Professional baseball changed Ryan Lavarnway’s life, just not in the way you’d expect.
The former Red Sox catcher has a 2013 World Series ring, and thanks to this game, he’s gotten to see more of the world than most.
But for Lavarnway, baseball gave him something even bigger: a strong Jewish identity.
“I was part of the World Series team, I played for half the league, I was an Olympian, I finished an Ironman. The thing that I get recognized for or support for the most is being a Jewish baseball player,” Lavarnway told the Herald. “And it also changed my life and changed how I see myself in the world, how I see myself as a man, and how I’m raising my family. One of the most meaningful experiences of my life is also one of the things that gets recognized the most, and to me, that’s pretty cool.”
Wednesday night was Jewish Heritage Night at Fenway Park. The event, like the other heritage nights the team hosts throughout each season, is supposed to be a joyous occasion for a city home to one of the largest Jewish populations in the world. But since Hamas invaded southern Israel last October 7, taking hundreds of hostages back to Gaza and igniting a war, antisemitism has surged around the globe. According to the Antisemitism Worldwide Report, published annually by Tel Aviv University and the Anti-Defamation League, there were 1,000 antisemitic incidents recorded between October-December ’22, and 3,976 between the same months in 2023. Overall, the ADL’s annual audit catalogued 7,523 incidents last year, the highest number they’d ever recorded; it was more than double the year before, which had set the previous record.
Around the world, Jewish people are being harassed on college campuses and schools, synagogues are receiving threats, and antisemitic attacks are being carried out in broad daylight. So, it was with some trepidation that Jewish Red Sox fans walked into their baseball cathedral on Wednesday evening and donned the bright yellow City Connect jerseys they were gifted (with purchase of specific tickets), with “Boston” emblazoned in Hebrew letters across the chest.
Lavarnway, back in town to catch the ceremonial first pitch from award-winning comedian and native Bostonian Alex Edelman, felt differently. (The Brookline, MA native threw a strike, the catcher said.) This was a chance to celebrate being Jewish and being together as a community.
“When I go out and I’m speaking in the Jewish community, there’s so many people talking about antisemitism, I see my role as reminding people of why we’re proud to be Jewish,” Lavarnway told the Herald. “Because it’s really important to fight antisemitism, it’s really important to educate and everything else, it’s also important to remember why we love being Jewish and why we are committed to this community.”
Since October 7, Lavarnway, who retired last year after a professional baseball career that spanned 16 years in the minors, Majors, World Baseball Classics, and the Tokyo Olympics, is one of many Jewish athletes who’ve become more vocal in the world and online.
“It’s been alarming and disheartening to see the rise in antisemitism, but what’s been really encouraging is to see the surge of Jewish pride, and I think people are feeling empowered and the importance of stepping up and speaking out,” the catcher said. “I mean, guys like (Kevin) Youkilis that never really said anything before are now posting daily. It’s really important.”
In addition to remaining in the game as a coach in the Cubs organization, Lavarnway is the proud author of “Baseball and Belonging,” a new children’s book about his experience. His father is Jewish, his mother isn’t. Baseball, he says, made him the Jewish man he is today.
“The book came from talking to adults about my story, growing up in a mixed-religion household,” the former catcher explained. “I found my spiritual identity, my Jewish identity, through playing baseball for Team Israel. It really was a life-changing experience for me to play in the World Baseball Classic.”
Israel was something of an abstract concept for Lavarnway until he went there for the first time when he was 28 years old. The country he saw was not the devastated war-torn land often depicted in the media, but a vibrant, diverse democracy, home to many cultures and religions. And he would never be the same.
“Coming from a guy that had very little to no relationship with God, to feel God at the Western Wall was a life-changing moment,” he said. “To see Christians and Muslims and Jews living shoulder-to-shoulder and to see the most holy and historic sites a stone’s throw from each other and people praying in different religions at the same sites, it’s something that you need to see to understand.”
For Lavarnway, what makes Judaism special is the emphasis on celebrating life, and the “community first” mentality.
“Being embraced by the global Jewish community really helped me find my place and where I belonged,” he said. “My favorite page of my book, it says ‘More than anything, he felt a growing sense of pride. People said, ‘You’re one of us, welcome to the Tribe.’
“I sign every book when I personalize it, ‘Do what you love and find where you belong,” he added. “And that’s the message I hope everyone takes from the book, whether you’re Jewish or not.”
On Jewish Heritage Night at Fenway, Lavarnway was exactly where and with whom he belonged.
