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Jewish Yankee Harrison Bader talks baseball over matzah ball soup and pastrami at Liebman’s Deli
(New York Jewish Week) — What better way to recover from an injury than some Jewish penicillin?
New York Yankees Jewish outfielder Harrison Bader, who is missing the beginning of the 2023 MLB season due to an oblique muscle injury, starred in a recent episode of “Home Plate: New York,” a program hosted by celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson. In each installment of the show, which is available on the YES Network mobile app, Samuelsson and a New York sports star visit an iconic New York eatery to discuss food, heritage and, of course, sports.
In the show’s most recent episode, Bader and Samuelsson visit Liebman’s Deli — a kosher spot that’s the last Jewish deli in the Bronx — which is just a short drive from where Bader grew up in Bronxville. Bader attended the Horace Mann School in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Riverdale.
“For Passover I wanted to give a shoutout to Liebman’s Kosher Delicatessen, an absolute classic Jewish deli here in the Bronx,” Samuelsson wrote on Facebook.
While at Liebman’s, Bader and Samuelsson met owner Yuval Dekel, who has led the popular Bronx deli for 20 years, after taking over for his father, who himself ran the restaurant for 20 years.
Dekel walked them through the deli’s process for preparing its beloved pastrami — even letting Bader apply the spice rub to pre-brined brisket. Bader, who called himself “a mustard guy,” said he grew up eating a lot of pastrami.
Once the briskets were ready to go into the oven, Bader and Samuelsson enjoyed some matzah ball soup, before sitting down to a full meal of pastrami sandwiches, stuffed cabbage, pickles and other classic Jewish delicacies.
Bader, 28, played the first five and a half seasons of his career in St. Louis before being traded to the Yankees last season. Bader’s father, who is Jewish, told the Forward that his son is considering formally converting to Judaism (Bader would not be considered Jewish under matrilineal descent, which says only a child born to a Jewish mother or a person who formally converts to Judaism is Jewish.)
Bader had initially planned to play for Team Israel in the 2023 World Baseball Classic that was held in March, but ultimately dropped out due to his injuries. He said he would “absolutely consider” playing for the team in the future. (Bader’s fellow Jewish teammate Scott Effross, whom the Yankees acquired one day before Bader, also missed the WBC because of an injury.)
Bader and Samuelsson dined on Jewish deli classics while they talked baseball. (E.H. Wallop/YES Network)
During his meal with Samuelsson, Bader talked about growing up in New York and playing baseball — and he credited his parents with helping to launch his career. “Obviously my father was my first coach,” Bader said. “Without my dad pitching to me every day, since I was 5 years old, I would be nowhere.”
Bader said his father likes to visit every stadium he plays in, and often travels to see Bader’s games when he plays at a new stadium for the first time.
He said his mother’s cooking has played a key role in his success, too.
After joining the Yankees last year, Bader lived at home with his parents during the playoffs, during which Bader enjoyed a breakout performance. “I was just in my little bubble — mother’s cooking me breakfast, grabbing coffee with my dad in the morning, then we’re going to play some ball at Yankee Stadium,” Bader recalled. “It’s so cool. It was so fun for all of us.”
Perhaps his postseason success was no coincidence? “Something in my mom’s eggs, I don’t know,” he said.
For more Jewish sports coverage, check out the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Jewish Sport Report newsletter.
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The post Jewish Yankee Harrison Bader talks baseball over matzah ball soup and pastrami at Liebman’s Deli appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
(JTA) — Israel criticized Ukraine Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Though the Ukrainian organization shared a mutual opposition to Soviet rule with the Nazis, it also promoted antisemitic rhetoric and some of its members participated in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. Melnyk initially sought cooperation with Nazi Germany but was later detained by the Nazis as relations with Ukrainian nationalist groups deteriorated.
The ceremony marked the latest flashpoint in a longstanding dispute over Ukraine’s commemoration of World War II-era nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration. In 2018, the country designated the birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a holiday, and in 2017, a statue was unveiled honoring a nationalist leader whose regime killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution.
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Glory to every Ukrainian hero! Glory to all our Ukrainian warriors! Glory to our people!,” Zelensky, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X marking the ceremony, adding that he was “grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
The post Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’
(JTA) — The U.S. Department of Justice sued the University of California for the second time this year over allegations of an antisemitic campus environment at UCLA, claiming the school “was deliberately indifferent to the suffering of its Jewish and Israeli students” after Oct. 7.
