The Ciesla Foundation is proud to announce that it will be commemorating the 25th anniversary of Aviva Kempner’s acclaimed documentary, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, by remastering and rereleasing the film in stunning 4K resolution. This project also marks the 90th anniversary of the iconic moment when Hank Greenberg, in an inspiring act of faith and integrity, chose not to play in a crucial pennant race game to observe Yom Kippur.”
In the 1930s Jewish mothers would ask their sons: “What kind of day did Hank have?” Hank Greenberg, the Detroit Tigers slugger who came close to breaking Babe Ruth’s homerun record, was baseball’s first Jewish star. Tall (6’4″), handsome, and uncommonly good-natured, Greenberg was a secular Jew from the Bronx who became “the baseball Moses,” an icon for everyone from Walter Matthau (“I joined the Beverly Hills tennis club to eat lunch with him. I don’t even play tennis”) to Alan Dershowitz (“I thought he’d become the first Jewish president”). Aviva Kempner’s loving tribute is chock full of wonderful archival footage from the ’30s and ’40s and interviews with a self-effacing Greenberg and many of his Tiger teammates. Plus Mandy Patinkin’s rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” — in Yiddish!
http://www.hankgreenbergfilm.org
