Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 7, 2000

Volume 28, Number 27

Screening kicks off Slifka Center
forum on Jews and sports

The Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale will present the first Forum for the Study of Jews and Sports with a special screening April 12 of "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg," a critically acclaimed documentary on the baseball great.

The film will be shown at York Square Cinemas,

55 Broadway, at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, April 12. Tickets, which are free to the Yale community, can be obtained at the Slifka Center, 80 Wall St. For more information, call (203) 432-1134.

The screening of "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg" marks the opening of the Forum for the Study of Jews and Sports, a program that seeks to encourage the emergence of a new Jewish sports tradition by bringing accomplished athletes to Yale for discussions, lectures and testimonials about the impact of sports on Jews. The forum is supported by the Karetsky Family Fund.

Hank Greenberg was known as much for his batting average as for his courage in battling religious prejudice in the ballpark. Born in the Bronx in 1911, Greenberg rose to fame playing for the Detroit Tigers from 1933 to 1946. His 183 RBIs in 1937 were one short of Lou Gehrig's American League record, and he hit 58 home runs in 1938, nearly matching what was then the record of 60 by Babe Ruth. Greenberg, who was sometimes called "the baseball Moses," was an inspiration to American Jews, refusing to play on the holy day of Yom Kippur and getting special, widely publicized rabbinic dispensation in 1934 to play an important game that fell on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year.

His courage in the face of freely expressed anti-Semitism served as a model to athletes who followed. Jackie Robinson acknowledged his debt to Greenberg in his own struggle to overcome racial prejudice, and in 1965, following Greenberg's example, Sandy Koufax refused to play in a World Series game on Yom Kippur.

The documentary film -- written, directed and produced by Aviva Kempner -- presents "Hammerin' Hank" through archival footage and interviews with friends, family, teammates and many celebrity fans. "I thought he'd become the first Jewish president," says Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz in the film.

Included in the film is the historic footage of Greenberg's 1945 grand slam that brought the Tigers to the World Series, and two renditions of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," sung in Yiddish by Henry Sapoznik and Mandy Patinkin.

Immediately following the screening, Aviva Kempner and Hank's son, Steve Greenberg (Yale '70), a former deputy commissioner of baseball, will lead a discussion with audience members.

"The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg," made its cinematic debut at the Film Forum in New York on Jan. 12 of this year, and has been screened at film festivals in Berlin, Jerusalem and San Francisco. It won the Spirit Award for Best Sports Documentary at the International Sports Video and Film Awards as well as the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Hamptons International Film Festival.

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Yale authors to sign copies of new works

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