them to come play for Team Israel.”
Kinsler is not the WBC’s only inexperienced manager who was chosen in part as a draw for players. Former players Mark DeRosa (United States), Mike Piazza (Italy) and Yadier Molina (Puerto Rico) are all managing, and Nelson Cruz is both a player on the Dominican Republic team and its general manager.
Ian Kinsler played for Team Israel at the Olympics in Tokyo after 14 MLB seasons. (Courtesy of JNF-USA)
As Kinsler began his recruitment, his first call was to Joc Pederson.
“It’s been an awesome experience,” Pederson told JTA. “I really enjoyed my time last time I played [in the 2012 WBC qualifier], and I wanted to do that again. Great group of guys.”
From there, Kurz said, he and Kinsler went down the list of Jewish major leaguers, calling each one to gauge their interest in representing Israel in the World Cup-style tournament. Given the timing of the WBC — just weeks before Major League Baseball’s Opening Day — it was largely a conversation about logistics.
“I think it wasn’t really necessarily the conversation about ‘Are you Jewish?’ Or ‘Are you eligible to play for Team Israel,’” Kinsler explained. “I think it was more of a conversation of ‘do you want to participate?’”
Pederson, who texted fellow big league players like Houston Astros star Alex Bregman and Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Rowdy Tellez (who is playing for Mexico), said health concerns and having enough time to get ready for the season were factors. New York Yankees players Harrison Bader and Scott Effross dropped out because of injuries.
And why did Pederson want to help recruit? It’s simple: “Because I like winning, and I want to win,” he said.
Israel hoped that having big-name players like Kinsler and Pederson lead the outreach efforts would pay off. While some of the game’s top Jewish stars ultimately did not join the team — namely Bregman and Atlanta Braves ace Max Fried — their work was far from fruitless, as this roster boasts the most major league experience Israel has ever had.
“I tried to get Peter to hold off as long as he could, so I could be the first one to get in touch with people,” Kinsler said. “Because I do think it helps hearing from a player.”
When making his calls, Kinsler said he shared his experience playing in the 2017 WBC with the U.S. team, plus “what kind of environment we’re trying to create for Israeli baseball.”
While navigating spring training schedules and injuries is certainly part of it, Kurz said there were many players who were excited for the opportunity to wear Israel across their jersey.
One of those players is Baltimore Orioles pitcher Dean Kremer, who was the first Israeli to be drafted into the MLB. Kremer, whose parents are Israeli, was born and raised in California, but has spent time living in Israel.
Dean Kremer pitches against Nicaragua in Israel’s first game of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, March 12, 2023, in Miami. (Courtesy Team Israel)
“Playing for Team Israel, anytime I get to put on that uniform is special for me,” Kremer said after pitching in Israel’s victory over Nicaragua. “It’s like another home. So every time I get to represent it’s one of the better feelings.”
Pederson added that the whole team “feels extremely proud.”
Ryan Lavarnway, a veteran catcher who has also played for Israel since 2017 and is seen as one of its leaders, has been vocal about how much it means to him to suit up for Israel.
“Playing for this team is super meaningful to me,” Lavarnway said after Israel’s exhibition game against the Miami Marlins. “It’s been really life changing. And I hope that this next generation of players that are new to this team takes the baton, and it means as much to them as it’s meant to us.”
One of those younger players is Toronto Blue Jays prospect Spencer Horwitz.
“Coming into this, I didn’t know what to really expect, this being my first time playing for Team Israel,” Horwitz said. “It’s living up to everything that people are saying. That environment we were just in was definitely electric.”
With reports of antisemitism on the rise in the United States, Kurz said players are more inclined to publicly identify as Jewish.
“I think a lot of these players feel, even more so, that they have to identify as being Jewish. Nobody’s trying to hide that at all,” he said.
Kurz added that Israel had an easier time recruiting top talent for the 2023 roster than in previous years, for a few reasons.
First, he said, both Team Israel and the WBC itself have gained in prominence over the past decade. For Israel, a surprising run in the 2017 WBC helped put Israeli baseball on the map, garnering excitement among both fans and potential players. And the WBC itself has grown more popular in the United States and around the world, with superstar players such as Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout suiting up for their ancestral countries, and MLB devoting more resources to marketing the tournament.
Geography also played a role. With most of the games being played in Miami, that allowed MLB players to more easily participate, as half the league has spring training in Florida.
