feature
Photo by Elli Wohlgelernter
Various jerseys from Alon Leichman’s baseball career on display
at his family’s home on Kibbutz Gezer in Israel.

kibbutz to fl y him over.

Not that he wasn’t used to working; like all
kibbutz members, he was already contributing by
third grade. But now he had to put in extra hours,
picking olives or milking cows, to make the extra
money. “I liked milking cows,” he recalled. “Sometimes,
it’s hard work, but I got more of a kick out of it than
hitting an olive tree” to shake loose the olives.

Leichman remembers well that tournament in
Holland, the fi rst time he wore the Israeli uniform
representing his country abroad.

“It was really cool,” he recalled. “A sense of pride.

That’s the fi rst time I think I felt like: ‘You’re not
just Alon, you’re not just representing the kibbutz
anymore; you’re representing a whole country.’
“I knew back then that Israel was not on the
best terms with the world. So it was something
that I was aware of: that part of our job of playing
baseball is also making sure that these guys get
to know Israelis other than what they hear on the
news and show them that, you know, we’re good
people.” The 5’-8” right-hander kept playing, kept improv-
ing and kept representing Israel at tournaments. He
played in the one-season Israel Baseball League in
2007 as the second-youngest player, served in the
Israeli army from 2007 to 2010, and then headed
to the states to play college ball at two schools,
Cypress College and the University of California,
San Diego.

In his fi rst appearance at Cypress, his elbow blew
out, and he needed what’s known as “Tommy John
surgery” to repair a torn ulnar ligament inside the
elbow. Then he got hurt again and had a second
Tommy John surgery. But when he got hurt a third
time, and the doctor said he needed to go under the
knife yet again, Leichman knew that his hopes for a
professional playing career were over.

But not before proving to himself that he had
what it takes.

“I know I was good in Israel. I knew that. But I
had no idea how I would fare coming to the States.

I thought I could fare [well] there, but I really never
knew because I had never faced those types of
18 DECEMBER 29, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
hitters. And then, in my fi rst game, I did really well
for two and a third innings, four strikeouts. No one
got on. It was 1-2-3, 1-2-3, and then I got the fi rst
guy out in the ninth. And on a one-two fastball,
my elbow popped. So it was like, ‘OK, I can do
this here.’”
‘Throw more strikes’
His love for the game never left him, and Leichman
grew into an insightful and intuitive coach. His
expertise and aptitude were self-evident.

“Alon will be a big-league coach one day,” said
pitcher and teammate Alex Katz three years ago.

“It’s hard to get a coaching job in affi liate ball with-
out professional experience, let alone non-affi liated
experience. But he’s just one of the most intelligent
baseball minds I’ve been around. And he’s young.”
Leichman said his strength is “helping guys get
better. Communicating with them. Being able to
relate to them. Getting on their level. Simplifying
it for them. And being creative and fi nding ways to
throw more strikes.”
Despite the surgeries, Leichman could still pitch,
if he did it sparingly. He joined Israel’s World
Baseball Classic teams of 2012, 2016 and 2017 as a
player or coach; pitched for the European Baseball
Championship team in 2019; threw in the Olympic
qualifying tournaments in 2019; and hurled one
perfect inning against Team USA at the Olympics
in 2021 in Tokyo. Along the way, he also earned a
black belt in jujitsu.

But coaching was his future, and after being
given a chance in 2017 to instruct in the Seattle
Mariners farm system, Leichman kept moving up,
from Single A to Double AA to Triple AAA, before
being grabbed by the Reds to join their major
league staff this season.

His father is overwhelmed. “It’s unbelievable,”
said David Leichman. “I’m still shaking and crying
to myself about how wonderful this has been.”
Alon is no less shell-shocked, having agreed to
sign a contract with the Reds on the same day that
the New York Mets asked to interview him about a
potential job.

“It’s not really sinking in yet, to be honest,” he
said while in Israel recently to visit his family on
Gezer. “But it’s defi nitely a dream come true, some-
thing I’ve been dreaming about since I’m a little
kid. Obviously, I wanted to be there as a player, but
once I got hurt and realized that playing was not
an option anymore, I started pursuing coaching.

I wanted to do it at the highest level. The dream
remained; it just took a diff erent route. But it’s still
as exciting.”
Leichman is still undecided on whether to join
Team Israel’s coaching staff in Florida for the WBC
in March before heading back to Arizona to rejoin
the Reds for spring training. But this product of
the wheat fi elds of Gezer won’t ever forget where
he’s from: His uniform numeral, 29, is a con-
stant reminder. It’s his laundry-tag number at the
kibbutz. JE
David Leichman, left, stands behind the backstop at the baseball
fi eld he helped build at Kibbutz Gezer in Israel, where his son
Alon, right, learned the game that has brought him to the major
leagues.




arts & culture
2022 was a big year for Jews
in the arts
Andrew Lapin | JTA
O nce more for the record, Dave
Chappelle: Jews don’t really
run Hollywood. But anyone
paying attention in 2022 saw a great
deal of Jewish creativity this year; in
fact, it was notable just how many
of the biggest pop-culture events fer-
vently embraced Jewish identity.

