Here is an eye-opening look at one of baseball's most intriguing and little known stories: the many-faceted relationship between Jews and black baseball in Jim Crow America. In Out of Left Field, Rebecca Alpert explores how Jewish sports entrepreneurs, political radicals, and a team of black Jews from Belleville, Virginia called the Belleville Grays--the only Jewish team in the history of black baseball--made their mark on the segregated world of the Negro Leagues. Through in-depth research, Alpert tells the stories of the Jewish businessmen who owned and promoted teams as they both acted out and fell victim to pervasive stereotypes of Jews as greedy middlemen and hucksters. Some Jewish owners produced a kind of comedy baseball, akin to basketball's Harlem Globetrotters--indeed, Globetrotters owner Abe Saperstein was very active in black baseball--that reaped financial benefits for both owners and players but also played upon the worst stereotypes of African Americans and prevented these black "showmen" from being taken seriously by the major leagues. But Alpert also shows how Jewish entrepreneurs, motivated in part by the traditional Jewish commitment to social justice, helped grow the business of black baseball in the face of the oppressive Jim Crow restrictions, and how radical journalists writing for the Communist Daily Worker argued passionately for an end to baseball's segregation. In fact, the campaign to convince manager Branch Rickey to integrate the Brooklyn Dodgers was initiated by Daily Worker sports writer Bill Mardo, in an open letter in the paper. Deftly written and meticulously researched, Out of Left Field offers a unique perspective on the economic and social negotiations between blacks and Jews in the first half of the 20th century, shedding new light on the intersection of race, religion, and sports in America.

Rabbi Rebecca Alpert is a leading voice in progressive Judaism. A crusader for reform within the Jewish community, she was one of the first women in Jewish history to be ordained a rabbi. Alpert is a celebrated teacher, an expert on Jewish American religious history, and a key public advocate for progressive social issues in contemporary Jewish life. In Whose Torah?, Alpert sketches a compelling portrait of the progressive values that belong to the core of Judaism today. Reaching deeply into the sources of Jewish tradition, she highlights with unflinching moral clarity the textual basis for a truly just vision of life for all who care about sexual, economic, and racial justice and for those who would oppose all forms of discrimination, unjust war, and the destruction of the environment. Alpert also carefully considers what it means to be Jewish in contemporary America―offering both a passionate and deeply learned defense of progressive Jewish identity. Whose Torah? will be an essential intellectual resource for progressive Jews and for anyone searching for the religious underpinnings of contemporary progressive politics. Elaine Pagels, Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion at Princeton University, is the author of numerous, widely acclaimed books on Gnosticism and early Christianity, including The Gnostic Gospels, Beyond Belief, and Reading Judas.