When we swing, we swing for the fences.

Perhaps more than any other sport, Jews have been drawn to baseball, both on and off the field, and in so doing, have established a kind of tradition, passing on stories from generation to generation. Hank Greenberg blasting two homers on Rosh Hashanah before sitting out on Yom Kippur, Sandy Koufax taking the bench for the first game of the 1965 World Series, even the latest jaw-dropping run by Team Israel in the World Baseball Classic—these Samsonian strongmen represent something bigger than themselves, and their success and failures have become a liturgy for the emerging Jewish baseball fan. Following suit on the page, authors—some members of the tribe, others playing for different ball clubs—have used blended Jewish ideas with baseball to create a new mythology.

The first stab at stitching Jews and baseball together on the literary field comes as early as the Roaring Twenties, although the scouting report is ill-favored for the home team. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has survived perhaps rightfully as a commentary on the tarnishing of the American Dream, but perhaps wrongly for how it veers from crediting the affairs of apathetic WASPs to blaming a caricature of the Jew as a loyalty-less grubber: Meyer Wolfsheim. Wolfsheim appears as one of Gatsby’s shadier connections—to really drive the point home, Fitzgerald dresses him in human-tooth cufflinks—but the true source of his corruption is revealed later by Gatsby:

“Meyer Wolfsheim? No, he’s a gambler.” Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: “He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919.”

“How did he happen to do that?” I asked after a minute.

“He just saw the opportunity.”

Wolfsheim, as it turns out, is a barely disguised Arnold Rothstein, often attributed with doing just what Gatsby accuses—fixing the World Series and getting away with it. It is clear from Gatsby’s distaste that he sees something perverse in a Jew bleeding the sacred cow that is baseball for a couple coin, and in doing so he establishes the first of many strains of myth-making in baseball literature. Baseball’s original sin stretches so long that W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe (more popularly known in movie form as Field of Dreams) is still trying to atone.

Not the most auspicious start for a lasting relationship, though the irony is that Jewish authors and Jewish themes have long elevated the game in prose. Although not Jewish himself, Pete Hamill’s Snow in August transplants the golem from Prague to mid-century Brooklyn, where it is brought to life by a Holocaust survivor and his young Irish Catholic friend. The book uses baseball as a canvas for its themes of intolerance, and though not implicitly drawn, the true golem of the story is Jackie Robinson, beginning his history-making turn in the majors, who echoes the golem’s traditional purpose as a symbol for the oppressed. James Sturm takes the opposite approach in his graphic novel, The Golem’s Mighty Swing, which demystifies the image of the golem in a story of a barnstorming Jewish baseball team during the Great Depression and exposes the limits of how far baseball can truly take the American Dream when it seems rotten at its core.

With a more cosmic perspective, however, comes Michael Chabon’s YA novel, Summerland, a blender of Native American and Norse mythologies, all centered around a belief that baseball is a tool of champions. Chabon provides a typical hero’s journey, but with a twist: the battleground? A baseball diamond. The stakes? The end of the world. The hero? A kid who only needs to catch one good game.

In this sense, all roads lead back to the quintessential baseball novel and the man who married Americana and Arthurian legend to build a new motley mythos: Bernard Malamud’s The Natural. It tells the story of a man named Roy Hobbs, returned to the game after being shot in his prime years before, and how he tries to rescue a slumping team with his Excalibur-like bat “Wonderboy” while battling his own tendencies to succumb to temptation. Nothing about the novel is essentially Jewish, except perhaps its ending. Whereas the movie adaptation provides a true Hollywood moment when cornfed Robert Redfield shatters the lights with his pennant-winning homer, the book ends, in true Arthurian taste, with Hobbs striking out, accused of throwing the game, and erased from its history. Maybe King Arthur learned pessimism from the Jews.

There can be miracles, however, if you believe. In Mindy Avra Portnoy’s timeless children’s classic Matzah Ball, a young fan feels ashamed schlepping to the ballpark with his Passover-approved lunch—and even more awkward when his friends eat his lunch instead of their own, leaving him in the lurch. In this dark hour, an old man appears and regales the kid with tales of boyhood games in Ebbets Field and gifts him a very special piece of matzah before disappearing. You know how it goes now—the kid catches a home run using his matzah as a glove, and we learn that while there may not be angels in the outfield, at least Elijah has a seat in the bleachers.

Photo of Sandy Koufax via Flickr

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You may have stopped watching Arthur (about the shenanigans of an anthropomorphized aardvark and his friends,) on PBS ten or fifteen years ago, but the show is still chugging along, with new episodes. Earlier this week, this year’s Halloween special, “Arthur and the Haunted Treehouse” debuted.

