If you struck out, you weren’t just a bum, you were a Jewish bum,” recalls Hank
Greenberg, one of the greatest Jewish baseball players in history, in a key
moment from the film,
Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story.
This
fascinating and moving film, directed by Peter Miller, is showing in the
Jerusalem Film Festival, which opens on July 8 and runs through the 17th. This
year’s festival features 200 films from over 40 countries. Among its several
competitions, the Wolgin Award in the Israeli Feature Film category will be one
of the most closely watched, as Avishai Sivan’s
The Wanderer, which competed at
the Cannes Film Festival this year, goes up against new films by Nir Bergman,
who made the acclaimed
Broken Wings, and Dover Kosashvili, who directed
A Late
Wedding.
The opening night film will be
La
Rafle, a French drama about
the Holocaust starring Jean Reno. The festival will close with the
newest movie
by Lisa Cholodenko
(Laurel Canyon),
The Kids are All Right, a
drama about a
lesbian couple – played by Julianne Moore and Annette Bening – who have a
baby.
In between, there will be the latest and most interesting features,
documentaries, shorts and animated films from Israel and around the
world. This
year, The Jewish Experience Category is particularly strong, and
Jews and
Baseball is one of the films competing that is likely to resonate
with many
viewers here. And that’s because it’s a fascinating subject, and not
only
because there are many transplanted Americans in Israel who still love
their
former national pastime.
“This is the story of the Jews in America
through the lens of baseball,” says Miller. “It’s about the Jewish
experience in
America – people who had been discriminated against finding a place in
their new
country.” By becoming baseball fans, Miller says, Jewish immigrants
could be as
American as anyone who had been born in the US.
THE FILM, which features
interviews with such legends as pitcher Sandy Koufax, Hank Greenberg
(who died
in 1986) and his children, and Al Rosen, the Cleveland Indians’ All-Star
third
baseman, among others, looks at the history of Jewish baseball players
and
Jewish fans. And it also analyzes what this history means and how it has
changed.
Miller immediately embraced the idea of making this film when
Will Hechter, his producing partner, came to him with the idea.
New York Times
sportswriter Ira Berkow, an expert on the subject, came on board as
writer and
consultant.
“The three of us embarked on this journey. From the moment we
started, I realized this was going to take over my life,” says Miller.
He
credits Berkow as being the baseball expert on the filmmaking team,
admitting,
“There are fans out there who know and will always know more about this
than I
do.People feel very passionately about this subject.”
Miller got a
surprise as he started working on the film. “A lot of my research
involved
talking to Jewish ballplayers and I wasn’t prepared for how incredibly
articulate and bright they were,” he said.
“I knew I would be talking to
people who were jocks but they turned out to be philosophers and sages
in a way
I didn’t expect.” Rosen, for instance, is “one of the most passionate
and
interesting people I’ve ever met.”
Discussing how Rosen was taunted as a
child for being Jewish and later faced similar slurs in the major
leagues,
Miller notes, “People harassed him.
Sometimes he would fight back by
hitting the ball, and other times with his fists. He epitomized the kind
of
assertive muscular Jewishness that was on the rise in the post-World War
II era,
especially after the establishment of the State of Israel. This man in
his
eighties connects his story to the story of anti-Semitism in
America.”
ONE OF the emotional high points in the film for Miller is the
moment where people recall the dustup between Jackie Robinson, the first
black
player in baseball, and Hank Greenberg early in Robinson’s career.
Greenberg and
Robinson collided as Robinson ran to first and Greenberg tried to catch
the
ball. Later in the game, Greenberg asked Robinson if he was all
right.
“Greenberg gave him some words of encouragement, urging him not to
let all the bigotry get to him. It made a huge impression on
Robinson.”
Robinson later told
The New York Times,
“Class
tells.
It sticks out all over Mr. Greenberg.'' This incident reflected a
larger black-Jewish solidarity in the era, a time when Jews became
involved in
the civil-rights movement. “You have people like [Rabbi] Rebecca Alpert
in the
movie saying she thought of the Brooklyn Dodgers as a Jewish team
because they
were the first team to integrate. And she thought of Jackie Robinson as a
Jewish
hero.”
Miller, who now lives and works in New York, grew up in Boston and
is a Red Sox fan. He is slightly sheepish over the fact that the Red Sox
were
the last team to integrate black players onto the team. However, he says
he had
the sense growing up that waiting for his team to win the World Series
was akin
to waiting for the Messiah.
“There was something spiritual and religious,
a sense of optimism and failure. There was always the hope that this
could be
the year, side by side with the knowledge that this is never going to be
the
year. In a way it was harder finally winning in 2004 and not knowing how
do deal
the success,” he says.
Making documentaries is never easy, but Miller
says this one went relatively quickly, since it took just two-and-a-half
years
to make. The director, who has produced many documentaries, some of them
with
the well-known documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, also directed films
about
Mexican Americans and Sacco and Vanzetti. “Documentary making is partly
about
doing creative work and mostly about figuring out how to pay for it,” he
says.
Miller plans to devote the next six months to promoting this film.
But he is working on other film ideas, one about Jewish refugees during
World
War II who were taken in by the Dominican Republic, and the other about
Doc
Pomus, a legendary rhythm and blues singer who hid his middle-class
Jewish
origins.
Looking back on the history of Jews and baseball, Miller sees an
American success story. “In the beginning, the Jewish players faced
barbs from
the stands. Now, you can have three Jews playing in the All-Star Game
and nobody
even knows.”