Even though the Los Angeles Dodgers are in last place, they still have the support of Jewish Angelinos-- at least the living ones.
Our Dodger support goes way back, even to before Koufax. We once even occupied the same neighborhood, and I'm not talking about Brooklyn.
In Chavez Ravine, about a bloop single's distance beyond the Dodger Stadium parking lot, there once was a Jewish cemetery, the first one in LA.
This season, there's an almost spooky feeling in town, especially at the stadium where attendance is down. You don't hear the Dodger games on car radios anymore. And last week my kids were able to buy good upper deck seats on StubHub for five bucks each.
The former team of owners Frank and Jamie McCourt continue to struggle through an ugly divorce. The team's on the brink of bankruptcy. And a guy committing the "transgression" of wearing a Giant's jersey to the season's home opener against San Francisco, was almost beaten to death in the parking lot.
It doesn't look like the franchise has a ghost of a chance to win the division (at this writing, their record was a scary 12 games below .500).
It's a house of horror up there but don't blame us. We moved out of the neighborhood around one hundred years ago.
Or so the story goes.
In 1855, according to a 1969 article in the Western States Jewish History Journal by Thomas Cohen, a title was granted to the Los Angeles Hebrew Benevolent Society for a "piece of ground," in Chavez Ravine to be used "as a burying ground for the Israelites forever."
According to the piece, "The first burial in the old cemetery had been in 1858 and by 1902; there had been over 360 burials." Markers were of white marble or wood and "More elaborate monuments were made of granite and other stone." Then between 1902 and 1910, either because the City of Los Angeles wanted the site for a "detention hospital," or "pest house," or the Benevolent Society (now affiliated with Congregation B'nai B'rith) wanted a more accessible location (or perhaps because of both), those interred at the cemetery were moved to what is now Home of Peace Cemetery in East Los Angeles, and the property was sold.
In 1967, to mark the site of the city's first Jewish cemetery, author Cohen, and Dr. Norton Stern successfully submitted an application to the California Historical Landmarks Advisory Committee for a landmark (#822) to be built on the site.
On a Sunday recently, hours before the evening Dodger game, I drove up Lilac Terrace to visit the landmark which stands halfway up a grade that runs just below the stadium parking lot. "Close enough to hear the crowd," I thought, while reading the headstone shaped monument. Standing there, I tried to picture the horse drawn wagons carrying the dead Jewish pioneers of Los Angeles up the steep, hot hill.
With the dedication of the monument in 1968, the stadium--cemetery story went cold, so to speak, until 2007 when Dan Gordon and Mickey Bradley published "Haunted Baseball: Ghosts, Curses, Legends, and Eerie Events."
For their book the authors interviewed Dodger grounds keepers, security officers and other stadium workers who according to Gordon's blog reported, "Apparitions on the field and eerie late night sounds."
What do you think? Yiddesheh angels in the outfield?
In the book, the authors even note a mausoleum that remained on the property until the late 1990's that "Was a popular hangout for hundreds of Dodger employees after the game."
Today, in light of the Dodgers mysterious decline, perhaps the authors could do a follow up and ask what's causing Dodger bats to whiff, and catcher's throws to soar? And, has any staff seen signs that either Jamie or Frank McCourt is possessed by a dybbuk?
Are lost Jewish spirits angry about Dodger Stadium being built so close by? Or are they simply disturbed about the season they now must endure?
Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate.In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association.
