I go to Red Sox Jewish Heritage Night whenever I can. I’m a diehard Red Sox fan, the game usually comes around on a pleasant spring evening, and I always end up running into all kinds of people I know.
This year, the game arrived with the last-place Sox sporting the worst home record in baseball and a four-game home losing streak, but that was not going to dampen expectations. Everyone I knew who was going was pretty fired up about going.
Our family rolled into Fenway a full hour before first pitch to make sure to snag the correct sizes for the gorgeous “Fenway Greens” Hebrew-lettered jersey, got food and drinks before the long lines at the concessions, and settled in for a few hours of baseball and Jewish heritage.
But it was more than that this year. It was way more. It wasn’t just a night at Fenway, it was a reminder that being visibly, proudly Jewish in a public space still matters, maybe now more than it has in a long time.
In a year where we are drowning in the vicious and pernicious mainstreaming of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, we needed this game. We needed to wear those jerseys proudly and RIGHT AWAY. We needed to be able to fearlessly applaud the Israeli consul general and the season-ticket holder wearing his Israel Baseball hat during the pregame ceremony. We needed to see Scott Gladstone from the AJC rocking his kippah in the dance-off in the eighth. We needed to see the Hebrew jerseys from this year and Jewish Heritage Night’s past sprinkled all over the ballparks. We needed it all.
We also needed to walk around the ballpark, expecting that we would know every other person wearing the Hebrew jersey, because it felt that way, right? It certainly did to me.
And you know what else we needed? A six-run fourth inning, Jarren Duran and Ceddanne Refaela going 7-10 combined, Connolly Early throwing seven scoreless, the team combining for 15 hits, and, most importantly, a joyful 8-0 victory over Atlanta.
Not for nothing, but the Sox are 9-18 at home, yet are 6-1 when I show up; the front office should probably explore the analytics there.
It was, without a doubt, the safest I have felt being overtly and obviously Jewish in a good long time. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Red Sox. Now, can you go out and get some power hitting? And as Marc Baker told a group the morning after, “It was a great night, and no one was talking about antisemitism.” Amen.
And while Facebook is never a reflection of the actual real world, it did feel like about half of my Jewish friends were at the game and posting pictures just like mine of real-life, happy, unapologetic Jews. That’s a great thing.
But as much joy as I derived from the experience, the real blessing of the evening happened when we got home. Four of our five kids came to the game (one of them is in New York for the summer), and each of them came over to quietly thank me before bed. I’d like to think, and I’m actually pretty sure, that they felt their Jewish heritage a little extra this year. Mission accomplished.
And I’m reasonably sure those jerseys were worn to school today, as well.
That might be exactly what we needed.
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