When trying to discover Jewish players, there’s a certain element of word-of-mouth Jewish geography that comes into play, too. No player encapsulates that better than Ty Kelly.
“It’s easy to get the Cohens and the Levys. It’s more difficult to get the Ty Kellys,” Kurz said.
Ty Kelly bats during Israel’s exhibition game against the Miami Marlins, March 8, 2023 in Jupiter, Florida. (Emma Sharon/MLB)
Kurz recalled that about seven years ago, he heard from someone on Long Island who had taken his kids to a minor league game. Kelly was signing autographs and spotted the kids’ kippahs and told them he was Jewish. They told their father, who in turn told Kurz.
“And the rest was history,” Kurz said. Kelly, who has played for Israel since the 2017 WBC, has become another one of the team’s leaders. After this WBC, he will begin his coaching career in the Seattle Mariners organization.
The WBC’s eligibility rules also allowed Israel some flexibility in recruiting. Outfielder Alex Dickerson, for example, is not Jewish, but his wife is.
“This is about creating the best team possible within the rules,” Kinsler said.
Creating the best team also meant creating a strong coaching staff.
Kinsler recruited former Israel manager Brad Ausmus, who was Kinsler’s manager in the big leagues, and former All-Star and fan favorite Kevin Youkilis, the former Boston Red Sox first baseman.
“It was easy,” Youkilis said of his decision to join the team. “Being part of this is part of my heritage, part of growing up Jewish and being bar mitzvahed and all that. It was an easy yes.”
Youkilis, who retired in 2014, said coaching full-time isn’t in the cards for him, but he’s enjoying the experience right now.
“It’s remarkable how good a talent we have, a collective Jewish group of ballplayers that when I was growing up probably wasn’t that strong,” he said. “It’s good to see the next generation of ballplayers, and to be a coach, and to witness it and be around and help guys.”
While this team, and its coaches, is largely a group of American Jews, the uniform says Israel. Even with the fraught political climate in Israel, which is experiencing an uptick in violence and widespread protests over the country’s far-right government and its controversial judicial proposals, both Kurz and Kinlser said politics were not a factor for any player.
“I don’t think in general athletes are too scared of those types of things,” Kinsler said.
Kurz added that leading up to the WBC, numerous players reached out to ask questions and gain a better understanding of the current situation in Israel. But nobody expressed hesitation about identifying with the country. (There have not been protests or anti-Israel demonstrations, as there have been at times in the past when Team Israel plays in the United States and abroad.)
“They’re definitely interested, they want to know what’s going on,” Kurz said. “They want to know who they’re playing for.”
Kelly, who was part of those types of discussions in the clubhouse with the Olympic team, said the players are keeping an eye on the news, but they haven’t had many conversations about it yet.
“I think it’s sort of the nature of the team, having a lot of new guys and people not really knowing what their roles are supposed to be, as far as talking about that stuff, or what their opinions are supposed to be,” Kelly said. “I think that happens as guys get to know each other more.”
Building camaraderie was also a priority for the team. Prior to the tournament, Israel held a private screening of the new documentary “Israel Swings for Gold,” which followed the team’s Olympic experience in Tokyo.
Kinsler said that while the event was not mandatory, he encouraged players to attend.
“I think that’ll be a great bonding experience for us, and something that other teams don’t really have the luxury of using as motivation or bringing togetherness,” Kinsler said beforehand. “That could be an advantage for us.”
And with a tough draw in Pool D, which pits Israel against top teams including the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Puerto Rico, Israel will need any advantage it can get.
But Israel is no stranger to being the underdog. In fact, the team relishes it.
“We’re certainly the David against the Goliath of the baseball world. But you know, we love it,” Kurz said.
—
The post How Israel built its most talented baseball roster ever for the 2023 World Baseball Classic appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
NYC’s yeshivas can offer a well-rounded education. Will Mayor Mamdani help them get there?
In the most intensely covered mayoral election in generations, the wellbeing of Jewish New Yorkers became a major flashpoint. And yet, no candidate took a decisive stance on a crisis affecting tens of thousands of Jewish children: the educational conditions at Hasidic and haredi yeshivas.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has not said much, and the few comments he has made have raised concern for those of us who believe the schools are characterized by grave educational neglect. At a New York Jewish Agenda forum during the primary, he questioned whether the enforcement of basic education standards in yeshivas was possible. This is troubling, given that New York State recently gutted regulations to provide a sound, basic education.
