The role Robinson played in Jewish life fascinated me. That insight, that Robinson was a Jewish hero or icon, was the seed of the book.

Many times my mother saw the Dodgers as Jewish because they’d done the right thing. The Brooklyn Dodgers were the first racially integrated team in baseball, breaking the so-called “color line” with the signing of Jackie Robinson to a major league contract in 1947 by Branch Rickey, their general manager. My goal is to provoke people to think about the important role baseball plays in American civil religion and get a greater appreciation of how Jews who aren’t often studied – mid-20th century entrepreneurs, Communists, and Hebrew Israelites – negotiated the terms of their religious, ethnic, and racial identities in the era before and after World War II. Tell people you’re writing about Jews in black baseball, and they just look at you funny. Tell people you’re writing about Jews and baseball, and they say “Sandy Koufax” or “Hank Greenberg,” or maybe nothing at all. Q: How did you become interested in this subject?Ī: Tell people that you’re writing about baseball, and they are waiting for the bad jokes and silly puns. She spoke with the Ledger about how she was inspired to explore this pivotal relationship in American sports history, now largely missing from our collective consciousness. She will talk about her book on Thursday, Feb. Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball (Oxford University Press, 2011) is inspired by Alpert’s childhood as a Dodgers fan growing up in Brooklyn. Alpert’s most recent work is, comparatively, “out of left field,” and bears that title.

Among her works are the award-winning Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition (Columbia University Press, 1997) Exploring Judaism: A Reconstructionist Approach which she co-authored, and Voices of the Religious Left: A Contemporary Sourcebook (Temple University Press, 2000), which she edited. A prolific author and editor with numerous articles and chapters published in scholarly publications.

Ordained as a rabbi from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Alpert specializes in religion in America, with a focus on sexuality and race. Alpert is associate professor of religion and women’s studies at Temple University.

Lesbian Rabbis by Rebecca T. Alpert