By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – As the Major League Baseball season is about to get underway, I’m disappointed to report that our San Diego Padres do not have any Jewish player on the roster. However, there are eight Jewish players on National League teams that the Padres will play during the regular season. Garrett Stubbs, a catcher with the Philadelphia Phillies, grew up in San Diego County and regularly attended Temple Solel in Encinitas. Other Jewish Phillies are pitcher Bubby Rossman and infielder/outfielder Dalton Guthrie.
Other Jewish players include Rowdy Tellez, a first baseman for the Milwaukee Brewers, who played for Team Mexico in the 2023 World Baseball Classic. One memorable moment came when he struck out during a semifinal game against Japan and in frustration snapped a bat across his knee. Other Jewish players in the National League include pitcher Max Fried and outfielder Kevin Pillar of the Atlanta Braves; pitcher Jake Bird of the Colorado Rockies; and outfielder Joc Pederson of the San Francisco Giants.
In the American League, nine Jewish players include New York Yankees center fielder Harrison Bader and pitcher Scott Effros; Los Angeles Angels pitchers Kenny Rosenberg and Zach Weiss; Boston Red Sox pitcher Richard Bleier; Houston Astros third baseman Alex Bregman; Oakland A’s pitcher Jake Fishman; Baltimore Orioles pitcher Dean Kremer, and Cleveland Guardians pitcher Eli Morgan.
In the recent World Baseball Classic, Team Israel had listed on its roster Bird, Bleier, Fishman, Kremer, Pederson, Rossman, Stubbs, and Weiss. The team won one game against Nicaragua and lost three games respectively to Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Venezuela, thereby failing to advance to the quarterfinals.
Sabras or Prickly-Pear Cactuses
Next time you see a prickly pear cactus, you can feel a botanical connection with Israel. The nickname for an Israeli is “sabra,” after the prickly-pear cactus that is said to be prickly on the outside but soft on the inside.
Those who first meet Israelis are sometimes put off by what may seem to be “abruptness.” However, once you get to know and befriend Israelis, you will find that for the most part, they are very caring people, whose compassion often goes far beyond the confines of their families to fellow Israelis as well as to Jews and philosemites throughout the world.
At Santee Lakes, one of the wild botanical species that visitors may encounter is the coast prickly-pear (opuntia littoralis) as shown at the bottom of this signboard.
*
Jewish Political News
NATIONAL — A remembrance ceremony for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was held Friday, March 17, at the U.S. Supreme Court. Ginsburg, who would have turned 90 on March 15, was described by Chief Justice John Roberts as a “woman of conviction, courage and quiet compassion. … Small in stature, she stands as a giant in the history of this court.” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Ginsburg was the “chief tactician in the campaign for equal rights for women.”
Pop Culture Classroom, a Denver-based arts and education non-profit organization, has issued a comic book about Justice Ginsburg, which may be accessed here. It tells how Ginsburg, while an attorney in 1973, argued before the Supreme Court in Frontiero v. Richardson that gender should play no role in determining a person’s qualifications for a job. As a professor at Rutgers University, she had protested against unequal pay for male and female professors, and later as a tenured professor at Columbia Law School she founded the Women’s Rights Project through the ACLU. After being appointed in 1993 by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. Supreme Court, Ginsburg voted in the majority in the 1996 U.S. v. Virginia ruling that the Virginia Military Academy’s all-male admissions policy violated women’s right. In 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges, she joined the majority in ruling that same-sex couples have the right to marry. The following year in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellersted, she again voted in the majority ruling that Texas may not place burdensome restrictions on abortion services. One of her most famous dissents was in the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., in which she argued that the court should have found for Lilly Ledbetter who had claimed she was paid less for equal work because she was a woman. Congress heeded Ginsburg’s dissent, passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act two years later. The comic book, nooted that including Ginsburg and her predecessor Sandra Day O’Connor, there have been only six women serving on the Supreme Court since its founding, four of them currently, (Amy Coney Barrett, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayer), compared to 115 men. The comic book also has an extensive teaching guide for classroom discussion. My only quibble with the comic book is that it never mentions that Ginsburg was Jewish, although this background was important to her desire for tikkun olam, repairing the world.
