The Jewish sports world is buzzing after Assaf Lowengart signed with the New York Boulders of the independent Frontier League, becoming the first Israeli-born position player to sign a professional baseball deal in America. Lowengart signed on February 9, and the local Jewish community in Rockland has already warmly welcomed him.
Lowengart is excited to join the Boulders, who play in a county with a Jewish population of around one-third, including many Orthodox Jews. “Being able to come back there with the big Jewish community, it’s going to be pretty amazing,” she remarked. “I’ve attended several institutions, and the Jewish communities were usually small. So it’ll be a fairly amazing experience to be connected to the Jewish community this time, to have them behind me, to have their support, and to be able to give back to them.”
This “pretty amazing” support from the predominantly Orthodox local community for the secular and nonobservant Lowengart exemplifies the Jewish unity — or achdut — that we so urgently need. With Israel at war, we’ve witnessed such achdut: secular and religious, left and right, have united over their shared Jewishness rather of focusing on their differences.
Admittedly, the Boulders are not the Yankees or the Mets; Rockland’s Jewish community is thrilled to have Lowengart in the area not because he is a celebrity, but because he is their brother. The fact that some of these admirers may be of a different religious strata than Assaf is irrelevant here, demonstrating that the words from the Shabbat prayer yekum purkan is still alive and well: “kol yisrael achehem” — “all Jews are brothers!”
Rockland’s Jews are carrying on a legacy of achdut and baseball. Shtetl Jews who moved to America in the early twentieth century were known to be fervent supporters of Jewish baseball players. Some people didn’t understand or even enjoy baseball, but if a Jew was in the lineup, they would show their support. This culminated in 1923, when the New York Giants baseball club experienced a difficulty. The cross-town Bronx team, the Yankees, possessed Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat, whose towering home runs drew fans, ticket sales, and victories from the Giants.
How can we bring fans and victory back to the Polo Grounds? Giants manager John McGraw remarked, “We understand that many of the fans in New York are Jewish, and we have been trying to find a prospect with Jewish blood.” They signed Mose Solomon, sometimes known as “The Rabbi of Swat,” to compete with Ruth. Solomon established the minor league home run record that year. In his first week as a Giant, Mose batted.375 and drew huge crowds of Jews to see him. But that was it: Solomon was out of the Major Leagues for good after just one week because of his poor fielding. The Yankees won their first World Series that year, have dominated the game ever since, and drove the Giants out of town to San Francisco.
The Jews who came to watch Solomon in the two games he played didn’t mind that he was a sloppy outfielder. He was a fellow Jew. We hope Assaf Lowengart better luck on the field than Mose and continue to show Jewish unity, love, and support.