In the absence of state oversight, new research has revealed just how deep this educational neglect runs. The sociologist Matty Lichtenstein captured the most granular data to date of course material in New York City’s Jewish schools, leveraging community researchers to survey dozens of people with on-the-ground knowledge of curriculum. Ultimately, the researchers gained a comprehensive understanding of what is taught in 171 grades at 85 schools — including haredi yeshivas.
The results were astounding.
In Hasidic all-boys schools, students spent an average of less than two hours per week on all secular subjects combined. At the height of their intellectual development, children’s growth is being stunted.
And STEM education was almost nonexistent for Hasidic high school boys – only 13% of male high school cohorts received any science instruction, and fewer than a quarter received math. The denial of a STEM education essentially slams the door shut on many career paths in today’s tech-forward workforce.
And though English received greater priority for Hasidic high school boys, many Hasidic boys have a limited ability to communicate with the outside world. A separate report that we released earlier this year about economic outcomes in the Hasidic community found that fully 13% of Hasidic male youth speak no English whatsoever, with much larger percentages languishing at subpar proficiency levels.
As an advocate for Hasidic and haredi education equity, I have seen that the impact of this deprivation extends far beyond the classroom. Too often, I hear stories like that of a man who had a bright mind and was a great Torah student — but when he enrolled in college to help build a career, he could not keep up. Without the English fluency to do his coursework, he dropped out within a year.
His story is tragically common, and it is borne out in the data. Approximately 63% of Hasidic individuals live below or near the poverty line, and Hasidic men earn about 30% less than their non-Hasidic counterparts.
Still, we have reasons for cautious optimism. The curriculum report found that some Hasidic boys’ schools — a small but important minority — include six to eight hours of secular studies per week. And Hasidic all-girls schools generally offered at least eight hours per week of secular coursework as well as robust religious coursework. This proves that traditional Torah study and secular instruction are not mutually exclusive within these communities.
I have met many haredi women who received a balanced education, and they credit it for their success. They’ve seen firsthand how access to both religious and secular learning opens doors — and how its absence closes them. Some have even stepped in to fill the gaps themselves, teaching their sons to read and write in English at home.
These women want schools that honor their faith while preparing their children for the world beyond it. And supporting yeshivas in moving toward this balance would fulfill a core Jewish value: helping others achieve dignity and self-sufficiency.
We cannot accept a reality where tens of thousands of Jewish children graduate without the basic skills they need to earn a living and support their families. Stronger education standards must ensure that Hasidic and Haredi students gain the tools to thrive as adults.
But elected leaders cannot take action without knowing which schools are denying students an education. And because the state has shirked its role in requiring comprehensive school assessments, existing public data on Jewish school curriculum is sparse. The mayor and the New York City Department of Education can play a key role here by compiling information on what institutions are teaching. Mayor-elect Mamdani should fulfill New York City’s responsibility to track what students are actually learning.
New York State has betrayed Jewish students by gutting education standards and failing to monitor what they are being taught. As the next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani must stand up for the right to learn – ensuring that every Hasidic and haredi Orthodox Jewish child receives an education that honors both their faith and their future.
The well being of the Jewish community depends on it.
—
The post NYC’s yeshivas can offer a well-rounded education. Will Mayor Mamdani help them get there? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Toronto City Hall Announces Plan to Fly Palestinian Flag Next Week
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow speaks to reporters in Toronto, March 8, 2025. Photo: Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press via ZUMA Press via Reuters Connect
A Canadian nonprofit organization has succeeded in persuading the city staff of Toronto to fly the Palestinian flag at city hall next week in recognition of the “State of Palestine’s Independence Day” on Saturday.
Braman Thillainathan, press secretary for Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, explained that the city’s protocol office had made the decision requested by the International Center of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) to fly the flag this coming Monday, not the mayor or city council.
“City Council provided city staff the authority to manage the public flagpole booking process based on policy approved by council in 1999,” he said in an emailed statement to Canadian media.
“The use of the city’s courtesy flagpole neither implies nor expresses support for the politics or policies of nations and/or organizations but raises the flag in recognition of those citizens or members that have made the request,” a spokesperson for the city of Toronto told the CBC.
ICJP lawyer Shane Martinez framed the raising of the flag as a move to counter racism.
