Retired SUNY professor to speak at Jews in Baseball event
Mar. 28—William Simons, SUNY Oneonta Professor Emeritus and former chair of the History Department, will give a talk titled, "The Jews, Dodgers and Brooklyn: The Jackie Robinson Decade," in Cooperstown at 11 a.m. on Sunday, April 2. The talk will take place in the Cooperstown Village Hall ballroom during "The Diamond District: Jews in Baseball" event.
The event will be sponsored by Temple Beth El, and kosher hot dogs will be provided by Rabbi Meir Rubashkin of Chabad in Oneonta, according to a media release. To reserve a kosher hot dog, contact tbeoneonta@gmail.com or call 607-432-5522.
Simons' talk will examine the relationship between Brooklyn's large Jewish community and the Dodgers, a media release said.
"In various venues — my sport history course at SUNY Oneonta, numerous public lectures for the New York Council on the Humanities and other groups, and my publications — I have found the Brooklyn Dodgers continue to fascinate people," Simons said in an email.
"The relationship between the Dodgers and the Brooklyn Jewish community had a central role to racial integration of major league baseball. Jackie Robinson's reintegration of MLB rendered the bond between the Dodgers and Brooklyn's liberal Jewish community implacable," he said.
According to Simons, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union Ira Glasser asserted that his generation of ACLU leaders were all Jewish, Brooklynites and Jackie Robinson-Dodger fans.
"At the 1947 Foner family Passover seder, the youngest son, Henry, asked 'Why is this night different from all other nights?': the response — a Black man now plays for the Dodgers," Simons said.
Brooklyn obtained a sense of identity and meaning through identification with the Dodgers. The Jewish community shared commonalities with the Dodgers, "derived from shared sensibility," that they did not share with the "haughty" Yankees, he said.
The best part of baseball is its past, Simons said. "Every team, community ethnic/racial group, and fan has their own story, and we will rekindle memories of just how much baseball meant to Brooklyn," he said. The Dodgers were integrated intimately with the community, on the field and in the city.
Simons said it will be a great event. Each lecture will disseminate information about baseball in America as it relates to the past and present.
