My Most Significant Jewish Moment

I was asked by my Rabbi to speak to our congregation during the High Holidays on my most significant Jewish moment. Since much of my life has centered around sports, I though I would tie that in to my presentation. 

I hope you enjoy my story as much as I enjoyed writing and remembering.

MY MOST SIGNIFICANT JEWISH MOMENT

BY: Paul Zipperstein

When I was asked to speak on my most significant Jewish moment, it brought to mind a number of events: attending Hebrew school and learning how to read a foreign language, becoming a Bar Mitzvah, going to synagogue during the high holidays, being honored with an Aliyah on Shabbat, or better yet, during the High Holidays, retelling the story of the Exodus from Egypt, unrolling and touching the Torah on Simchat Torah, lighting the candles on Chanukah, getting married under a chupah, a bris or baby naming for your children, and the myriad of life-cycle events you attend as a parent. 

I didn’t choose any of those as my significant moment. A man by the name of Sanford Braun provided that moment.

Baseball has always been a passion of mine. Some of my favorite movies are about baseball; It Happens Every Spring, with Ray Milland, Bull Durham, with Kevin Costner, and Major League, with Charlie Sheen. I even get a little teary-eyed at the end of Field of Dreams when Kevin Costner has a "catch" with his father. 

I grew up in a small town outside of Detroit, MI at a time when the neighborhood kids all met at the nearby sandlot after school, chose up sides, and played baseball until dark...or until our mothers called us in for dinner.

Our gloves were well broken in, our baseballs had torn covers and were sometimes even taped, and our bats were kept together with nails and masking tape until they literally broke into pieces. I played in Little League, Senior League, and Babe Ruth from the age of eight until I was 16 years old.  

Professional ballplayers held "hero" status with my friends and me. We lived and died with the Detroit Tigers of the late '50s and early '60s. Norm Cash, Dick McAuliffe, Eddie Yost, Frank Lary, the Yankee Killer, Rocky Colovito, and my hero, Al Kaline, the youngest player to ever win an American League batting title.

Today, Kaline is a baseball Hall-of-Famer and broadcaster for the Tigers. This was also the time when I began attending Hebrew school. I began to learn of my heritage and the rich history of my people. It was a time when I began to learn that to some people we were different because we didn't believe in God the way THEY believed in God. When you're that young, you don't like being different. You want to fit in.   

It was October of 1965. I had just become a Bar Mitzvah in January of that year. The Fall Classic, baseball’s World Series, was about to begin. It was the Los Angeles Dodgers versus the Minnesota Twins.

The Dodgers had a great pitching staff led by Sanford Braun…oh, sorry, you may remember him as Sandy Koufax. I knew that Koufax was Jewish, but I didn’t think about the timing of the World Series with the High Holidays. I just assumed Koufax would pitch the first game of the World Series, since he was the best pitcher in baseball.

The newspaper headlines were big and bold; ‘KOUFAX WILL NOT PITCH ON YOM KIPPUR!’  The announcers and news people wrote about it for days and even questioned his loyalty to his team. Koufax would not compromise and stood his ground. The Dodger organization, his manager, and his teammates supported him.

That was the first time I can remember that I was PROUD to be Jewish. I later learned that a former Detroit Tiger Hall-of-Famer, Hank Greenberg, also refused to play on Yom Kippur long before Koufax took a stand. Greenberg played at a time when baseball was not televised and his sacrifice did not receive as much attention. 

You would think that in today’s modern, well-informed world a Jew’s refusal to play on our holiest day wouldn’t be news. Apparently being well-informed does not improve one’s understanding and tolerance. Just a few years ago, Shawn Greene, then with the Los Angeles Dodgers, had to make a similar decision of playing or not playing on Yom Kippur. It was met with the same headlines and questions as it was with Sandy Koufax. 

I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Sanford Braun, but his refusal to play in a World Series game on Yom Kippur is my most significant Jewish moment. It taught me to stand up for who I am and what I believe in, and I remember it as clearly today as when it happened 43 years ago.