Jewish Heritage Night BlueClaws
June 8, 2010

With Lakewood BlueClaws’ Jewish Heritage Night now scheduled for the third year in a row, the event is taking its place alongside Italian and Irish heritage nights as an annual opportunity to showcase Ocean County’s cultural landscape at FirstEnergy Park.
The minor league baseball team and the Jewish Federation of Ocean County will once again bring kosher food, the Israeli flag, and a host of other Jewish elements and festivities to the stadium June 8. The Jewish Federation of Monmouth County will partner with JFOC and the BlueClaws as well for the event. The BlueClaws are proud to offer Jewish fans something to take ownership and something that reminds them of home when they come to the ballpark, said Josh Feinberg, one of the team’s regional sales managers and a coordinator for Jewish Heritage Night.
“It goes back to being a minor league team and having that community involvement,” Feinberg said.
Danny Goldberg, the federation’s executive director, said Jewish Heritage Night is a chance for the community to be “recognized as part of the mosaic of different ethnic groups” that make up Ocean County. The federation’s relationship with the BlueClaws began in 2002, when the organizations worked together on hosting the Garden State Jewish Festival, an event that brought 75 Israeli vendors to the stadium, Goldberg said.
At the festival in 2002, attendees tried to break the Guinness World Record for the largest Horah dance. Since Israeli tourism was down during the Second Intifada that year, vendors came to America to sell to the Jewish community directly, Goldberg explained.
The BlueClaws hold a similar festival for the Irish community on a non-game night at FirstEnergy Park, in addition to the annual Irish Heritage Night on a game night, Feinberg said. The team could revisit the prospect of hosting a Jewish festival in future years, Feinberg said, and might also look into adding exciting new wrinkles to Jewish Heritage Night like a post-game concert, noting the plans of the Philadelphia 76ers National Basketball Association team to host a post-game Matisyahu concert in January.
Jewish Heritage Night for the BlueClaws has featured pre-game music the last two years from Ed Goldberg and the Odessa Klezmer Band. Feinberg said the band’s performance gives fans Jewish flavor “from the first step in the ballpark,” since it is the only time in 70 BlueClaws home games all season that a band plays on the stadium’s concourse.
Jewish Heritage Night activities — like children having the chance to play a pre-game catch with players on the field — are the kinds of opportunities that aren’t present at FirstEnergy Park the rest of the season, Feinberg said. While the federation creates buzz around the event, Feinberg said he also does considerable outreach to local synagogues on his own.
In 2008, the first Jewish Heritage Night for the BlueClaws was a celebration of Israel’s 60th birthday. Since then, the event is always scheduled around the time of Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day, and has become a way for the local Jewish community to display its strong connection to Israel, Goldberg said. In that spirit, Goldberg noted, a high-ranking official from the Consulate General of Israel in New York has thrown out the first pitch on Jewish Heritage Night for the last two years.
With a pre-game parade of Jewish organizations in Ocean County, Jewish Heritage Night also gives synagogues, Jewish War Veterans, and other groups a chance to be visible in the public eye, Goldberg said.
Finally, Jewish Heritage Night is simply a nice night out for Ocean County’s Jewish families and a chance to be part of the action at the ballpark, Goldberg said. For locals who aren’t interested in baseball, and drive by the stadium in Lakewood almost every day without giving it a second glance, Jewish Heritage Night and other cultural nights provide a great reason to come to a game, Feinberg said.
“It’s a different way to get people out to the ballpark,” Feinberg said.
Since he is a Jewish member of the BlueClaws’ front office, coordinating on Jewish Heritage Night and seeing the program come to fruition each year has become a special source of pride for Feinberg.
“[Lakewood is] our home,” Feinberg said of the BlueClaws. “This is our home, just as much as it is the [Jewish community’s] home.”