*
A Gallup Poll conducted in February found that Democrats are more sympathetic to the Palestinians than to Israelis by a margin of 49 percent to 38 percent, with the balance of respondents saying they did not favor either side. Republicans overwhelmingly favored Israelis, 78 percent to 11 percent for the Palestinians, and independents 49 percent favored Israelis compared to 11 percent for Palestinians. Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said the poll uncovered “an extremely troubling trend. Many elected Democrats claim to be pro-Israel, but party activists and rank-and-file members are increasingly indifferent or even hostile to the Jewish state. It’s long past time for Democratic leaders to admit that they have a problem that must be addressed to restore the historic bipartisan support for Israel.” Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, commented, “Democrats—from President Biden on down—strongly support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as security assistance or Israel and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians. The Israel-Palestinian conflict is not a zero-sum game, and thus polling that presents it as a binary choice is inherently flawed. The bottom line is that there is no evidence of erosion of support for Israel among Democrats—including those in Congress or the White House—and that is what matters.”
*
(Photo: Wikipedia)
Historian Walter Isaacson was one of 11 recipients of the National Humanities Medal and actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus was one of 12 receiving the National Medal of the Arts from President Joe Biden at a White House ceremony on Tuesday, March 21. Dreyfus’s citation read: “As one of the most decorated comedic actors of our time, Julia Louis-Dreyfus has blazed a trail for women in comedy and across American life through her commitment to excellence and the power of her example.” When she received her medal, the actress who starred in Veep pretended it was so heavy it forced her to almost sink to her knees. President Biden in good spirit asked her if she preferred portraying the vice president or the president in the television comedy series. Isaacson’s citation said: “Through the stories of our Nation’s remarkable citizens, Walter Isaacson’s work, words, and wisdom bridge divides between science and the humanities and between opposing philosophies, elevating discourse and our understanding of who we are as a Nation.”
*
Adam Frisch, a former Aspen, Colorado, city councilman, who lost to Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert in 2022 by 546 votes, is campaigning again for the same congressional seat, which includes 27 rural counties. The Jewish Democrat says “the ranchers and farmers and small business owners that I met in the small towns we went to …want the circus to end. Something like 30 to 40% of the Republicans I mt want their party back from extremists like Lauren Boebert. They want someone in elected office who will focus on the district and its needs.” Frisch’s wife, Katy, commented, “I’ll be honest: the first campaign was hard. But defeating Lauren Boebert is just too important to sit this out. Adam’s all-in to finish the job in 2024.”
*
U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada, is one of five Democrats up for reelection in 2024 whose seats are being targeted by the Republicans’ Senate Campaign Committee.
*
CALIFORNIA — Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, a former president pro tempore of the state Senate, has been traveling around the state with Gov. Gavin Newsom to promote a proposed $3 billion bond issue to build facilities and treat homeless people with mental illnesses.
*
SAN DIEGO COUNTY — Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer says her reelection will help to safeguard LGBTQ+ rights in San Diego County. “As the only LGBTQ+ member of the Board of Supervisors, my heart breaks at the stories I hear from LGBTQ youth in San Diego who were kicked-out of their homes after coming out to their parents,” she stated in a fundraising appeal. “That’s why I championed a first-of-its-kind $5 million dollar investment for homeless prevention and outreach efforts targeted at LGBTQ+ young people. From international headlines to social media trolls – there are still many in our region who want to erase us.”
*
San Diego City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera has endorsed Assemblyman Brian Maienschein for San Diego City Attorney. The incumbent, Mara Elliott, will be ineligible to run again in 2024 because of term limits.
*
Tara McGrath has been nominated by President Joe Biden to replace Randy Grossman as the U.S. Attorney based in San Diego. She had worked in the U.S. Attorney’s office from 2008 to 2019 before entering private practice. Her nomination was praised by the two Democratic U.S. Senators from California: Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla.
*
Jewish Celebrities
A civil trial is underway in Park City, Utah, pitting actress Gwyneth Paltrow against retired optometrist Terry Sanderson in a case arising from a 2016 collision on the ski slopes of the Deer Valley Resort. Sanderson says Paltrow crashed into him, causing him physical injuries. Au contraire, says the actress, Sanderson came from uphill and skied into her.
*
Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com