Growing up Jewish in movies
Two of the year’s big arthouse film
releases were autobiographical portray-
als of their directors’ Jewish upbring-
ings. In “The Fabelmans,” Steven
Spielberg’s account of how he became
a filmmaker, a teenager in 1950s
America navigates a fracturing Jewish
family and antisemitism at school. And
in “Armageddon Time,” James Gray’s
retelling of his Reagan-era childhood
(with appearances from the Trumps), a
Jewish family in Queens, N.Y., tries to
assimilate into the WASPy upper class
while their young son brushes aside the
needs of his Black friend.

‘Tár’ and ‘teshuvah’
While the families in “The Fabelmans”
and “Armageddon Time” were obvi-
ously Jewish, Cate Blanchett’s mon-
strous fictional conductor in “Tár” was
not, which made it all the more sur-
prising when the film not-so-subtly
incorporated Jewish themes into its
story of artistic success and karmic ret-
ribution. The acclaimed drama looks
to make big inroads this awards season
as it gives audiences a de facto Hebrew
lesson. Photo illustration: Mollie Suss/70 Faces Media
‘Rehearsal’ for living Jewishly
Gonzo comedian Nathan Fielder staged
some elaborate simulations of everyday
life in “The Rehearsal,” a new HBO
series that proved to be among the
buzziest TV shows of the year — and
whose late-season pivot to discussions
of Jewish parenting caught just about
everyone by surprise. As the Internet
lit up with conversations about Miriam
Eskenasy, the Hebrew tutor Fielder
hired for his fake Jewish son, JTA spoke
to Miriam herself about the various
“Armageddon Time,” “Russian Doll,” “The Rehearsal” and “Tár” were some of the cultural works that dealt with Jewish themes.

questions of Jewish identity explored by
the show.

‘The U.S. and the Holocaust’
Ken Burns’ PBS documentary relay-
ing how the United States responded
to the Holocaust on the homefront and
during wartime ignited a fierce national
reckoning over the historic treatment of
Jews and outsiders. Burns and his Jewish
co-directors said they hoped to commu-
nicate an important lesson to the coun-
try about antisemitism and xenophobia
that could challenge America’s founding
myths. TV had Jewish conflicts
FX/Hulu’s thriller “The Patient” dug into
an inter-family divide between Reform
parents and Orthodox children, even as
the show weathered criticism for its cast-
ing of non-Jew Steve Carell as a Jewish
therapist. Another Hulu show, Ramy
Youssef’s “Ramy,” entered its third sea-
son with a storyline set in Israel and an
Orthodox Jewish supporting character,
notable for a series that focuses on a
Muslim American protagonist.

‘Russian Doll’ Nazi gold train
Natasha Lyonne’s time-hopping Netflix
series returned for a second season,
reaching deep into the past to find
Lyonne’s protagonist Nadia unearth-
ing generations of Jewish trauma in
her family. It all culminated with her
exploration of a Hungarian “gold train”
filled with treasures that the Nazis sup-
posedly looted from the country’s Jews
during wartime. Lyonne was drawing
on real-life Holocaust history for the
plot. Some uncomfy Jewish jokes
The “Sex and the City” follow-up on
HBO was largely viewed by fans of the
original as a trainwreck. Jewish view-
ers saw something else: bizarre Jewish
jokes, from a midseason flirtation with
a Holocaust-denier to a season-finale,
“They Mitzvah,” that ultimately didn’t
happen. ‘Funny Girl’ cast conflicts
The hotly anticipated revival of the
biographical musical about Jewish
comedian Fanny Brice that ini-
tially launched the career of Barbra
Streisand, debuted in spring to sky-
high expectations. Lead Beanie
Feldstein said that taking on the role of
Brice was “incredibly meaningful for
me as a Jewish woman.” But following
poor reviews and ticket sales, Feldstein
exited with gusto — and was replaced
by Lea Michele, the “Glee” star with
Jewish ancestry who’d spent much of
her career openly pining for the role
of Fanny.

Other Jewish stories from
2022 available to stream:
13: The Musical (Netflix); Ahed’s Knee
(VOD rental); American Masters: The
Adventures of Saul Bellow (PBS); The
Calling (Peacock); Cha Cha Real Smooth
(Apple TV+); Heirs to the Land (Netflix);
Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey,
A Song (VOD rental); Idina Menzel:
Which Way to the Stage (Disney+);
Image of Victory (Netflix); Jackass
Forever (Paramount+); Last Flight Home
(Paramount+); Ridley Road (PBS);
Shababnikim (Chaiflicks); Yosi, the
Regretful Spy (Amazon Prime). JE
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 19