The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims UCLA violated the students’ civil rights by failing to intervene during pro-Palestinian encampment activity in early 2024. It follows an earlier suit that focused on the university’s treatment of its Jewish and Israeli employees, and comes 10 days after the university unveiled its own “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.”
“Earlier this year, we sued UCLA for subjecting its Jewish and Israeli employees to an antisemitic hostile work environment,” assistant U.S. attorney general Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release. “Now, the Department of Justice calls UCLA to account for its toleration of the equally appalling hostile educational environment against its Jewish and Israeli students.”
Requests for comment to the Justice Department and UCLA were not immediately returned.
The new suit draws on widely reported accounts of UCLA’s campus environment in spring 2024, when protesters in pro-Palestinian encampments clashed with pro-Israel counter-protesters, sparking violence and turmoil. The failure to protect Jewish students violated their Title VI civil rights, attorneys said.
Citing the report of UCLA’s own task force on antisemitism, published in response to the 2024 campus upheaval, the suit states, “UCLA’s leadership apparently preferred a do-nothing ‘de-escalation strategy’ to protecting their Jewish and Israeli students from an angry mob organized by peers armed with tasers, lumber, and a sword.”
The Justice Department is seeking several redress measures, including the return of all federal grants made to UCLA “during the time of UCLA’s noncompliance with Title VI.” The school had previously resolved several Title VI antisemitism cases under the Biden administration, and also reached a $6.13 million settlement with Jewish groups in a private suit related to the spring 2024 incidents on campus — a case cited in DOJ’s new lawsuit.
The Trump administration has sought to make a particular example of UCLA in its aggressive approach to campus antisemitism. Officials had sought to levy fines in excess of $1 billion against the public university for its alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students, until a federal judge intervened. Several DOJ lawyers have left the department over its UCLA investigation, telling reporters the case was “fraudulent,” a “sham” and driven by pressure to “find” evidence to support further legal action against UCLA.
In addition, some of the most violent clashes on the campuses included perpetrators on both sides of the conflict, leading some members of the UCLA Jewish community to complain that pro-Israel counter-protesters ultimately undercut the Jewish students’ legitimate grievances regarding the harassment they had been facing inside the campus gates.
And the campus environment for Jews remains tense. Last month, the UCLA student senate condemned a campus visit by a freed Israeli hostage, drawing blowback from a university regent.
The post Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic
(JTA) — Dozens of European Jewish leaders, joined by Israeli and American diplomats, decried Antwerp prosecutors who plan to charge two Jewish men with performing illegal circumcisions.
In an open letter on Tuesday to European and Belgian officials, 45 communal and religious Jewish leaders accused the Antwerp Public Prosecutor’s Office of “effectively criminalizing the act of circumcision” and infringing on religious freedom.
Earlier this month, Belgian prosecutors announced their recommendation to refer two mohels, or ritual circumcisers, to the criminal court following investigations into alleged illegal circumcisions.
In Belgium, the law requires all circumcisions to be performed by licensed medical professionals. The two men would be charged with intentional assault or battery against minors and the unlawful practice of medicine.
The European Jewish leaders responded that prosecuting mohels was “antisemitic in nature, reminiscent of efforts taken in Europe against Jewish practice prior to the Second World War.”
They said the potential prosecutions sent a message that “Jews are no longer welcome in Belgium” and “Belgian Jews are now second class citizens with limited rights.” Their appeal was led by the chairman of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin.
Israeli and U.S. officials have also accused Belgium of targeting Jews for practicing their faith.
Gideon Saar, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, called the prosecutors’ decision a “scarlet letter on Belgian society.” He was joined by the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, who said on X that Belgium “will be thought of now as anti Semitic by world.”
Belgium’s foreign minister fired back that it was “inappropriate to publicly criticize a country and tarnish its image simply because you disagree with judicial proceedings.”
“I recall that the proceedings in question were initiated by representatives of the Jewish community themselves,” said Maxime Prévot. “To portray those as a country’s desire to undermine the religious freedom of Jews is defamatory.”
The mohels were first investigated after complaints lodged by Moshe Aryeh Friedman, an Antwerp rabbi. He alleged in 2023 that six local mohels practiced metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser cleans the circumcision wound with oral suction. Over the past two decades, several infants in New York City were infected with herpes as a result of the practice.
The letter from European Jewish leaders did not address Friedman’s claims.
The post Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic appeared first on The Forward.