This time, they say, it’s different.
After winning their first pennant in 71 years, the Chicago Cubs are set to play their first World Series game at Wrigley Field since 1945. The baseball team, which hasn’t won a championship since 1908, split the first two games played against the Indians in Cleveland earlier this week.
Now, as the city of Chicago and fans of the national pastime turn their eyes back to the iconic corner of Addison and Clark in Wrigleyville, they’ll notice what has become a regular sight around the North Side home of the Cubs: A rabbi in a “Team Chabad” baseball jersey offering Jews of all stripes the ability to do a mitzvah.
For the second straight season, Rabbi Dovid Kotlarsky—co-director of Chabad-Lubavitch of East Lakeview, which encompasses Wrigleyville—has been stationing himself around Wrigley Field with tefillin, encouraging Jewish baseball fans to wrap the traditional leather prayer straps. During Sukkot, the rabbi brought a sukkah mobile to the area as well, shaking the lulav and etrog with Jews of all ages.
The number on the rabbi’s jersey? 18, of course—the numerical value of chai, or “life.”
Kotlarsky is regularly joined in his effort by his father-in-law, Rabbi Baruch Hertz, who founded Chabad of Lakeview in 2003 and pioneered Chabad activities at Wrigley Field at the same time. The two are often joined by volunteer rabbinical students.
On Friday morning, Kotlarsky and an enlarged team will be out in full force once again, engaging the assemblage of fans who flock to the Wrigley area. They’ll be there on Sunday, too.
“We get recognized all the time, and people’s reactions are great,” says Kotlarsky, whose sukkah mobile was profiled on Chicago’s WGN-TV News and in other media outlets. “People are upbeat, so there’s just this sense of happiness in the city.”
“When people are excited in this way, it leads to positivity,” says Hertz, who, on some years, even built a large permanent sukkah near the stadium. “I’ve seen this season after season. When the fans are feeling good, happy, they’ll do a mitzvah, and that’s a great thing. Right now, there is huge excitement in Chicago; nothing else even comes close.”
‘Never Give Up’
Hertz also has another Cubby connection that is of historical interest. Since 1993, he has served as rabbi of the historic Congregation Bnei Ruven in West Rogers Park (for years on Shabbat, he would walk the 5.1 miles between his Chabad center in Lakeview and Bnei Ruven). Bnei Ruven was initially founded in 1895 by Lubavitch immigrants from Russia, who built their synagogue on Chicago’s West Side, not too far away from the Cubs’ old stadium, the West Side Grounds, the place where they last won the World Series in 1908.
The last Cubs championship game to be played in Chicago was on Oct. 12, 1908, or 17 Tishrei 5669, the first intermediate day of Sukkot, The Cubs lost that game, and it’s possible that Bnei Ruven’s congregants heard the groans coming from the ball park while sitting in their sukkahs. The Cubs would end up winning the next two games, and the series, in Detroit.
But a long time has passed since that Chicago Sukkot of 5669, and Cubs fans feel that their moment is coming once again. Hertz believes that there’s a classic Jewish lesson to be learned by everyone.
“Try again and again, never give up,” says the rabbi. “If you try, you’ll eventually get there.”
Join the Discussion