Any fan of Arthur, old or new, will tell you that Arthur’s friend Francine Frensky (some kind of a monkey, in theory, but she looks more like a hippo, TBH) is Jewish, so she brings us a very Jewish spooky story this episode. Of course, that story is the Golem. The dybbuk might be a bit much for kids.

Francine is trick-or-treating in her apartment building, when she knocks on the door of an elderly woman with a vague European accent who invites her inside.

Two things to spot:

1. This woman has a Menorah prominently on display. How else will we know she’s Jewish?
2. This Jewish woman appears to be a goat-person, which means that she has horns. Didn’t really think that one through, did you, animation team?

Anyway, the woman shows Francine a photo of a golem she says she took herself, and begins to tell her the story of how she came upon it, back in her childhood home of Mindelplotz (near Prague, apparently).

The story that follows, is sadly divorced from Jewishness, more a Frankenstein’s monster sort of scenario. In the tale, a violinist who is bitter after breaking his hands studies “magic,” which apparently includes looking at a book with pictures of ankhs and a kabbalistic Tree of Life. He constructs a golem (that has adorable bunny ears!!), and then activates it by sticking in a shard of his violin. The golem goes on a rampage and terrorizes the town! It turns out that the old lady telling Francine the story is the ghost of the long-lost sister of the actual apartment resident (Mr. Saperstein, also a goat-person), and a victim of the Golem!

OoooOOOohhh!!!

Anyway, it’s not the most faithful telling of a golem narrative, and nowhere does anyone even say the word “Jewish,” but points for Halloween diversity!

And, yes, you can watch this on YouTube. The whole segment is less than ten minutes:

https://youtu.be/xxPyqE-NF6Y?t=9m43s

Image via YouTube.

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If you haven’t heard of Len Wein, you still definitely know his work. The comics writer and editor died yesterday at the age of 69, after nearly fifty years in the industry. A member of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, Wein may not be a household name like Stan Lee, but he was hugely important just the same, and respected amongst his peers and comic fans alike.

Jews are predominantly associated with the Golden and Silver Age of comics (as in, the early days through 1970), but Wein is a reminder that they’re remained a relevant presence in the industry since.

Let’s go over just a few of his contributions to the world of comics.

• He created Swamp Thing, the horror comic with a brain, a heart, and multiple live-action adaptations.
• He resurrected the X-Men in 1975 after a hiatus of the iconic superhero mutant team. This included one of the first ever appearances of Wolverine, and the introduction of the hugely popular Storm, Colossus, and Nightcrawler.
• He edited Watchmen, arguably the most important graphic novel of all time.

But let’s take a moment to appreciate one of his more obscure moments— because it’s not every comics writer who decides to bring the Golem to the page.

Strange Tales was a Marvel Anthology series. In Issue #174, from 1974 (during Wein’s very brief gig as Marvel’s editor-in-chief), Wein wrote a story about a Jewish archeologist, Abraham Adamson, who brings young relatives on a desert archeological dig to find the Golem of Prague; Adamson makes it very explicit that the Golem’s purpose is to protect Jews from their enemies. Adamson succeeds in finding the legend, and when he is murdered (by uncomfortable Arab stereotypes, granted), the Golem returns to life and goes on a killing spree, saving Adamson’s family.

The story continued over several issues, and Wein also edited the issue in which Golem fights the Thing, which is amazing because the Thing is Jewish (though it wasn’t explicit at the time) and also looks quite like a Golem himself.

The Golem is not a hugely important comics character, nor does he only appear in this one franchise (a number of writers, Jewish and not, have put the clay creature on the page). But 1974 was a bit early for explicitly Jewish content in comics— this was before Magneto “came out” as Jewish, before Kitty Pryde, before Israeli superhero Sabra.

This story isn’t hugely important (nor is it the first time the Golem appeared in the pages of a comic), but it’s a sort of missing link in how Jewish comics creators expressed their heritage in their works. There had to have been a transitional phase, from needing your your Nazi-punching hero to look so All-American he could have been Aryan to having a girl ward off Dracula with a Magen David. Some of Wein’s famous creations, like Colossus and Swamp Thing, are arguably Golem-like, but here’s the Jewish version of the story in the flesh— er, clay. On the journey from subtext to text, we have this strange little story.

Len Wein was a nerdy Jewish kid who loves superhero comics in the 1950s, and eventually took on the mantle of creation himself. It’s the American Jewish chain of tradition.

Image of Wein via Wikimedia. Comic panels from Strange Tales #174.

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Yiddish has had an exciting creative revival in recent years, including festivals, theater, and music. Even punk music is getting its Yiddish on!

