16
Friday, September 28, 1984 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
SPORTS
FOR ISRAEL'S DOUBLE "CHAI"
Continued from preceding page
and
FOR UNITED JERUSALEM'S "CHAI"
During the High Holy Day Appeal
in your Congregation
BUY MORE ISRAEL BONDS THAN EVER BEFORE
Remember — your Israel Bond purchase is your
most direct way of helping to build Israel. It ex-
presses your active support for Israel's economic
well-being and strengthens your partnership with the
people of Israel, sending a message that you stand
shoulder to shoulder with them as they seek to turn
their economy around.
AND AFTER YOU PURCHASE YOUR BONDS
Start a visit to Israel for your children, your grandchildren or for yourself by addi-
tional purchases of the new improved State of Israel $250 Certificates.
• Certificates at least one year old can be used as payment for El Al Israel Airline
tickets for flights to and from Israel under current provisions.
• When cashed in Israel after being held for at least one year, the holder will receive
Israeli currency for the following amounts: $260 — after 1 year from date of issue;
$275 — after 2 years; $295 — after 3 years; $320 — after 4 years; $360 —
after 5 years.
Above all Certificate purchases strengthen identification with Israel through enjoyable
and exciting visits.
,
ADAT SHALOM SYNAGOGUE
CONGREGATION B'NAI MOSHE
Rabbi Efrey Spectre
Rabbi Stanley M. Rosenbaum
CONGREGATION BETH ABRAHAM HILLEL MOSES
Rabbi A. Irving Schnipper
CONGREGATION B'NAI ZION
Rabbi Solomon Grushkin
CONGREGATION BETH ACHIM
CONGREGATION MISHKAN ISRAEL
Rabbi Milton Arm
Greenberg does not recall the
issue coming up again; it would
have been an issue in the 1935
World Series (the Tigers had
again won the pennant), but
Greenberg had broken his wrist
and couldn't play anyway. In-
terestingly, though, the question
did come up for a Jewish pitcher
who toiled for the Brooklyn Dod-
gers twenty years before Koufax.
This was Harry Eisenstat, like
Koufax, a Brooklyn-born left-
hander. Eisenstat also consulted
with a rabbi, who gave him simi-
lar advice, so he was in uniform,
though not scheduled to pitch, on
Rosh Hashanah, 1935. (He was
then a rookie.) The "happy holi-
day" belied its reputation, how-
ever, when Eisenstat was called
on to relieve against the New
York Giants and his first pitch
was hit for a grand-slam home
run.
Though it is now well known, Al
Rosen, the Cleveland Indians'
slugging third baseman in the
1950s and the second Jewish Hall
of Fame player (after Greenberg
and before eisenstat's successor,
Koufax), never played on Yom
Kippur either — though he, too,
played on Rosh Hashanah. The
rabbi he consulted, the famous
Abba Hillel Silver, gave him the
same justification: that Rosh
Hashanah was a "day of happi-
ness" in a way that was not true of
Yom Kippur.
Rosen, now general manager of
the Houston Astros, recalls that
the moment of truth on this issue
came for him in 1953, when he
was fighting for the league bat-
ting title (which he was to lose by
one point). True to conviction,
Rosen didn't show, but the game
was rained out anyway — which
Rosen (like Greenberg but unlike,
presumably, Harry Eisenstat) has
no trouble interpreting as an in-
stance of Divine, and benign, in-
tervention.
Cal Abrams was an outfielder,
for the Dodgers, Orioles, and
other teams, over about the same
period as Al Rosen was playing.
He reports occasional anti-
Semitic remarks being directed
against him (something Rosen
and Greenberg also experienced),
but was first made aware that
others saw him as Jewish, and
thereby mysterious and somehow
exotic, when he was playing on a
Dodger minor league farm team
Rabbi Betzalel Gottlieb
CONGREGATION BETH ISRAEL (FLINT)
Rabbi Paul Reis
CONGREGATION SHAAREY SHOMAYIM
Rabbi Leo Y. Goldman
CONGREGATION BETH SHALOM
CONGREGATION SHOMREY EMUNAH
Rabbi David A. Nelson
Rabbi Shale Zachariash
CONGREGATION BETH TEFILO EMANUEL TIKVAH
Rabbi Leizer Levin
YOUNG ISRAEL OF GREENFIELD
Rabbi Reuven Drucker
CONGREGATION B'NAI DAVID
YOUNG ISRAEL OF OAK WOODS
Rabbi Morton F. Yolkut
Rabbi James I. Gordon
CONGREGATION B'NAI ISRAEL BETH YEHUDAH
Rabbi Joel Sperka
YOUNG ISRAEL OF SOUTHFIELD
Rabbi Eli M. Goldberg
For Current Prospectus Call or Write:
STATE OF ISRAEL BONDS
Development Corporation for Israel
24123 Greenfield Road, Southfield, Michigan 48075
Telephone (313) 557-2900
D. DAN KAHN
General Chairman
MAX SOSIN
Synagogue Activities
Chairman
J ohn Lowenstein
of the Orioles is not
Jewish but
apparently gets a
kick out of the fact
that people think
he is.
Hall of Famer Koufax has been a
role model for Jewish boys.
in Mobile, Alabama. "I hear
you're a Jewish player," a farmer
in the stands called out to him, in
a tone of friendly curiosity. "What
are you, Jewish Protestant or
Jewish Catholic?"
The child of a not very tradi-
tional Jewish background, Ab-
rams might not have confronted
the playing-on-the-High-
Holidays issue if not for long-time
Dodger coach Jake Pitler (who
was himself briefly a player with
the Pittsburgh Pirates). Abrams
recalls with some amusement
that the first time he reached first
base as a Dodger (he had been
brought up by the club toward the
end of the season), firstbase coach
Pitler, in a variation on Groucho
Marx's "Hello, I must be going,"
congratulated him on making the
big leagues and promptly advised
him that "I assume you'll be stay-
ing out three days starting next
week." Abrams confides that he
had no idea what Pitler was talk-
ing about; in fact, the Dodger
coach had made a policy of not
working on any of the High Holi-
days and felt, as he told Abrams,
that I'd look stupid if you showed
up." So Abrams didn't. But after-
wards he worked out his own solu-
tion: "If my team was fighting for
a championship and the game
might count, I'd figure God would
forgive me and show up and play.
If not, I'D stay home."
Oddly enough, it was the same
Jake Pitler, not many years later,
who encouraged Sandy Koufax to
follow his instincts about not
playing on Yom Kippur. In the
1961 season, manager Walter
Alston scheduled Koufax to pitch
on Yom Kippur and had to change
pitchers at the last moment;
thereafter, he was said to keep a
Jewish calendar on his desk.