“Visibility is something that’s particularly important,” Martinez said. “Anti-Palestinian racism is carried out in large part through attempts to erase Palestinian identity, erase Palestinian voices, and ensure that they don’t have a place in society, that they’re stigmatized, that they’re tabooed, that they’re othered and sometimes that their existence is denied altogether.”
Martinez described the activist move as “really a statement as to Palestinian resilience in the face of oppression, in the face of unprecedented oppression by Israel.”
The statement came days after members of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter led a mob that spilled blood and caused the hospitalization of at least one Jewish student after forcibly breaching a venue in which an advocacy group had convened for an event featuring veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Bashar Alshawwa, a Palestinian activist living in Toronto, called the raising of the flag “symbolic,” but said he believed it would “encourage other parties and institutions, individuals inside Canada, to join the journey for human rights and equality and justice regarding the issue of Palestine.”
The decision to raise the flag follows Canada recognizing a Palestinian state in September and Prime Minister Mark Carney saying he would support arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Earlier this month, Jewish groups also began circulating a petition calling for Chow to resign after the mayor chose to use the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s war to defeat the Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip.
“The genocide in Gaza impacts us all,” Chow said on video. “A common bond to shared humanity is tested, and I will speak out when children anywhere are feeling the pain and violence and hunger.”
The Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation pushed back against Chow’s rhetoric, stating that “the only Gaza genocide was the massacre perpetrated by Hamas and its allies against Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. Somehow, we doubt that’s what the mayor was referencing.”
The Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) called the mayor’s statement “reckless, divisive, and dangerous.” The group added that “the Jewish community expects the mayor to make this right by addressing the harm caused and taking immediate action to restore trust and ensure our safety.”
Toronto and Canada more broadly have seen antisemitism surge over the past two years, following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities and amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
In May, the J7 Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism — a coalition of Jewish organizations in Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States — released its first J7 Annual Report on Antisemitism.
CIJA provided the data and analysis on Canada, reporting that the Jewish community “was easily the most targeted religious minority, accounting for some 70 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes (with 900 total hate crimes against Jews recorded). Hate crimes against Jews increased by 71 percent from 2022 to 2023, and 172 percent in total since 2020.”
The report also documented that Toronto police tallied 164 hate crimes against Jews as of October 2024, representing a 74.5 percent jump from the previous year.
“What is at stake is not only the safety and well-being of our community, but the future of a Canada where everyone can live free from fear and discrimination,” CIJA interim resident Noah Shack said in a statement.
Uncategorized
An immersive dinner takes a culinary journey through the Jewish Diaspora
Dima and Yuliia Lytvnenko spent their entire lives in Odessa. There, the married couple owned a restaurant, Mama Cassala (Ukrainian for “Mama Said”) and a sausage factory. Both were destroyed in 2022 rocket attacks during the ongoing war with Russia.
Fearing for their safety, the Jewish family — they have three children, ages 15, 11 and 10 — fled to Spain in 2023, and then to New York City in early 2024. Today, they are the proprietors of Papa Did It, a beef jerky and cured meat company based in Staten Island.
Yuliia Lytvynenko has been surprised by how little New Yorkers seem to know about the Jewish community in her hometown. Lytvynenko describes Odessa as a “very Jewish city” with many Jewish schools and synagogues. “But a lot of people don’t know that the Jewish in Ukraine are still there,” she said.
The Lytvynenko family’s journey of displacement, preserving their heritage and building a home on a new continent will be told this month and next in New York as part of “Diaspora,” a four-course dinner and theater experience inspired by real-life stories of the Jewish Diaspora.
Produced by a group of Broadway alumni and entrepreneurs, “Diaspora” is the latest project from StoryCourse, an immersive dining and theater collective that’s focused on telling the stories of marginalized people. Running for 13 performances throughout November and December at a studio space at 245 West 18th Street, “Diaspora” treats audiences to performances based on real-life immigration stories of Iranian, Ethiopian, Mexican and Ukrainian Jewish families, accompanied by vegetarian and nut-free food that represents the four countries.
StoryCourse Diaspora creative director Charly Jaffe (left) and head of operations Andy Hartman in the Chelsea studio where the dinner-and-a-show experience comes to life. (Jackie Hajdenberg)
“I think this is an experience that will really widen people’s perspective on what Jewishness can look like, can taste like, can feel like, and it’s an experience that allows for everyone to have a seat at the table,” said Adam Kantor, the director of “Diaspora,” whose previous credits include “The Band’s Visit” and “Rent.”