From klezmer-punk to pop-punk, here are the best punk acts with Yiddish as their mamaloshen (mother tongue). They’re punk with their attitudes and sensibilities, their musical styles, and their polemics against injustice and war.

Klunk

Klunk (short for “klezmer-punk”) combines klezmer with punk rock and metal. The Parisian band released their debut EP in March. Their songs embrace left-wing stances against oppression, poverty, unemployment, and inequality. “I consider myself a Yiddishist, and I try to promote the Yiddish language and culture by all means possible,” says lead singer and pianist Jean-Gabriel Davis.

“Daloy Polizey” (“Down with the Police”) features raspy vocals, crunchy guitar chords, and a fast tempo. The song dates back to at least 1905. According to the Jewish Music Research Centre, the song “tends toward anarchism, even anarchist terror, especially in the verse that calls to bury Tsar Nicolai along with his mother,” and “may be connected to more radical sections of the Labor Bund.”

Asher Yatzar

Not all Yiddish punk stems from klezmer! Asher Yatzar, a Yiddish pop-punk band, started playing shows in Chicago last year. For the band members, singing in Yiddish isn’t a radical statement, but rather, natural for Ashkenazi Jews. “They’re all Jewish songs,” said guitarist/singer Shmul. “My lyrics are generally more secular, but we have a song about the bund, a song about creating new paradigms for envisioning collective Jewish liberation, a song about Yiddishkayt.”

The song “Genitungen” (“Exercise”) begins, “Far i’deayl gezuntenkeit … genitungen” (“For optimal health … exercise”). In the lyrics, examples of exercise include running, learning in a bet-midrash (house of study), and praying. Asher Yatzar drummer/singer Dave explained that “for ideal health,” a Jew needs “to work your guf (body) and your brain and your nshoma (soul).”

Golem

Golem plays klezmer with a rockin’, punked-up edge. Singer/accordionist Annette Ezekiel Kogan said that Golem was out to make klezmer that “preserved the past” but was “alive,” rather than belonging in “a museum” or “a morgue.”

Golem typically opens shows with Kogan wailing “Oy!” and then greeting the crowd in Yiddish. Golem’s other singer, Aaron Diskin, translates that Kogan isn’t speaking English, German, or Hebrew, but rather—brace for the excitement—Yiddish! With a hefty drum-roll, Golem then launches into the frenzied “Odessa,” which Kogan has called their “anthem.” The old Peisachke Burstein song is about yearning for the narrator’s hometown and “beautiful city” of Odessa, Ukraine. Golem included “Odessa” on their 2004 and 2014 albums, but it sounds the most intense—and punk rock—live.

Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird

Although their “Radical Yiddish Punkfolk Cabaret” stew contains many ingredients, punk is an important element of Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird. In my book, Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk, Kahn says that his music exhibited a “do-it-yourself” approach, “exuberant irreverence and aggressiveness,” “sardonic acid humor,” a “willingness to engage with some dark shit,” and a rejection of “commercial market populism: the idea of trying to make something that’s appealing to everybody.”

When the band included electric guitar, there was a more discernible punk rock vibe, such as in the intense bridge and coda of “Yosl Ber/A Patriot.” Kahn sang most verses of the Itsik Manger song in both Yiddish and English, but it’s the one he didn’t translate into English that made the song’s underlying joke work. In the liner notes Kahn explained that a Jewish soldier accused of running away from battle was a “faithful soldier”: “That’s why I ran away from the front! I hate the enemy so much, I don’t even want to look him in the eye!”

To learn more about Golem, Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird, and other bands that combine Jewishness and punk, check out, Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk.

Photo of Klunk by Kriss Peeks

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1. Yidcore: Punk Rock Chanukah Song

Adam Sandler took Jewish holiday music to the next level with “The Chanukah Song,” but Yidcore one-upped Sandler with this parody—and circumcised him in the (arguably NSFW) music video. Yidcore proudly recalled the many prominent Jews in punk rock. Yidcore declared, “Joey Ramone ate matzoh at the seder/Just like Richard Hell and most of the Dictators.” Sure the Maccabees are important, but this is an important history lesson too.

2. Golem: Freydele

Golem is a klezmer-rock band with a punk edge. The first few times I heard “Freydele” live, I was blown away that Golem had come up with such a catchy, poppy, dance-y song. Just like most songs that meet that description, there’s some rapping in Yiddish. The lyrics discuss a maydele, named Freydele, who plays with her dreydele.

