{"id":1503,"date":"2007-11-29T16:19:45","date_gmt":"2007-11-29T16:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2007\/11\/jews-in-sports-vs-jews-in-spor.html"},"modified":"2007-11-29T16:19:45","modified_gmt":"2007-11-29T16:19:45","slug":"jews-in-sports-vs-jews-in-spor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/11\/jews-in-sports-vs-jews-in-spor.html","title":{"rendered":"Jews in Sports Vs. Jews In Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This summer marked the opening season of the Israel Baseball League. It opened to some controversy, because the sport&#8217;s pretty American; in Israel, they play &#8220;football&#8221;, of course, and some basketball. But baseball? Could the society support a new sport that was largely unfamiliar? Well, depending on who you ask, the season was either <a href=\"http:\/\/www.presentensemagazine.org\/mag\/?page_id=131\" target=\"_new\">a success<\/a> or a little bit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.presentensemagazine.org\/mag\/?page_id=126\">more like a hung jury<\/a>. But what&#8217;s been disappointing is definitely the aftermath. Because even though Israel is a relatively small country, one baseball league isn&#8217;t enough, apparently, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thejewishweek.com\/viewArticle\/c41_a1081\/News\/Short_Takes.html\" target=\"_new\">as the NY Jewish Week reports <\/a>and as Yoda once said, &#8220;There is another.&#8221; I am somehow reminded of a scene in Monty Python&#8217;s &#8220;Life of Brian&#8221; when members of the People&#8217;s Front of Judea are mistaken for the Judean People&#8217;s Front. And the Popular Front. And everyone&#8217;s offended because no one wants to be mistaken for a member of the club they&#8217;re not affiliated with. View the clip (some &#8220;adult language,&#8221; but nothing you don&#8217;t hear regularly on FX these days):<object width=\"425\" height=\"355\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/gb_qHP7VaZE&#038;rel=1\"><\/param><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/gb_qHP7VaZE&#038;rel=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"355\"><\/embed><\/object><!--more-->&#8220;Jews in sports&#8221; is often cited as a punchline. But apparently, the lesson that Monty Python taught is a cultural observation that&#8217;s still in effect: where there&#8217;s a PFJ, there&#8217;s got to be a JPF. And where there&#8217;s an Israel Baseball League, there apparently has to be an Israel Professional Baseball League. Is this how things started with the National and American Leagues in American professional baseball? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This summer marked the opening season of the Israel Baseball League. It opened to some controversy, because the sport&#8217;s pretty American; in Israel, they play &#8220;football&#8221;, of course, and some basketball. But baseball? Could the society support a new sport that was largely unfamiliar? Well, depending on who you ask, the season was either a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Jews in Sports Vs. Jews In Sports<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/11\/jews-in-sports-vs-jews-in-spor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jews in Sports Vs. Jews In Sports\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This summer marked the opening season of the Israel Baseball League. It opened to some controversy, because the sport&#8217;s pretty American; in Israel, they play &#8220;football&#8221;, of course, and some basketball. But baseball? Could the society support a new sport that was largely unfamiliar? Well, depending on who you ask, the season was either a&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/11\/jews-in-sports-vs-jews-in-spor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-11-29T16:19:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Esther Kustanowitz\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Jews in Sports Vs. Jews In Sports","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/11\/jews-in-sports-vs-jews-in-spor.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Jews in Sports Vs. Jews In Sports","og_description":"This summer marked the opening season of the Israel Baseball League. It opened to some controversy, because the sport&#8217;s pretty American; in Israel, they play &#8220;football&#8221;, of course, and some basketball. But baseball? Could the society support a new sport that was largely unfamiliar? Well, depending on who you ask, the season was either a&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/11\/jews-in-sports-vs-jews-in-spor.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2007-11-29T16:19:45+00:00","author":"Esther Kustanowitz","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/11\/jews-in-sports-vs-jews-in-spor.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/11\/jews-in-sports-vs-jews-in-spor.html","name":"Jews in Sports Vs. 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Jews In Sports"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/fcb22915d0c12856ef1a8541aadbf3a8","name":"Esther Kustanowitz","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/db5\/db5e38b5fe16a4bf4c9c481909dc528ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/db5\/db5e38b5fe16a4bf4c9c481909dc528ax96.jpg","caption":"Esther Kustanowitz"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/ekustanowitz"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}