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THE JEWISH
Shabbos Shuva • Vayelech • Candlelighting 6:40 pm • Luach page 6
September 18, 2015 • 5 Tishrei 5776
Books, Parsha, Teshuva the Jewish Star’s columnists: inside
STAR Vol 14, No. 36 • TheJewishStar.com
the newspaper of oUr orthodox commUnities
50 years ago, Koufax proud When America’s #1 southpaw sacrificed a World Series opener to honor Yom Kippur
S
anford Braun “Sandy” Koufax is perhaps the most dominating lefthanded starting pitcher in baseball history. Some say he was the greatest lefty to ever take the mound. In a career spanning 12 years with the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers from 1955 to 1966, Koufax won 165 games and lost only 87. Three times he was voted as the Cy Young award winner (baseball’s most outstanding pitcher). Four times he led all pitchers in strikeouts. And in four immortal games, he held his opponents altogether hitless. Yet to the Jewish community, it is a game Koufax did not pitch in that resonates as perhaps his most towering accomplishment. It was 50 years ago on Yom Kippur: Oct. 6, 1965. Game one of the World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Minnesota Twins. Sandy Koufax
Special to The Jewish Star by Lonnie Ostrow was the obvious choice to start the series against the mighty Twins lineup. He had just completed one of the most spectacular pitching seasons in baseball history. His incomparable won/loss record of 26–8 was powered by a record 382 strikeouts of opposing batters. And yet, when his Dodgers teammates took the field that evening at Metropolitan Stadium in Minneapolis, Sandy Koufax was not in the ballpark. He was back in his room at the St. Paul hotel quietly observing the most solemn day on the Jewish calendar. Back in 1965, the World Series began just days after the regular baseball season ended. There were no playoff rounds. No wildcard teams. Just the first-place team
from the American League vs. the top squad from the National League to crown a champion. When Dodger’s manager, Walter Alston went to set his rotation for the ’65 series, it was not an injury, or fatigue to his star, but a scheduling conflict of spiritual proportions that prevented him from using his ace hurler in game #1. For the first ten years of his Major League career, Sandy Koufax never pitched in a game on either Rosh Hashanah, or Yom Kippur. “Taking off on Yom Kippur wasn’t a big deal, he said in a 2014 Jewish Week interview. “It was something I always did.” In the early years, he was infrequently used as a relief pitcher and an occasional starter with no defined schedule. Not that he would have pitched had his turn come up. He instead took the day off and spent it with his parents. Furthermore, the high holidays often took place after the regular season ended. If the Dodgers didn’t qualify for the World Series, there was no conflict to ponder. But for game #1 of the 1965 World SeContinued on page 18
UCalifornia downplays rising threats to Jewish students Viewpoint When the Regents of the 10-school University of California (UC) system discuss a statement of principles against intolerance this week, it is unclear if anti-Semitism — clearly rising on their campuses — will be given specific consideration. larmed by a rash of anti-Semitic incidents on UC campuses, a large number of Jewish scholars and activists have urged that the Regents adopt, in the context of their deliberations, the U.S. State Department’s working definition of anti-Semitism as an essential step in dealing with this grave problem. What the incident count at UC schools demonstrates is that the intellectually modish anti-Zionism that animates campus activism on Middle East issues has effortlessly combined with anti-Semitic
The new school year began just before Rosh Hashana for most Long Islanders. At the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway, HAFTR parent and faculty member Robin Maron poses with her daughter Lilly. Schools news on page 23.
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invective of the more traditional sort. “Zionists should be sent to the gas chamber,” as one bathroom wall scrawling at UC Berkeley declared, sounds like a slogan coined at a messaging workshop jointly convened by the American Nazi Party and Students for Justice in Palestine. In a similar vein, the grilling of a Jewish candidate for student government at UCLA over how her origins might impact her views on Israel brings to mind Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s disdain for “rootless cosmopolitans,” along with the brutal anti-Semitic campaign that accompanied it. I was one of 34 scholars and experts on anti-Semitism who signed an Aug. 31 letter to UC President Janet Napolitano and the UC Regents supporting the adoption of the State Department definition, which underlines that visceral attacks on Israel, and especially calls for its destruction, are anti-Semitic. Our letter quoted the late Professor Robert Wistrich, a truly irreplaceable authority on antiSemitism and its history, observing that anti-ZionContinued on page 19