3. Shira: Hanukkah Song

Although Shiragirl was a punk rock band, as a solo artist Shira focused more on dance music, while still incorporating punk-inspired distorted guitar. “Hanukkah Song” mentions the oil that lasted for eight nights, latkes, chocolate gelt, and doughnuts. The lyrics include a tutorial on how to play dreidel. As far as Chanukah songs go, it’s all encompassing in discussing both the historical and celebratory aspects of the holiday.

4. Schmekel: I’ll Be Your Maccabee

Schmekel frequently relied on Jewish holidays as a familiar, resonant vehicle to discuss the transgender Jewish experience, (Remember all their High Holy Day songs?). Singer/guitarist Lucian Kahn explained that “I’ll Be Your Maccabee” was about “a young, Jewish, trans guy who goes to a Hanukkah party” and tries to seduce “a very handsome, Christian, non-trans guy.” The song includes a keyboard interlude of the more traditional Hanukkah ditty “Maoz Tzur.”

5. The Schleps: Maoz Tzur

If you’re looking for a full version of “Maoz Tzur” (Rock of Ages), The Schleps recorded a 37-second “koshercore” rendition. For Hanukkah 2008, JDub Records (z”l) featured the song on their blog and “predict[ed] that koshercore will finally take off in 2009 (maybe).” Koshercore did not hit the big time in 2009 or, as of press time, ever, but Jews are good at waiting.

6. Gefilte Fuck: Dreidel Song

Gefilte Fuck’s “Dreidel Song” is a medley of “I Have a Little Dreidel” and “Hanukkah, O Hanukkah.” Front man Howard Hallis recalled that he and the band’s guitarist thought it would be “really funny to take some of these old songs” and “make them punk rock style, because there are some really lovely melodies there that can be bastardized and put into the punk rock format.”

7. Electric Menorah: Charmonica for Chanuka

Brett Singer played guitar in a hardcore band under the stage name Bozo Foreskin. He had the idea of “Bozo Foreskin years later exploring his Jewish roots,” so he formed the one-man band Electric Menorah. Electric Menorah released the EP Chanucore, which consisted of three songs uploaded to MySpace. After a Passocore detour, Electric Menorah returned with “Charmonica for Chanuka.” Singer began the song by chanting “Shin! Hey! Gimmel! Nun!” before saying, “Shin sucks. Gimme Gimmel!”

8. Gangsta Rabbi: My Last Chanukah

Finish up your Chanukah with some end-of-life music. Steve “Gangsta Rabbi” Lieberman is battling cancer and finds it difficult to keep making music, but he hasn’t given up. He’s working on his 30th album (68th if you count his 38 cassette recordings), The King of Jewish Punk. He included “My Last Chanukah” on 2014’s Cancer Ward, but it wasn’t his last Festival of Lights. In a July interview, the Gangsta Rabbi had a unique take on his health situation. He wondered, “Has the God of Israel written a scorching rocker for me to play in Heaven—but not until I get there?”

You can learn more about all eight artists in my book, Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk.

Photo of Shira: Andrina Farago, Hair/Makeup: Paul Mojica

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In retrospect, it was inevitable that I’d write Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk. I feel a personal connection with many of the featured artists, and had circumstances allowed, I gladly would have seen them live more often. Many of them are based too far away, or don’t play often enough. Yet, there are two bands in the book that I’ve seen far more than any others, and I saw both for the umpteenth time last week. Golem, a klezmer-rock band with a punk edge, is the center of attention in my chapter about punk influences on klezmer and other types of Jewish music. Moshiach Oi!, a “Torah hardcore” band, is perhaps the most prominently featured group in my chapter about overtly Jewish punk rock bands.

Why do I keep going to see these bands over and over again? Of course I enjoy the music, and for a long time it was research for my book. Golem and Moshiach Oi! are based in New York and have been around a while (since 2000 and 2008, respectively), which gave me numerous opportunities. But the reasons I went again and again ran deeper.

Golem and Moshiach Oi! reaffirmed for me that Jewish punk (or klezmer-rock with a punk edge, if you will,) was not just a collection of isolated examples. So many of the bands in my book were spread out by time and geography, but they were an exception. Seeing Golem and Moshiach Oi! so often made my research subject—and my passion—tangible. I wasn’t only covering a band that played a few shows or a defunct band from halfway around the world. Jewish punk—and its variations—was still going strong.

Golem’s and Moshiach Oi!’s music—and concert experiences—also give me satisfaction in my identity as an outside-the-box Jew. This happens at a cultural level with Golem and at a religious level for Moshiach Oi!

