Softball and Jewish Study Become an Arizona Summer Tradition

Every year, Andy Luper looks forward to the Jewish softball game. An active congregant of Chabad-Lubavitch of Arizona for the past 20 years, Luper says the game reminds him of his childhood.

“It’s always a lot of fun,” he explains. “We have plenty of people there and water, and a few cold [drinks] for after the game as well.”

Luper played first base at this summer’s event, a jovial game played on a warm Sunday afternoon at a local public school field behind the Chabad synagogue. Community members and rabbis squared off for the friendly competition, and in what has become something of an annual tradition, a group of visiting rabbinical students from New York, California, Massachusetts and Montreal – who spend five weeks in Arizona running a seasonal yeshiva for the local community – took to the field as well.

The rabbinical students arrived in Phoenix and travelled for two weeks around the state, visiting regions and towns with small Jewish communities, and returned to Phoenix to spend their final three weeks. They gave sermons and weekly Torah classes, and ran programs for Jewish teens living in the area.

The project gives people the experience of learning one-on-one in 45-minute to hour-long sessions of Judaic topics of their choosing, says one of the visiting students, 23-year-old Eli Sapochkinsky. And the kickoff baseball game provides an informal setting for everyone to get together outside of a synagogue setting.

It’s a way of laying the groundwork for a relationship, continues Sapochkinsky, and makes calling around the community about opportunities to learn easier. “It wasn’t like some stranger calling them, offering to learn. They knew this already; we’d played this game together.”

The six visiting students will be in the community until the 22nd of the month, and are seeing tens of people coming to talk about topics that interest them throughout the week. And the education goes both ways. As the students teach, they gain experience with how to relate to a diverse community of Jewish learners who might want to study anything from the weekly Torah portion and prayer to the afterlife.

Inspiring Change

The young men’s presence in the community inspired community member Yitz Garfinkel, who pitched for the baseball game, to start helping others learn.

“Taking the lead from the boys,” he calls his working with a boy in the neighborhood on the Hebrew alphabet, putting his own background and Jewish education to work.

The visitors bring the community closer, says Garfinkel. “They’re a really great group of guys. Every year we get a different group, and every year we get someone coming back through. We welcome them here and they become part of us; they’re family.”

In addition to hoping to take advantage of more learning opportunities, Garfinkel’s hoping for another game.

“We love playing with them and every year we say we have to have more games,” he says. “I would play every week if I could. I’d make my schedule around the baseball games.”

The rabbis won the last one, reportedly 6-2.

“We lost by a few runs, but it was close,” says Luper.

As for the students, Luper has found their involvement in the local community to be both enjoyable and insightful.

“They always bring new energy to the congregation,” he says. “They add the energy of youth and enthusiasm for the teachings” of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory.

Rabbinical student Eli Phillips, 23, came to Phoenix as part of the program three years ago and says it’s nice to return and see familiar faces. He wants the people he learns with to eventually incorporate Torah study into their daily schedule, whether as part of classes or on their own.

Playing softball twice in three years doesn’t exactly make him a professional, remarks the center-fielder, but it’s always a good time.

“They see that you’re someone who’s able to go out and play baseball with them,” says Phillips, all in the name of strengthening Judaism.