Judaism, baseball, and the drive for normal
Dr. Solomon Schechter, president of the Jewish Theological Seminary, once told my young grandfather, Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, then a student at the seminary, “Unless you can play baseball, you’ll never get to be a rabbi in America.”
My grandfather never played baseball and never really understood the game. He told me he once went to a game but didn’t enjoy it; the noise kept interrupting his thinking. My grandfather ultimately was more interested in the Book of Ruth than Babe Ruth and Talmud more than a triple play.