My first article about Jews and punk in 2005 began by quoting Golem’s then-violinist, Alicia Jo Rabins, and Golem has been a key part of my Jewish punk journey ever since. I recalled my first Golem show, in San Francisco, in my book:

A 2006 concert showcased Golem’s potential to give fans a wild, fun Jewish experience. … When Golem played a hora, two or three women wearing sexy dresses danced in front of the band and helped get a hora dance going. They were called the Hanukkah Horas—with emphasis on the first syllable of the second word. About half the crowd exuberantly joined hands, kicked their feet, and circled around a mid-sized concert venue. After starting out with the standard Hebrew lyrics of “Hava Nagila,” singer Aaron Diskin frantically sang in English about wanting another tequila with lime and salt. Diskin rolled around onstage, stripped down to “A Great Miracle Happened Here” Hanukkah-themed underwear, which two of his bandmates also showed off.

As I moved around the club intertwined with presumably Jewish strangers, I had a euphoric high and felt “Jewishly connected” on my own terms. I wasn’t getting that in Virginia, where I was living at the time. This was fun Jewish culture mixed with debauchery and edginess. I’d waited a long time and come a long way for this. I don’t get as excited every time I see Golem, but that experience is ingrained in my mind as the benchmark for what a Golem concert is.

This past Wednesday was my 19th time seeing Golem, and I’ve written about the first 18. I’ve started a hora, gotten a hora to switch directions and circle to the left, and danced the hora outside in the rain in December. I’ve seen Golem at an Oktoberfest gig, multiple Chanukah shows (latkes were involved), a holiday season concert, and a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. I’ve even crashed a wedding that Golem was playing at!

Whereas Golem is the band I want to play my wedding when the time comes, Moshiach Oi! was the band at my book release party. I’d been in touch with guitarist Menashe Yaakov Wagner since 2006 about his band White Shabbos, and in 2008, Wagner told me that his friend Yishai Romanoff had started “perhaps the world’s first hardcore vegan straight-edge Orthodox Jewish punk band.” Needless to say, I was intrigued! Around the time Wagner helped expand Moshiach Oi! into a quartet later that year, the label was shortened to “Torah hardcore.”

In November 2008, I went to Wagner’s house and was the first person to interview Moshiach Oi! They’d only played one show, and I was dubious about the band’s prospects. I was wrong, and since then, Moshiach Oi! has released two albums, with a third in the works. The group has been featured in one documentary (Punk Jews) and interviewed for a second (Tikkun Olam) and been profiled in The New York Times. Romanoff graces the cover of my book.

On Thursday I saw Moshiach Oi! for the 10th time, and like for Golem, I recounted every show. A Moshiach Oi! concert is an intense experience, not just because the music is heavy. Romanoff has described the band’s music as “a punch in the face of godliness.” When Romanoff is screaming “Baruch Hashem,” it’s not just art inspired by Judaism. It’s a religious expression of Judaism. “When I’m onstage screaming, I’m trying as hard as I can to only focus on one thing, that I’m doing this for the sake of G-d … only to make G-d’s name great in the world,” Romanoff explained in Punk Jews. Romanoff hopes that his punk rock version of “Shema Yisroel,” for example, makes the prayer more relatable for people who don’t connect with a conventional rendition.

When the opening chords of “Am Yisroel Chai” strike, I get into a focused state. When the lyrics kick in, I scream along with the message of the Jewish people persevering. At my book release party, Romanoff passed me the microphone so I could sing, “We are the children of Abraham… He was the first man to break apart and raise up a fist and smash his culture’s lies and scream ‘Resist!’” Romanoff doesn’t merely tell the story of a Biblical character. He recites it as a battle cry that seamlessly melds his Jewish and punk identities.

When the bridge of “Avoda Zara” kicks in and the musical intensity picks up, I have an out-of-body experience. “No, no, no, I only bless Hakodesh Baruch Hu [the Holy One, Blessed Be He],” Romanoff screams and so do I, before repeatedly screaming “Hey!” in the coda to sustain the momentum just a little longer. During that song, I am filled with a fierce, fierce love for Hashem. That might sound like an oxymoron, but the praise for God is genuine and it’s wonderful. Nothing else brings me closer to God with such concentrated passion in the moment.

I know that that not everyone is reassured in their Jewish identity or feels an unparalleled connection with God. I do, and with these concerts I keep going back for more.

Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk was published in April by Praeger (an imprint of ABC-CLIO).

Image credits: Cover of Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk

Golem via Golemrocks.com

Moshiach Oi! performing at the Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk book release party in June. By Michael Shields.

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The wild sounds of Eastern European music, klezmer, Gypsy songs and punk rock all come together in this lively, fun and interactive concert (3 pm) and workshop (4:15 pm) for families. (Ages 4 & Up)

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