“We’re in really divisive times now in terms of anti-Jewishness and anti-immigration policies,” Kantor added. “So it feels like this is sort of a latent sociopolitical act, but it’s one that does not aim to be overtly political, necessarily. It aims to bring people together over community and food and heart.”
Inspired by the Passover seder — that is, combining storytelling with a festive meal — StoryCourse was founded in 2017 by Kantor, composer Benj Pasek and Brian Bordainick, the creator of the membership-based supper club Dinner Lab, all of whom are Jewish. StoryCourse went viral with its virtual “Saturday Night Seder” in 2020 — held as a fundraiser for COVID-19 emergency relief — and has also put on shows centering the stories of LGBTQ+ chefs.
“Diaspora” embraces the Jewish roots of StoryCourse, according to Charly Jaffe, the organization’s creative director. “In a time where so many people are feeling like they’ve lost their sense of home, whether it’s a literal home, political home, or the-earth-we-live-on home … it’s looking at what we do at StoryCourse, and what our Jewish lineage — what we have in our history — actually has so much value for us,” Jaffe said.
The three other Jewish families at the heart of “Diaspora” are Stephanie and Yvonne Ohebshalom, daughter and wife of real estate developer Fred Ohebshalom. who have Iranian roots; Beejhy Barhany, the owner of Harlem’s Tsion Café, who came to New York from Ethiopia via Sudan and Israel, and Fany Gerson, owner of Fan-Fan Doughnuts in Bedford-Stuyvesant, who hails from Mexico.
“People think: ‘Jewish New York,’ and they just think, like, Katz’s Deli, or Borough Park, or neurotic Woody Allen,” Jaffe said. “There’s so much richness in [the] global Jewish tapestry.”
Andy Hartman, StoryCourse’s head of operations, said he hopes audiences will leave with an “expanded understanding” of Jews and Jewish food. “I think so much of what we have been trying to do is sort of push back on the Ashkenormativity that exists in the United States, more broadly, but even in New York, in terms of what Jews look like and what Jewish food is,” he said.
“Diaspora” will explore these themes over four courses adapted from the four families’ own recipes, including Persian naan-o-paneer and Shirazi salad; Ethiopian messer wot lentil stew; Ukrainian borscht, and Mexican dessert flavors like guava with cheese. They’ll be prepared for guests by two Jewish chefs, Dave Dreifus, the founder of Best Damn Cookies, and Lottie Gurvis, owner of Oh My Noshhh private dining.
About 50 guests each night will travel the world from their dinner plate while learning about the lives of these real, New York-based Jewish families.
Ethiopian chef Barhany, who is also the author of “Gursha: Timeless Recipes for Modern Kitchens, from Ethiopia, Israel, Harlem, and Beyond” is participating in “Diaspora” because, she said, “I wanted to bring the perspective of other Jews that we have to immerse ourselves and celebrate our differences and be more inclusive.”
Beejhy Barhany opened Tsion Café in 2014. (Josefin Dolsten)
Barhany, 49, was born in Ethiopia; as a child, she spent three years in Sudan before her family arrived in Israel, where she eventually served in the Israel Defense Forces. After traveling the world, Barhany settled in New York, where she’s lived for more than two decades.
“I don’t think there is much knowledge on the flavors, traditions and what Ethiopian Jews have to offer to the landscape of the deliciousness of Jewish food,” Barhany said. “Tsion Café, or myself — we’re adding to that landscape of the diverse, unique flavors that the Jewish diaspora has to offer.”
Yuliia Lytvynenko said she hopes “Diaspora” informs its New York audience about contemporary Ukrainian Jewish life. (Case in point: Her husband’s surname was not originally Lytvynenko — his father, for whom Papa Did It is named, changed the family’s surname from Rabinovich due to rising antisemitism in Ukraine in the 1970s.)
During the Lytvynenkos’ course — the third — Ukrainian borscht, a favorite dish of the Lytvynenko children, will be served, along with a few creative interpretations of traditional Ukrainian spreads.
Asked what he hopes audiences will walk away with from the show, director Kantor said: “I hope that they will be crying into their borscht.”
“StoryCourse: Diaspora” will run for 13 performances throughout November and December at 245 West 18th St. Tickets, $180, include a four-course meal and wine.
—
The post An immersive dinner takes a culinary journey through the Jewish Diaspora appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.