Fenway Park hosts Jewish Heritage Night on Monday, May 19, as the Red Sox take on the Mets. Tickets start at $46 and come with a personalized T-shirt, written in Hebrew—make sure to wear yours to the game!
Since a presidential proclamation in 2006, May has been designated as Jewish American Heritage Month, making Jews the only religious group in the United States that has a month dedicated to its history.
“This isn’t religious; it’s to get the Jewish community out and about. People come with groups: schools, youth groups, synagogues, CJP and Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters,” says event planner Rachel Glazer, who organizes the event every year.
The party starts with Israeli music and dancing on Jersey Street before the game; the first pitch traditionally honors a notable Jewish community member. (Last year, Brookline-born comedian Alex Edelman took the mound.) The national anthem is also sung by a Jewish vocalist; in recent years, Gann Academy’s a cappella group, ShenaniGanns, performed.
“There’s a lot of Jewish pride: to see everyone wearing the shirts and feeling good, especially now,” Glazer says. One perennial fan in the stands? Base BSTN‘s Rabbi Jackson Mercer, who feels a strong connection between Judaism and baseball. Mercer grew up making fantasy lineups and practicing baseball swings in the front yard. “In the peak of summer, my life is really a confluence of two rhythms: the Jewish rhythm of prayer and Shabbat and the rhythm of baseball, checking box scores with my morning coffee and falling asleep to West Coast radio broadcasts. Both of those rhythms are deeply tied to my connections and relationships—they make me think of my father and my immediate relatives and also generations of families who in different ways lived those rhythms. To get to share that intersection with our community feels like a space and moment to be able to bring a unique part of myself to them,” Mercer says. “From a wider perspective, as a huge fan of pluralism, there are few places as diverse and encompassing of all the multitudes of Jews and Jewish communities as Jewish Heritage Night. It’s like schmoozing at shul on steroids—walking through the bleachers is stopping every few rows to give folks a hug, to connect with an old friend. And just as impressive as recognizing so many faces, to walk into a space with so many Jews I don’t know is such an incredible statement of the size and scope of the Boston Jewish community,” he adds. Sounds like fun, right? Get your tickets here!
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